Mona's Friend Could Be A Team Material on 'PLL'

A pal of dearly departed Mona is breezing into Rosewood on Tuesday's episode of Pretty Little Liars, but whether she will be a friend or foe to the girls is yet to be seen. According to Futon Critic, Hanna and the other liars will come face to face with Mona's friend Lesli Stone in upcoming PLL episode "Oh, What Hard Luck Stories They All Hand Me," and much like Mona herself (RIP), she might be a bit of a shady character. According to the episode synopsis, Hanna will be tasked with collecting information about the mysterious friend — played by The Clique's Elizabeth McLaughlin — in an effort to discover if she really is who she says she is. Could Lesli help the girls find out who murdered Mona, or will she be yet another adversary to add to the list?

Right now, it's up in the air, but from what we know about Lesli, she does seem like someone Mona trusted — a rare thing for someone as secretive and guarded as the late Ms. Vanderwaal. How do we know this? Well, right before the originally A was killed by that blonde in a hood, Mona and her mother had a lovely little chat before Momma V headed off to Thanksgiving dinner. Mona's mom informed her that Lesli was coming to Thanksgiving dinner, and Mona seemed thrilled to see her. Unfortunately for Mona, she was killed before she ever sat down for a slice of pumpkin pie with her friend.

Fans were initially mixed on whether that conversation meant anything. While some saw it as a huge clue to an important person from Mona's past, not everyone saw it as significant — even actress Janel Parrish thought Lesli was "just a cousin," included in the script to show how sad it was that she never got to go to her Thanksgiving dinner. But it turns out that Lesli might hold a real key to Mona's past — whoever she might be.

We have very little real information about Lesli, but we do know two things. The first is that she goes away to school, which we learned when Mona told her mom that she thought Lesli was "stuck at school" and couldn't attend Thanksgiving dinner. The second is that she's a friend that Hanna doesn't seem to know — a little odd, considering that Hanna and Mona were BFFs before the whole "A thing" went down. The latter hints that perhaps there was a reason why Mona kept her friendship with Lesli a secret — while there's certainly a chance that Mona and Lesli's friendship was under the radar due to the distance between them, it could be more than that. Perhaps the reason Lesli and Hanna took up separate spaces in Mona's life was because Lesli was helping Mona with her A game long before the girls got wind of it — which might not bode well for the girls.

It's just a theory, but if Lesli did help Mona torture the girls back in Mona's A days, then she might not be so inclined to appease the girls now — Lesli could still see them as the "bitches" in Ali's posse who made Mona's life so hard. Lesli might find it hard to believe that the girls are trying to get justice for Mona now after years of bullying their now-deceased frenemy. In fact, it's plausible to think that Lesli believes the little liars were behind Mona's murder — if she only heard one side of the story from Mona, the girls really do look like terrible people.

It might be wishful thinking, but I'm hoping that this new character Lesli can be trusted — we have plenty of shady characters in Rosewood and could use someone who actually has the liars' backs... even if she used to work for the A team. For more theories, check out Bustle's Pretty Little Liars podcast below.

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