User:Miss X-Factor/Alison DiLaurentis

Alison DiLaurentis
Pretty Little Liars character
First appearanceNovel:
Pretty Little Liars (2006)
Television:
"Pilot"
(episode 1.01)
Created bySara Shepard
Portrayed bySasha Pieterse
In-universe information
GenderFemale
OccupationHigh school student
FamilyKenneth DiLaurentis
(father)
Jessica DiLaurentis
(mother)
Jason DiLaurentis
(half-brother)
Grandma D.
(grandmother)
ResidenceRosewood, Pennsylvania
Philadelphia

Alison DiLaurentis is a fictional character in the Pretty Little Liars book series by Sara Shepard, and in the ABC Family television series adaption. She is portrayed by Sasha Pieterse in the show.

Throughout the first three seasons, Ali mostly appeared in flash backs and hallucinations. The character of Ali played a more prominent role in season 4.[1] Alison had an alter ego named "Vivian Darkbloom" whom she used to spy on "A". The character was revealed to be alive and has been hiding from A while trying to help the Liars.[2][3]

Television

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Season 1

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The series begins with footage of the night Alison DiLaurentis disappeared. Alison, Aria Montgomery, Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin and Emily Fields were having a sleepover party in Spencer's barn.[4] Alison scared them by sneaking up on them in the barn doorway, causing them all to laugh.[4] Aria, Hanna and Emily later wake up from their sleep and realize Spencer and Ali are both missing.[4] Spencer then returns to tell the other girls that she looked for Ali everywhere and thinks she heard her scream.[4] Aria has a flashback to October 2008 when she and Alison had cruelly ditched nerdy Mona only to find her father, Byron, kissing another woman inside his car.[4] Spencer flashes back to a moment the summer before, when Melissa Hastings was dating then-boyfriend Ian Thomas. She had been standing with Alison and Hanna in her kitchen when Ian and Melissa walked in.[4] Suddenly, Alison announced that Spencer had something to reveal, but Spencer denied it, and was annoyed by Alison's blunt betrayal.[4] Outside, out of earshot, Ali had threatened to expose Spencer's secret in front of her sister, namely the fact that she had once kissed her sister's boyfriend Ian.[4] Spencer had countered with a threat to expose Ali's involvement in "The Jenna Thing."[4] After the flashback, Spencer looks out the window and sees into the window of Alison's house across from hers, a wavy blonde figure moving about inside.[4] Spencer gasps, "Alison."[4] Towards the end of the Pilot, "Alison's body" is found behind her house. A funeral takes place afterwards, and the girls realize Alison is not "A."[4]

In the episode "Keep Your Friends Close", Alison catches Spencer kissing Melissa's boyfriend in which Ali calls out Spencer to let her know that she saw her kissing her sister's boyfriend. She called it disgusting and basically called Spencer a skank to boot, implying Alison's jealousy.[5]

In the episode "Moments Later", Alison visits Hanna in a candy striper outfit in her hospital room. She smiles at Hanna and asks if she misses her. Weak, Hanna tries to ask her what happened that fateful night, but all Alison will say is that the four of them combined already know the truth. Additionally, she tells Hanna that "A" annoys her, and that she should really do something about that bitch. She reveals that it is dangerous for her to have come, but she did because she had to see if Hanna was ok. When she leaves, a berry-colored lipstick stain - the same shade that Alison is wearing - is seen on the rim of a Styrofoam cup near Hanna's bed.[6]

Season 2

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In the second season (2011–2012), Ali appears in the episode "Blind Dates" as an imaginative representation in order to help Hanna overcome the emotional abuse that Alison inflicted on her.[7]

Season 3

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In the episode "Single Fright Female", Alison appears in an flash back, CeCe and Alison talk in her car, and Alison tells her about how she'd set up Paige by writing her a love letter, pretending to be Emily. CeCe says she's proud of her. When Paige appears for the setup, Alison confronts her and threatens to tell her father, who is the deacon at the church. Paige screams at Alison to give her the note back, but Alison says that she owns her now. CeCe gleefully speeds away from the scene with Alison.

In the episode "Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Inferno", CeCe revealed that Ali told her that she is 2 weeks late and scared she is pregnant because she didn't use protection every time. When CeCe asks her if she told 'him,' Ali says she can't because he would kill her. This is the episode in which "Board Shorts" was first mentioned.

