Issues / Plot holes with Charles/Cece is -A reveal
Okay just a few comments of mine on the 6x10 summer finale. I absolutely love the idea of cece being -A and I think it’s absolutely fantastic that they made her to be -A but there’s several things that are bothering me with the whole episode and explanation of everything. Don’t get me wrong I loved the idea of it but it just seemed really messy and all over the place to me so I’m gonna break it down but bare with me it’s long.
1) First of all, I’m gonna start with the biggest issue of mine with the reveal of Bethany having killed Toby’s mother.
Toby’s mother was killed in 2007, two years before Alison’s disappearance. So if I’m not mistaken, at the time that would make all of the girls (Spencer, Aria, Hanna, Emily, Alison, Mona & Sara) about 13. Toby is I believe two years older than the girls, so he would be 15. According to the yearbook that Spencer found in Ian’s things back in season 1, Jason, Ian, Garrett, Wilden, Cece, and I believe Melissa, are all the same age, being seven years older than the liars. This would make them roughly 20 when Marion died. Now considering Jason and Cece are not twins, I would assume that Cece and Jason are actually almost a year apart, and were just born within the same year which would explain why they were in the same grade in school. Assuming Cece is nearly a year younger than Jason, this would make her roughly 19 at the time of Marion’s death. If the timeline is correct, and Bethany was 17 when she was killed, she would have also been 15 when Marion died.
This would be fine, except with the flashback we saw in tonight’s episode, Marion was shown being pushed off the roof by Bethany, accompanied by Charles, both of whom look no older than 12. Aside from the fact that the two children look the same age even though they are supposed to be 4 years apart, the timeline of events is also wrong. Bethany should have been 15 and Charles (Cece) should have been 19 at the time of Marion’s death which they clearly are not in the flashback.
As well as we have seen a flashback of Toby and Alison in Toby’s room with his mother when Toby was around 15 years old. How is it possible for this flashback to have existed if Toby’s mother died when Charles and Bethany were just children when Charles is 6-7 years older than the liars and 4-5 years older than Toby?
I am not sure if this is just Marlene and the writers being incredibly lazy and not checking the timeline or not, but I would hope this isn’t just a silly mistake. It’s quite a large mistake for someone to make on a show that is as intricate as PLL. I’m not sure what kind of explanation could be made for why the timeline is so far off, but it’s off by anywhere from 3-6 years which is a very large mistake for them to make for no reason. My only hope is that it has something to do with Cece having lied to Alison, though I’m not sure how this information would become relevant considering the Charles storyline is supposed to be done after tonight’s episode.
2) My second issue with Cece having been -A this whole time is the reveal of Cece having been constantly in and out of radley while she was a patient.
We have been told that Cece was let out of radley to attend classes at UPenn which would have been fine except this doesn’t make much sense. Cece had been living in radley constant since she was 5 years old, meaning she would never have even gone to high school. As well as the fact that Ivy League schools do not allow mental patients to attend classes at their school when they’re still in a mental institution. Not to mention there is no way in hell that a mental institution would allow a patient to leave the hospital and attend classes WITHOUT SUPERVISION. Cece would never be able to freely roam around outside of radley with no one with her so she could do -A related things. Even if they did allow patients out of the institution, this story still has holes in it.
Cece practically lived at radley and there is absolutely no way in hell that Cece would have been allowed to attend frat parties at UPenn, or even be allowed out at night from radley for that matter, both of which we have seen her do on multiple occasions. As well as medicated patients are not allowed to take alcohol with their medication. I mean I understand that radley was basically a shit show mental institution that had patients sneaking out constantly, but is this really logical?
3) The third issue I have is the flashback in which Alison’s mother is speaking of how Cece and Alison used to dress up and wear each other’s personalities.
“I get a phone call this afternoon, we have your daughter here they tell me. We think she may be a danger to herself. She wants to stay here. So I run about three stop signs, I’m trying to get your father on the phone, I’m terrified that you’ve hurt yourself. Then I get there and she’s dressed head to toe in your clothing but it’s not my daughter sitting in radley, it’s Cece Drake.” Mrs. Dilaurentis says to Alison to which she replies “I can’t believe that crazy bitch actually did it.”
