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Did Mrs. DiLaurentis Know About Sara On 'PLL'?

by Kaitlin Reilly

No one would accuse Pretty Little Liars of being light fare (after all, the show is about four girls who are tormented relentlessly by a deadly stalker), but the Season 6 premiere revealed something darker than most fans were expecting — not to mention gave us a whole other reason to fear the elusive A. Charles kidnapped Sara Harvey long before he went after Mona and the other girls, and it's one hell of a twist. Sara was a high school girl who went missing around the same time as Alison, and it now seems that she was taken by Charles when he wasn't able to get the real Ali. Of course, such an elaborate plan must've required some help. Could the now-deceased Mrs. DiLaurentis have helped Charles kidnap Sara? All signs point to yes, which means that the DiLaurentis family is even more messed up than we ever imagined.

We still don't know Charles' connection to Ali or the other members of the DiLaurentis family, but it seems highly likely that Charles is Jason's twin brother, making him Ali's half-brother and Mrs. DiLaurentis and Mr. Hastings' son. Though we can't yet confirm where Charles has been all these years, he clearly wasn't living with his family for some reason — and that reason might stem from mental illness. All roads lead to Radley, and it seems that the sanitarium is the most likely place for Charles to have ended up. It could be the reason why Mrs. DiLaurentis was on the board — she wanted to keep an eye on the son she locked away. But just because Charles was sent away from the family home doesn't mean that Mrs. DiLaurentis didn't love and want to protect him — and she could have done it at the expense of others.

Here's what we know. (Or, at the very least, probably know.) Mrs. DiLaurentis thought that Ali was dead, and believed it was her body in the grave. She also knew the person who tried to kill Ali and chose to protect them by burying her own daughter in the backyard. That person was most likely Charles — who else would Mrs. DiLaurentis place over her own daughter if not another child? The night that Mrs. DiLaurentis buried Ali, she also vowed to protect Charles' secret.

Here's my theory: I'm not so sure that Charles wanted Ali dead. In fact, I think that perhaps he wanted her alive, and actually used that rock intending to knock her out. When Charles thought he lost Ali forever, he panicked — he needed another girl to replace Ali in his dollhouse. The answer was to find someone who looked enough like Ali to be a good substitute. That person was Sara, and I think that Mrs. DiLaurentis knew all about her and chose to protect her son over doing the right thing.

In the episode "Unbridled," we see Mrs. DiLaurentis purchase clothes and then hand off the clothes to someone in the woods. At first everyone assumed Mrs. DiLaurentis was helping Ali, but we later learned that it wasn't the case — Mrs. DiLaurentis thought she was dead. So who were the clothes for? Maybe Mrs. DiLaurentis was shopping for Charles and providing him with what he needed for Sara. In exchange for his mother's silence on the Sara thing, Charles promised not to come after the family or hurt anyone else.

Mrs. DiLaurentis had a change of heart when she learned that Ali wasn't the girl in the grave after all — she could have assumed that Charles had kidnapped Ali and wanted her daughter back. Unfortunately, the mysterious email of "I can't protect you anymore" was most likely intended for Charles, sent him over the edge, and landed Mrs. DiLaurentis in a grave of her own.

Mrs. DiLaurentis helping her mentally unstable secret son abduct an innocent teenage girl is a pretty dark thought, but it's no darker than half of the stuff that happened in the very first episode of Season 6. Pretty Little Liars is going there, and this could be one hell of a jaw-dropping reveal.

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