In the season finale, Ali pulls the liars out of the burning lodge. Hanna looks up and it is Alison. As they are coming to, Mona runs over and asks if anyone else saw her, exclaiming that it was Alison that saved them from the fire.[8] Emily and Aria are in disbelief because Alison is dead, but Spencer comes and confirms that Alison is who she saw in the woods.[9][10]

Season 4

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In the fourth season (2013–2014),

Ali was revealed to be alive in the episode "Now You See Me, Now You Don't", as the Liars are stopped by Mrs. Grunwald who reveals that Ali is alive, and Mrs. Grunwald saved her life.[2][3] Someone was after Ali, and Ali was phoning Mrs. Grunwald, asking her to help her find out who it was.[2][3] On the night Ali 'died', Mrs. Grunwald had sensed Ali was in trouble and rescued her by pulling her up out of the soil where she had been buried alive.[2][3] Ali was injured and in shock, so Mrs. Grunwald brought her to the hospital, where Ali disappeared when Grunwald went inside.[2][3]

During the mid season on the episode "Grave New World", Mrs. Grunwald tells the girls that one of them has been touched by the one Alison fears the most,[11] In the final frames, the girls get dropped off back in Rosewood by Ezra (riding to the rescue in his car) and they think they see Alison run off into the woods.[11] She turns around ... and reveals herself to be alive.[11] "I want to come home, but you have to help me," she tells the girls.[11]

In "Close Encounters", it was revealed the Shana grew up in George next door to Alison's grandparents and that Ali asked Shana to come to Rosewood to look into who was trying to kill her.[12] Eventually, Alison decided to sent Shana to tell Emily that Alison wants to meet her and which Emily goes.[12] Alison and Emily meat in an unknown location where Ali says "You have no idea how hard it's been to stay away."[12] Alison also says she's not sure she can trust the other Liars but when Spencer shows up, Alison runs for it.[12]

In the episode "Bite Your Tongue", Spencer begins to believe Ezra is the one, Ali is afraid of as "Board Shorts" ordered boysenberry pie and beer with Ali at a pub near Hollis College and Spencer encounters him there with an order of boysenberry pie and beer.[13] In the episode "Hot for Teacher", Ali enlisted Emily to get Ali's secret stash of cash hidden in the back of a French painting in her bedroom and give it to Shana to deliver to Ali so he can continued on the run.[14] Shana was attacked by an unseen assailant leading to Ali calling Shana to ask her about the money but Shana didn't have it.[14] Shana's car is now parked in front of the "Welcome to Rosewood" sign, which contains a threatening message.[14] Shana hightails it out of Rosewood leaving Ali high and dry with out the money.[14][15]

In the episode "Unbridled", Emily discovers the password to the e-mail address on the post-it attached to Alison's money and contact her.[16] Alison calls, telling them to meet her in Philadelphia which reveals the Noel is helping her.[16] In the season finale of season four episode "'A' Is for Answers", Alison reveals all her secrets.[17] After recalling her many false “A” accusations (first Jenna, then Toby, then every member of the PLLs), Alison revealed what actually happened the night she went missing, including all the people she encountered along the way.[17] It was eventually revealed how she was buried, after Ali was hit over the head, Mrs. DiLaurentis, whom saw the whole thing, buried her alive in order to cover for someone.[17] After Carla Grunwald pulled Ali out of the ground, Ali eventually ran off where she was found by Mona. That's when Mona concocted the whole plan for Ali to “die” in order to unmask “A.”[17] Following this, the girls narrowly escaped a masked assailant; unfortunately, Ezra was shot while trying to save the girls.[17]

Season 5

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Marlene King conformed that Alison is returning to Rosewood and it will "Shake" Rosewood.[18] King says, adding that it will change "her relationships with the girls individually and with the group as a dynamic and with the parents too."[18] Sasha Pieterse, who plays Ali, conformed that Ali's relationship with the four other girls will be odd at first. "Their relationship will get better, but right now it's rocky. There's tension there. It's strange."[18]

Literature

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Alison is the main antagonist. Alison blamed the Liars for ruining her life and swore revenge. She was the second "A" and killed Courtney, Jenna and Ian. Later on she tries to kill the girls in her Poconos home but they manage to get out. Alison is left inside and it's unknown whether she died or not; later it is revealed she did indeed survive and was the third "A" torturing the girls along with her secret boyfriend, Nick. Nick was the murderer of Tabitha, Gayle, and Graham. Alison was featured as the main character and narrator in the self-entitled book Ali's Pretty Little Lies. In Deadly, Alison is seen limping out of the burning house, that is her vacation home, right after she tried to kill the liars.

