Hulu’s “Gossip Girl Meets Twin Peaks” Mystery Franchise Was So Good, It Got 4 Shows

One iconic teen franchise that blended the small-town mystery of Twin Peaks with the clique-ish drama of Gossip Girl managed to spawn four shows, but this Hulu series remains inexplicably underrated almost a decade later. It is notoriously hard to get teen TV shows right, and not just because the cast ages out of their roles so fast. The one-season runs of shows like My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, and Netflix’s underrated teen dramedy Everything Sucks all prove that even acclaimed teen shows often struggle to find an audience.

For every successful series like Netflix’s martial arts drama Cobra Kai, there are countless teen shows that failed to last beyond their first season. Meanwhile, shows like Euphoria and Riverdale might seem like ostensibly successful teen shows thanks to their lengthier runs, but their critical struggles and gradual slide away from teen-oriented plot lines mean these shows arguably didn’t even fit the definition of the genre by the time they reached their respective series finales.

Thus, any show that can balance maintaining a large teen audience with critical acclaim over multiple seasons, like the ‘90s classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer, deserves its flowers. Despite this, one of the most impressive and biggest teen franchises from the 2010s has been all but forgotten less than a decade after the original show’s finale, despite spawning not one, not two, but three separate spinoff shows. Pretty Little Liars lasted for 160 episodes across seven seasons between 2010 and 2017, but the show has seemingly been forgotten in the years since.

Pretty Little Liars Lasted 160 Episodes And Spawned 3 Spinoffs

MovieStills DB

Somewhat loosely based on the novel series of the same name by The Lying Game author Sara Shepard, the plot of Pretty Little Liars revolved around a quartet of young former friends with a dark shared secret. Lucy Hale’s Aria Montgomery, Shay Mitchell’s Emily Fields, Ashley Benson’s Hanna Marin, and Troian Bellisario’s Spencer Hastings are all united by the mysterious disappearance of their former shared friend/low-key bully, Sasha Pieterse’s Alison DiLaurentis.

The former best friends split off into different cliques after the night Alison disappears, but they are brought back together a year later when they begin to receive anonymous messages from ‘A,’ who threatens to reveal their darkest secrets if the girls don’t comply with the shadowy villain’s demands. Thus, the stage is set for a show that functions as a blend of the small-town murder mystery of Twin Peaks and the clique-based teen drama of Gossip Girl, with A being a more lethal spin on the latter’s title character.

With such a killer premise and an astounding cast, it is hardly surprising that Pretty Little Liars was a hit. However, it is still striking to see just how successful the series was. Other shows had tried to combine an Agatha Christie-style mystery with the usual romantic scandals and friend breakups of teen drama shows before, but Pretty Little Liars was such a hit that the show spawned one spinoff series, Ravenwood, while it was still airing, and a second, The Perfectionists, two years after it ended.

Pretty Little Liars was even revived as an R-rated horror show that shared its canon and continuity with the original PG-13-rated mystery in 2022’s Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, which was successful enough to spawn a second season, 2023’s Pretty Little Liars: Summer School, before its cancellation. Given how long the franchise lasted and how influential it was, Pretty Little Liars is wildly underrated among teen shows of the 2010s, not least because the show helped to kick-start a trend that still continues to this day.

Pretty Little Liars Started One Of The Most Popular TV Trends In Decades

Image courtesy of Everett Collection

Before Pretty Little Liars, live-action YA mystery shows weren’t a common sight on TV. Veronica Mars offered viewers a dark and deservedly acclaimed blend of the classic detective show format and teen drama, but that series was a cult hit that never made its way to the mainstream. In contrast, Pretty Little Liars was a massive mainstream success, and TV creators immediately sat up and took notice.

Riverdale, Cruel Summer, One of Us Is Lying, 13 Reasons Why, The CW’s Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, The Society, Elite, We Were Liars, Netflix’s Bet, and even Disney’s Goosebumps revival and Netflix’s upcoming Scooby-Doo: Origins all borrowed the live-action YA mystery show premise of Pretty Little Liars and offered different spins on the idea. Some of these later shows were more grounded, while others were even campier than Pretty Little Liars and eventually incorporated outright horror and fantasy elements into their stories.

However, the popularity of the Pretty Little Liars formula, blending fast-paced teen relationship drama with a darker mystery storyline, ultimately proved to be the franchise’s undoing. The original show wrapped up in 2017, just as Riverdale and 13 Reasons Why were building fanbases of their own, and the fandom was largely disappointed with the byzantine conclusion to its central mystery. Although it wasn’t long before Pretty Little Liars returned to screens, this wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

The Pretty Little Liars Franchise Was Rebooted Too Soon

Image courtesy of Everett Collection

Only 5 years after the original show’s series finale, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin debuted in 2022 to mixed reviews. Darker, gorier, and more horror-centric than the original series, the show was met with confusion by many original Pretty Little Liars fans online. With no original cast members returning, there was little nostalgic appetite for the HBOMax show’s reinvention of the series.

Furthermore, the grittier tone of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin had more in common with the Fear Street movies or the horror anthology Slasher than the original show. As a result, although the Pretty Little Liars reboot lasted two seasons, the slasher spin on the show never truly won over fans of the original teen mystery.

This muted reception, in turn, ensured that it will be a long time before another revival, reunion, or reboot comes about. Thus, even though Pretty Little Liars was one of the most influential teen shows of the last two decades, the show’s legacy ended with a quiet spinoff cancellation in 2024 and a disappointing original series finale instead of a fittingly spectacular bang.

Release Date

2010 – 2017-00-00

Showrunner

Ina Marlene King

• 

•