Now this whole scene makes no sense whatsoever to me. Either Mrs. Dilaurentis lied about what happened, or the producers again made a mistake. If Cece had actually showed up at Radley pretending to be Alison, all of the radley workers would recognize someone who’s been a patient there their entire life. And they clearly showed a flashback tonight in which Cece looked exactly like herself in radley, so you can’t say well maybe she looked different. So again, there are holes in the story.
4) Back to the yearbook for a minute again. If you go back and look at the yearbook pages that Spencer found in Ian’s things, Cece is clearly on a yearbook page with Jason and the rest of the members of the NAT club. Now this would be fine, except again there are holes.
In tonight’s episode we were shown a flashback of Jason and Cece in rosewood high getting school photos taken and Jason asks Cece if she even goes to rosewood high to which she replies that she doesn’t but she would be the prettiest girl in the yearbook. There are two issues with this. The first being, school photographers will not take your photo unless you are enrolled in classes and you usually have to have some sort of student ID or student number on you in order to be photographed. The second being, even if they did photograph her, she would not have wound up in the yearbook unless she were an enrolled student.
Not only that, but in the photo of Cece in the yearbook, underneath her photo it says that she was prom queen, as well as on the debate team, and in drama club. How is this possible if she never even went to rosewood high? As well as how in the hell did Cece spend so much time with Alison’s family when she was supposed to be checked into radley, and she clearly was not out of radley until at least when Mona was checked in which is WAY after Jason and the rest of them would have been out of high school. You can’t seriously tell me that she spent her time at a high school instead of going to her classes at UPenn and no one at the university or radley found out that she wasn’t attending her classes?
ALSO: what happened to the story about Alison getting her kicked out of UPenn? Even if that did actually happen, how did Cece have a roommate at UPenn that spoke to the liars when she would not have been sleeping in a dorm? She would have had to stay at radley at night.
5) We come around to the transition from Charles to Charlotte/Cece. I really do like the whole transgender storyline and I think it’s a great twist, but the way they did it all seemed quite rude and unfair. They made it out to seem like Cece as a transgender is this evil incestual villain who is mentally unstable and needs help. I realize that they likely were not intending to be insensitive but the way it was filmed did not reflect positively on the situation at all. It seemed like they only made Cece a transgender as a way to make people feel bad for -A.
The other issue with this is the transition of the whole ordeal. The way Cece described it she left one day as Charles and suddenly came back the following day as Charlotte. Now the transitional process would not be this quick, nor does it make much sense. They played it off like Charles killed himself and was no longer alive. How would the radley staff not be completely suspicious when Mrs. Dilaurentis left one day with a child with these kind of issues who supposed killed them self and then came back the following day with ANOTHER child with the exact same issues who was the exact same age? Like “hello yes I’m back with another child who needs to be committed for the same reasons, and is the same age here she is.” EXCUSE ME???? THAT MAKES NO SENSE.
also: DID THEY HAVE TO INCLUDE INCEST?? I know that Jason and Cece never had sex but even them kissing is still incest. Thats honestly just disgusting to me. Marlene has said that Cece being A has been the plan all along right from season 3 but if this were true, then they could have avoided having incest included in the story and I really don’t think they would intentionally include sibling incest in the plot. I mean sure the Dilaurentis family is screwed up, but that’s just gross for a show that is meant for teenagers.
6) Mona/Leslie timeline connection. Cece supposedly met Mona in radley and pretended to be Alison and that’s when she told the game from Mona. But as we’ve previously learned, Leslie was in radley for long enough to have known Charles and Charlotte and Mona all together so why wasn’t Leslie mentioned once during this whole explanation?
ALSO: if cece was in radley this whole time how in the hell did she have all of this money to do all of these things at the same time? I’m pretty sure radley patients can’t escape radley and build doll houses and charge it to credit cards all at the same time.
7) if Cece supposedly was driven back to radley the night that she hit Alison over the head with a rock, when the hell did she have time to meet Sara in amongst all of this? If she was in radley, how the hell would she have had Sara trapped in a fucking dollhouse the whole time? also, WHAT IS SARA’S RELEVANCE? To me, Sara being red coat and black widow was a complete piss off.