Book Comparisons

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  • Alison disappeared three years prior to the first book. In the show, it was one year. And in the books, Courtney disappeared in the beginning of summer before going into 8th grade. In the show, it was labor day weekend and all the girls were soon to be sophomores.
  • In the show, Alison dressed as Vivian Darkbloom to stay under "A's" radar. In the books, she didn't receive texts or notes from "A."
  • In the books, Alison is actually alive and it is her twin sister Courtney who is dead. In the show, there is no mention of a twin as Oliver Goldstick pointed out that, "they will not be exploring that storyline."
  • Alison never had a pregnancy scare in the books, but she had one in the summer before she disappeared on the TV show. Later on Mona revealed, based on Ali's diaries that such pregnancy was merely a false alarm.

Development

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The Hollywood Reporter noted that Sasha Pieterse along with Torrey DeVitto landed recurring roles in the pilot.[19] The Alloy website later confirmed that Pieterse would be playing Alison DiLaurentis.[20]

Characterization

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Alison was the former "Queen Bee" of her clique and the most popular girl in school before her disappearance and death. Although she cared for her friends, she enjoyed using their deepest secrets against them to keep them in line. Charming and manipulative, Alison was skilled at finding ways to blackmail everyone, and many people hated her.[21] She knew everybody's secrets, but since she's been gone her friends are beginning to realize how little they really knew about her.[21]

Though Alison had it all, she was easily threatened by people who intimidated her. Her jealousy and need for power got the best of her and often caused her to act cruel and selfish. Her fearless nature helped her to get back at her enemies in big ways. Alison was vindictive and cunning, often using other people as tools in her manipulations. She was sometimes referred to as the "snake behind an angel's face". Nobody told a lie better than Alison. She kept many secrets from her friends but never let them keep any from her. Alison often used her friend's secrets to keep them under control. She spun a web of lies so tangled that her friends were left to deal with "A" even after she was gone. Ali displays sociopathic qualities: controlling, paranoid, charming, seductive, dominant, incapable of remorse, and extremely intelligent. Though at times, Ali does seem to display real emotion. Ironically, the name Alison means "truth" in Irish. It also means "noble", everything Alison is not since she was a manipulative liar. Her surname DiLaurentis is anagram as 'Liars United'. the tagline for Season 4 (but actually the tagline is Liars Unite).

Sasha Pieterse conformed that Alison's character and personality has drastically changed, Ali has to "figure out who she is. She's been hiding for so long, and she's a victim now".[22] "Alison's a totally different person, so to see the way they treat her is going to be very interesting and to see the way that she gets affected by it is also going to be very interesting," Pieterse says.[18]

Relationships

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In the television series Alison only had two know relationships.

In an effort to escape “A” for a little while, Alison headed to Hilton Head with Ian. But their weekend rendezvous was ruined when Melissa showed up, angry for Ian's betrayal with Alison.[23] Overhearing Ian's conversation and reconciliation with Melissa, Alison chose to escape through the balcony, but not before stealing some files off of Ian's computer.[23] Besides a video of her, the Alis discovered a video labeled “Jenna & Toby.” “There’s nothing wrong with us,” Jenna says in the video as she wraps her arms around Toby. “We’re not even related.” Before her disappearance Ali and Ian met up at the "Kissing Rock" in which she said, after hocking up with Ian, “This is just me killing time while I’m waiting for something better to come along ... You and Melissa deserve each other. She’s such a b****.” Alison threatens to send him to jail if he or Melissa doesn't stop with the threatening messages, leaving Ian to stalk off.[23] Signing the end of the relationship.

The other know relationship is with Ezra.[23] Ezra became fascinated with her after meeting her at a pub near Hollis, and while the pair didn't have a sexual relationship, Ezra was set on writing a book about her.[23] On the night of her disappearance, Ezra pulled up unexpected, confronting her about her lies. Turns out Alison told him that she was a 21-year-old student student at UPenn and roommates with CeCe. “God help me, Alison, I actually like you,” he told her. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”[23]

