Pretty Little Liars' winter premiere on Monday was long on mystery and short on Rosewood High’s most adorable lesbian and erstwhile swim champ Emily’s love life, but the actress who embodies Emily, Shay Mitchell, gave a couple of little teasers to TV Line about Em’s romantic entanglements for the upcoming season.
But first, kudos to producer Marlene King and the gang for tossing in a truly queer reference in the form of a Carson McCullers’ novel. While I won’t give too much away for those who’ve yet to catch PLL’s winter premiere, I’ll just say that a note is passed to Emily in the pages of Spencer Hastings' copy of Carson McCullers classic novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. McCullers never came out as lesbian or bisexual in her lifetime but her fiction was rife with sexually ambiguous and androgynous characters including in A Member of the Wedding and The Ballad of the Sad Café. But what good fun that PLL’s writers chose a McCullers novel as the conduit for conversation between Emily, who’s estranged from her friends in the season opener.
While the winter premiere lacked any mention of Emily’s impending love life for the season, Mitchell did tell TV Line that Maya (Bianca Lawson) would be back and that the two would engage in a real –albeit changed – relationship.
Regarding Maya Mitchell said, “She comes back to Rosewood, and basically the girls get to renew the relationship but on different terms now, because Emily is a little bit of a different person.”
Mitchell went on to note that Emily is essentially not the same girl who fell for Maya toward beginning of season one.
“She has a lot more confidence,” Mitchell said, adding that Maya also had a few experiences Emily’s not aware of, which I’m guessing happened while she was at reform school / rehab.
“She has also been away for a while, so she has had some experiences that Emily doesn’t know about,” Mitchell told TV Line.
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