Pretty Little Liars is without a doubt one of the most iconic teen thrillers in the history of television. Over seven intriguing seasons, Pretty Little Liars led viewers through a maze of plot twist after plot twist.
For years, fans of the show tried to use in-universe clues to suss out the identity of the show’s main antagonist: a vengeful sadist who blackmails the four Pretty Little Liars in question via text messaging and goes by the ambiguous moniker, A. Playful, the show gives viewers reason to be suspicious of each character’s motives and actions; not even the favorites are spared from this lens of doubt.
Toby Cavanaugh: Lawful Good
When Toby is first introduced to Pretty Little Liars he seems sketchy. The Liars have a good reason not to trust him: Toby spent time in juvie before the starting events of the show for something the Liars know he didn’t do. But after some initial awkward moments, Toby becomes a good ally to the Liars.
He keeps their secrets, puts himself in peril to save them, and even becomes a police officer to further make the world a safer place in the later seasons. Last but not least, solid proof that Toby Cavanaugh is lawful good can be found in the plotline in which he is mad at Spencer because he ate a bag of her edible gummy bears and had a bad high.
Hanna Marin: Neutral Good
Our first introduction to Hanna is a mixed bag of intentions: she’s seen stealing sunglasses from a department store, but perhaps only leans on stealing as a coping mechanism. She’s loyal to the Liars from her first moments and is one of the only Liars to speak ill of Ali when she’s presumed to be dead.
Besides the stealing, Hanna is generally good. She dislikes secrets, dislikes lying, and is often the first Liar to take action to take down their nemesis A whenever there is an opening. She is fearless about protecting her friends, lovers, and family. Perhaps most importantly, she’s the only Liar to truly forgive and befriend Mona, after recognizing the damage the Liars did to her when they were younger.
Aria Montgomery: Chaotic Good
Aria Montgomery–what a talking point. When we first see Aria she is 16 and is quickly becoming entangled with a strange man in a bar who talks to her about literature and has a nice smile. Over the next seven seasons, she spends her plotline mostly entangled in a romance story with that same man who turns out to be her high school English teacher. She didn’t know about it when she met him, but when she finds out, she does everything she can to keep the secret: lying, stealing, manipulating, succumbing to A’s blackmail.
That being said, she never sets out to hurt anyone, and all she wants is a happy ending with the love of her life. Aria’s Myers-Briggs results might be up for debate, but her D&D alignment? That’s chaotic good in a nutshell.
Emily Fields: True Neutral
Emily has a few goals in this show. She wants to swim professionally. She wants to be accepted for who she is, and who she loves. She wants to get out of under A’s clutches, and she wants the same peace for her friends. She’s not particular about breaking the law, which is great because she can rock an all-black cat burglar outfit. She’s fantastic at keeping secrets and therefore lying.
But the quality that makes her most True Neutral is her ability to maintain relationships with characters who have wronged and bullied her in the past, such as Ali Dilaurentis and Paige McCullers.
Mona Vanderwaal: Chaotic Evil
Mona Vanderwaal is a mystery wrapped up in an enigma wrapped up in very, very expensive clothes. Arguably the most intelligent character, she starts somewhere between a nuisance and a friend, only to be revealed to be A (or one of A’s identities) in the season 2 finale “UnmAsked.” After the reveal, she spends the next five seasons on a redemption arc and proves to be a valuable asset to the Liars growing team of allies.
During the dollhouse plotline, Mona risks her safety to help the Liars survive and escape the dollhouse. However, once a shady evil character, always a shady evil character, and Mona never changes her methods no matter her intention. She hurts, kidnaps, threatens, manipulates, and lies to whoever she wants in order to achieve her goals, which makes her undoubtedly evil.
Alison Dilaurentis: Neutral Evil
Alison Dilaurentis begins the story in an odd way: she’s missing. Seasons later we discover she was never missing, just lying. Since the Liars are already lowkey suspicious of Alison’s disappearance as of the pilot episode, her continued silence despite her knowledge of their grief (they believe she was murdered) can be seen as a form of gaslighting.
After her return, she remains secretive, and though she apologizes for her brutal and constant bullying before the events of the show, she never had a particularly great reason to do it in the first place, and the other Liars are rightfully suspicious of her throughout the rest of the story.
Ezra Fitz: Neutral Evil
Ezra Fitz is a high school English teacher who dates his sixteen-year-old student to infiltrate her life so he could write a true-crime exposé about the night her best friend went missing, so he could get famous.
The redeeming quality to Ezra is that in the episodes in which he is in love with Arya, he often tries to do what is best for her. When he becomes aware of A, he teams up with the other boyfriends on the show to try to rescue the Liars. He breaks the law with Caleb, he puts himself in physical danger with Toby, and he follows through by checking on Arya emotionally after the Dollhouse. He’s selfish, but that includes his limited circle of people he cares about.
Caleb Rivers: Neutral Good
If any character in the show is neutral good, it’s Caleb Rivers. A modern-day Robin Hood, Caleb begins his story on Pretty Little Liars as a homeless hacker who falls in love with Hannah Marin. Like Ezra, he’s devoted to Hannah and will do anything to help her or her friends.
Unlike Ezra, Caleb never uses his powers of hacking to intrude in the Liars’ personal space, except in rare instances in which A forces the Liars to lie to him; when he thinks they might be in danger, all bets are off, and he does anything to protect the people he cares about.
Spencer Hastings: True Neutral
More than most of the other characters, the audience is constantly being exposed to things Spencer did before the events of the show in flashback style sequences that reinforce how untrustworthy she is. (That probably has to do with the show’s twist ending.) We see she carried on a brief affair with one of her sister’s exes. We see her family, originally depicted as perfect, is hiding more secrets than Area 51.
She’s one of the first Liars to try to leave town when she’s had enough of A, and though her type A personality might make her seem Lawful, she generally doesn’t care about law and order as long as she achieves her goals.
CeCe Drake: Lawful Evil
Like most exciting villains, CeCe Drake is lawful evil. Though the audience is unaware when first introduced to the character, CeCe is not to be trusted. She appears to the Liars as a friend, a long lost confidente of Alison Dilaurentis, armed with information the Liars needed to further piece together the puzzle of Ali’s disappearance. It is revealed later that CeCe Drake is Charlotte DiLaurentis.
The reveal uncovers a host of lies kept by the DiLaurentis family which went on to fuel CeCe’s hate-driven mission to torture the Liars as yet another set of thumbs blackmailing text messages to the Liars under the moniker of A.
