HomeTVPretty Little Liars season 5 Welcome to the Dollhouse recap

Pretty Little Liars season 5 Welcome to the Dollhouse recap

Pretty Little Liars drew its fifth season to a close with the biggest A reveal to date but it posed as many questions as it answered.

If you havenā€™t seen the episode and donā€™t want any spoilers then we suggest you stop reading now. If you have seen it and want to relive all of the action then keep reading.

Does dolly want to play?

The episode opened with Hanna (Ashley Benson), Emily (Shay Mitchell), Spencer (Troian Bellisario) and Aria (Lucy Hale) being transported to a different prison so they were kept separate from Alison (Sasha Pieterse). As they discussed their impending prison life, the van they were travelling in crashed and A opened the back doors, knocked the girls out with a smoke bomb and took the girls with him.

When they woke up the girls were in their own bedrooms, which had been faithfully recreated by A. Once the doors to each room opened the girls were told to follow the lighted path that led them to Alisonā€™s living room. A girl was playing the piano in the room and wearing a mask of Aliā€™s face. As the liars approached her, she took off her mask and revealed herself to be Mona (Janel Parrish) but insisted that she was really Alison.

Mona served the girls tea, then took them to a room to play a game of Mystery Date. When the girls refused to play and Mona told them to call her Alison, Hanna snapped and shouted into the video camera watching them. Due to their refusal to play, a siren sounded that Mona explained would end if the girls returned to their rooms.

Pretty Little Liars season 5 episode 25
Credit: ABC Family

Later on the girls met again in the corridor and Mona explained that she had been held there since her ā€˜deathā€™ and that she was forced to pretend to be Alison as part of Aā€™s game. She explained to the girls that the power generator shut down for 3 minutes each day and that sheā€™d been trying to find a way to escape but admitted there were no exits.

Things got weirder when A revealed his next game; getting the liars to recreate a prom night from 7 years earlier. Each of the liars was given a task to complete and Spencer quickly worked out that if A provided her with a set of materials, she could create a contraption that would blow out the power and allow them to escape. Spencer had also clocked some building blocks in one of the rooms that spelt out the name ā€˜Charlesā€™ giving her a clue to who their captor may be. Mona woke up to find a gas mask with a note from A saying that she was his favourite.

When A delivered the materials Spencer requested, she staged a fight with Emily to distract Aā€™s cameras so that Mona could take some of the materials and start working on the contraption. When the girls returned to their rooms they had prom dresses waiting for them. Getting changed and returning to the ā€˜promā€™ room, the girls were surrounded by mannequins dressed up for the event. They welcomed ā€˜Alisonā€™ into the room and gathered together on the stairs for a photo. Spencer called out for Charles to show his face and A stepped out from amongst the mannequins with his face covered by a mask. As he approached Aria took a photo and the power blew out. The girls scarpered and Spencer came upon a room with a video projector in it. She pressed play and saw a video of Mrs DiLaurentis (Andrea Parker) holding Alison and playing with her two (?!) sons ā€“ you guessed it Jason and Charles. Charles appeared behind Spencer and she turned to face him but the interruption of the other girls scared him away.

The liars then ran through the corridors out into the fresh air only to find that they were still trapped, this time by an electric fence.

Pretty Little Liars season 5 episode 25
Credit: ABC Family

Liars taskforce

With the girls missing Toby (Keegan Allen), Caleb (Tyler Blackburn) and Ezra (Ian Harding) joined forces to find them. They searched through surveillance footage to find that A had hacked the systems and put cartoon footage in place of the real footage. Caleb managed to find some information as to the whereabouts of the van and Toby took it to Tanner (Roma Maffia). She responded by putting out an APB for Caleb claiming that he was involved with the disappearance of the girls.

Whilst the boys were trying their best Veronica (Lesley Fera) and Peter Hastings (Nolan North) were doing some sleuthing of their own. They visited Alison in prison after Toby told them that the girls had disappeared and that Tanner thought they had escaped. They appealed to Alison to tell them where the girls were and even though she said she didnā€™t know, she did finally tell them about A.

Veronica and Peter showed up at Tobyā€™s to help search through the evidence against A and to find the girls. The police turned up looking for Caleb and he left the apartment to go to the police himself so he didnā€™t get Toby into trouble. He was accompanied by Veronica and Peter who finally made Tanner see that the girls were being set-up. Tanner let Caleb use the police systems and he located the van.

Tanner and Toby led a taskforce to the location where they found the abandoned van. It was outside of a warehouse owned by the Campbell family and in the basement was Aā€™s control centre where heā€™d been watching the girls. There was no sign of the liars or A but the reveal cast suspicion once again on Andrew (Brandon W. Jones) who was seen listening in to Veronicaā€™s phonecalls when she called Melissa (Torrey DeVitto) to tell her what had been going on.

What did you think of the season 5 finale? Rate it below:

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Pretty Little Liars will return to ABC Family and Netflix in the summer for its sixth season.

Pip Ellwood-Hughes
Pip Ellwood-Hughes
Pip is the owner and Editor of Entertainment Focus, and the Managing Director of PiƱata Media. With over 19 years of journalism experience, Pip has interviewed some of the biggest stars in the entertainment world. He is also a qualified digital marketing expert with over 20 years of experience.

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