Autopsy

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Alison seemingly died of suffocation, which is revealed in "The Jenna Thing" and mentioned once again in "For Whom the Bell Tolls." More information on her death is revealed in "Save the Date:" Alison had been hit from behind or was running away when she had been hit on the head suffering thus from blunt force trauma. The wound had come from a curved, blunt object (which Spencer believes to be her old field hockey stick). However, the impact had not killed her immediately. The autopsy found her lungs to be filled with dirt, implying that she had been inhaling dirt in the last moments before her death. This basically means her assailant had struck her, either knocking her unconscious or otherwise paralyzing her defenses, and proceeded to bury her alive. We later come to find in "Over My Dead Body" that the "curved, blunt object" actually wasn't a field hockey stick, but a shovel. Alison was buried by the same object that damaged her head. In "It Happened 'That Night'," Alison's body is stolen from her grave. In "This Is A Dark Ride " Alison's body is found in the ice cooler at the Halloween Ghost Train Party, after Toby and Noel fight, knocking the Cooler down, showing a black leather bag. Also shown the same episode was a flashback of her hand coming out of the ground, revealing she may have escaped. It was revealed in a flashback in "A Dangerous Game" that someone helped pull Ali out of the ground. We can see a hand reaching down and grabbing Ali's. In Now You See Me, Now You Don't, it is revealed that Carla Grunwald was the hand who pulled her out, meaning Alison did not die, and is still alive, hiding from A. Whose body it really is remains unknown. Alison was hit with a shovel and buried alive, but survived. Someone else was also hit with a shovel and buried alive, but died. It was later revealed in "'A' Is for Answers", that she was hit with an curved rock.

References

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  1. ^ Burt, Kayti. "Pretty Little Liars Season 4 Spoilers: More Sasha Pieterse, Anyone?". Wetpaint. Retrieved April 8, 2013.
  2. ^ a b c d e Lee, Tiohan. "'Pretty Little Liars' recap, 'Now You See Me, Now You Don't' pg.1". BaltimoreSun. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  3. ^ a b c d e Lee, Tionah. "'Pretty Little Liars' recap, 'Now You See Me, Now You Don't' pg. Two". Baltimoresun. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l "Pretty Little Liars - Pilot". ABC Family. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  5. ^ "Pretty Little Liars: Season 1 Episode 10: "Keep Your Friends Close"". Wet Paint. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  6. ^ Simmons, Chris. "'Pretty Little Liars': Season 1, Episode 11, 'Moments Later'". Blogs.wsj. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  7. ^ England, Kenzy. "Pretty Little Liars Season 2 episode 4 Recap: "Blind Dates"". Yahoo. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  8. ^ Wilkinson, Amy. "'Pretty Little Liars' Season 3 Finale Recap: 'A dAngerous gAme'". HollyWoodCrush. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  9. ^ Young, Candace. "PLL Season Finale Recap: A dAngerous gAme". Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  10. ^ Morfoot, Addie. "'Pretty Little Liars' Recap: Under the Red Coat". Blogs.wsj. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  11. ^ a b c d Reiher, Andrea. "'Pretty Little Liars' 'Grave New World': Alison is alive - 'I want to come home'". blog.zap2it. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  12. ^ a b c d Reiher, Andrea. "'Pretty Little Liars' - 'Close Encounters': Shana the spy, but who for?". blog.zap.it. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  13. ^ Morfoot, Addie. "'Pretty Little Liars' Recap: Season 4, Episode 17, 'Bite Your Tongue'". Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  14. ^ a b c d Cambell, Nick. "Pretty Little Liars "Hot for Teacher" Review: Ezra Is a Creep, Sky Is Blue". TV.com. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  15. ^ Morfoot, Addie. "'Pretty Little Liars,' Season 4, Episode 18, 'Hot for Teacher': TV Recap". Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  16. ^ a b Goldstein, Jessica. "Pretty Little Liars Recap: Feel It in My Fingers". Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  17. ^ a b c d e Swift, Andy. "Pretty Little Liars Season Finale Recap: Shot Through the Heart, But Who's to Blame?". TVLine. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  18. ^ a b c d Bently, Jean. "'Pretty Little Liars' Season 5: Ali's return will 'shake Rosewood'". blog zap2it. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference HR 2009-12-7 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ "Pretty Little Liars on TV!". Alloy Entertainment. January 28, 2010. Archived from the original on May 30, 2012. Retrieved January 29, 2010.
  21. ^ a b Pieterse, Sasha. "Alison Dilaurentis by Sasah Pieterse - ABC Family". ABCFamily. Retrieved 20 March 2014.
  22. ^ Wayne, Julia. "Sasha Pieterse and Lucy Hale Talk Ali's Return to Rosewood in Season 5 (VIDEO)". Wet Paint. Retrieved 23 March 2014.
  23. ^ a b c d e f Remling, Amanda. "'Pretty Little Liars' Season 4 Spoilers: What Really Happened The Night Alison Went Missing [SEASON FINALE RECAP]". Internation Business Times. Online Version. Retrieved 20 March 2014.
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