Things are not pretty for Max right now, and this isn’t a lie. The streamer’s Pretty Little Liars reboot has been cancelled after two seasons, officially killing any hope of a Season 3 to build upon this year’s second run, subtitled Summer School. Despite hints at a new mystery brewing for the liars, the unveiling of Bloody Rose back in June will mark the end of the latest adaptation of the book series by Sara Shepard. The news comes despite a strong reception from both critics and audiences for Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring‘s heavily horror-tinged take on the franchise.
Season 1 of the spin-off kicked off in 2022 under the title Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin, marking the fourth TV series in the franchise following the original Freeform program and its spin-offs Ravenswood and Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists. It followed a new group of girls after their best friend Allison went missing as they found themselves terrorized by the mysterious blackmailer “A” for their mothers’ transgressions back in 1999. After determining the culprit behind the cryptic messages, Season 2 picks up with the Little Liars still reeling from the traumatic experience when a new slasher emerges from the shadows. Although it told new delightfully sinful stories, the series also served as a love letter to the beloved original show, making for a bloody good time for longtime fans too.
Leading the Max series were Bailee Madison, Chandler Kinney, Zaria, Malia Pyles, Maia Reficco, Mallory Bechtel, Sharon Leal, Alex Aiono, Jordan Gonzalez, and Elias Kacavas. Had a third season order been given out, the cast and crew had a few plans for how to develop the Little Liars and those around them going forward. For her part, Kinney told Collider‘s Christina Radish that she wanted to see Season 3 go bigger than ever with an “A team” to increase the suspect list and make nowhere safe for the show’s final girls. Aguirre-Sacasa and Calhoon Bing similarly had some ideas in the bag as the girls would have entered their junior year, opening the door for new hellish high school stories about prom and other things.
Who Else Was Behind Max’s ‘Pretty Little Liars’?
In addition to creating and writing the series, the showrunners led a team of executive producers that included original Pretty Little Liars series developer Marlene King, Michael Grassi, and Alloy Entertainment‘s Leslie Morgenstein and Gina Girolamo. Aguirre-Sacasa‘s Muckle Man Productions also joined forces with Alloy to bring the series to life. Between the new, talented cast of young Liars and a creative team with experience from Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the show managed to captivate with chilling mysteries, relationship drama, and horror aplenty to the tune of a 90% overall Rotten Tomatoes score from critics. In an official statement, Max paid tribute to what the creative team accomplished with their vision of PLL:
“While Max will not be moving forward with a third season of ‘Pretty Little Liars,’ we are so grateful to our co-creators, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and Lindsay Calhoon Bring, as well as the team at Warner Bros. Television, for reintroducing fans to this new iteration of liars who band together to fight the latest creepy villain terrifying Millwood. Their unique and modern creative vision – combined with the immense talent of our cast and crew – gave the series a fun, horror-filled point of view that paid tribute to its original Rosewood roots.”
All episodes of Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin and Summer School are streaming now on Max.
via Collider