Like I knew she was sketchy and evil in some way, but are you seriously telling me that you’re gonna do this big build up around two characters for three seasons and then reveal it to be a character that has only been in the last 10 episodes of the show???? As far as we knew, Red Coat and Black Veil were the ones behind digging up the body as well as everything that went down in ravenswood, and you’re telling me that it was a character we hadn’t even met at that point in the show????
8) another piss off to me is the fact that nearly every death on this show has been ruled out as an accident now. It basically takes away all of the danger factor because the girls were never really in danger of being killed. Cece hit Alison with a rock? Thought she was Bethany and did it by accident. Mona hit Bethany with a shovel? Thought it was Alison and did it by accident. Maya’s death as far as we know had absolutely nothing to do with -A whatsoever so what was the point in even killing her off and having that be a storyline for half of a season? Alison’s wasn’t actually dead. Mona wasn’t actually dead. Now in an interview Marlene has said that Ian actually did kill himself and Mona made it look like A did it and wrote a fake suicide note even though Mona specifically told the girls that she had no clue what happened to Ian.
9) Why are none of the other shady ass characters on this show mentioned. Paige? Melissa? Wren? Sydney? Jenna? Eddie Lamb? Noel? Why the hell were all of these characters doing all this shady ass stuff if they weren’t related to A? Cece supposedly told Alison the whole story, yet she never mentions a single thing about any of these characters all of whom would obviously have to have crossed paths with her at some point.
10) according to Marlene, Sara pulled the girls out of the lodge fire and left Hanna in the fire for Alison to pull out. WHY WOULD SARA PULL THEM OUT IF CECE WAS TRYING TO TRAP THEM INSIDE AND SARA WAS HELPING CECE???? I DONT UNDERSTAND.
11) if Mona killed Bethany thinking she was Alison, and then saw Alison wandering around the fucking streets later at night, she would obviously know that Alison wasn’t dead. If she wanted her dead, why wouldn’t she just do it later when she was with Alison? Why did it take Mona so long to tell the girls that she hit Bethany when she clearly knew that it wasn’t Alison?
12) Why would Cece need Sara to go to wildens funeral to make sure he was dead if she killed him herself? Clearly it wasn’t Cece who moved his body to the middle of town if she had to double check that he was dead.
13) CECES MOTIVES. ARE YOU KIDDING? She tortured the girls for two years and locked them in a dollhouse and starved them because they said that they were relieved that Alison was dead? Half of rosewood was relieved that Alison was dead. Plus Cece spent all of this time saying how much she loved all of her dolls and she was ready to blow up radley with Sara, Cece, herself, Jason and her dad in the building.
are you seriously telling me that after 6 years, A is a character who has been in a total of 13 episodes and red coat and black widow is a character who’s been in 10 episodes????? really Marlene???? At this point I would have rather had tippi the damn bird be fucking A.
ALSO: there’s still a million questions left unanswered. Why the hell was Cyrus brought into the story he was barely relevant? What the hell did varjak have to do with anything? Did Alison really know Bethany or were those notes fake? What about the recording of Bethany in radley? Why have we not seen Bethany’s face when she’s older? How in the hell did Mona not see the face of whoever attacked and kidnapped her? How did she look so dead in the trunk? What was the point in killing Maya when that storyline had nothing to do with A? How is the NAT club relevant? What’s up with Jenna and Sydney? Why were Wilden and Melissa supposedly the queen of hearts on the ghost train that trapper Aria in the box with a dead Garrett when Melissa was supposedly protecting the girls? What was the purpose in stealing the body from the grave only to return it half a season later? Why was Jenna wearing a red coat on “that night” when the grave was dug up? Why in the hell did Sara casually give up her whole life to help Cece terrorize 6 girls that she didn’t even know? What happened to Jason and Mr.D after the whole incident at radley? Where the hell were all of the guys in that episode? DID THE MOMS GET OUT OF THE BASEMENT?
There’s a million more questions and I’m sure I could spend days listing them, but I think you get the point. This episode just left me with so many unanswered questions that I feel like wont ever have an answer because of the time jump. As well as I don’t understand how that’s gonna work either. The girls just randomly lived an A free life for five years and then suddenly as soon as college ends, someone is after Alison again??
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