2019 · Based on 1 season, 10 episodes through May 22, 2019 ·
Alison DiLaurentis moves to Beacon Heights University after leaving her wife, Emily, and their twin daughters in Rosewood. She works as a teaching assistant while Mona Vanderwaal helps her enter a town ruled by pressure, secrets, and constant watching. Three gifted students, Ava, Caitlin, and Dylan, are tied to Nolan Hotchkiss, a rich and cruel student who is murdered. The tense season follows their effort to hide their secrets, survive a campus investigation, and uncover the person behind the murder and the Beacon Guard system.
The show makes identity visible through Dylan, a gay cellist with a loving boyfriend, Alison's marriage to Emily, and Caitlin's family with two mothers. Dylan's past as an openly gay student from an unkind small town leads to blackmail, cheating, and a later meeting with a former bully who admits he is also gay. The central women often reject control by rich families, university security, and secret watchers. These ideas matter to the season, but the murder mystery, romance, blackmail, and surveillance plot remain more important than political debate.
Community feedback
Was our 44% Woke rating accurate?
Loading review details…
Breakdown
These are the editorial factors and ratings behind our score for Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists.
Woke representation / casting
The core students form a visibly mixed group with a black senator's daughter, a gay male cellist, and Ava, who is played by Colombian American Sofia Carson. The show also gives Mona and Dana, both women of color, major jobs at the university. The cast places several minority or LGBTQ characters in important, skilled, or powerful roles instead of keeping them in the background. Beacon Heights is a modern college town, so the mix is possible, but the repeated pattern creates a clear representation signal.
38%
Woke political dialogue
Not present. The political material concerns Caitlin's senator mother and Caitlin's plan to enter politics. The season does not use recurring speeches about current parties, identity politics, or activist causes.
0%
Identity-driven story themes
Dylan is a main student who is gay, has a boyfriend, and faces blackmail after sleeping with Nolan. Alison's marriage to Emily and their divorce remain a continuing part of Alison's choices and feelings. The finale adds Luke, a former bully who says he hid his own gay identity, while the show also depicts Caitlin being raised by two mothers. These identity stories recur across the season, but the murder mystery and blackmail plot still drive most episodes.
49%
Western institutional / cultural critique
Beacon Guard tracks students across the university and turns private life into data. The Hotchkiss family uses money, technology, and campus power to pressure students, while Dana uses her security job to target them and falsify evidence. The season treats surveillance, rich-family control, and male entitlement as dangers, but it does not turn them into a broad attack on capitalism, religion, or Western culture. The critique stays inside the mystery plot.
27%
Woke character or canon changes
Not relevant. The show changes Alison's marriage and Mona's job after the original series, but those changes serve the new plot and are not presented as a woke or identity-driven rewrite.
0%
Anti-woke backlash and complaints
Not present. Reported backlash focused on fans' anger that Alison and Emily were divorced and claims that the actors or showrunner misled them. That reaction was intense, but it was not a complaint that the show was too woke, political, or focused on DEI.
0%
Creator track record context
The stored context rates I. Marlene King at 45 because she defended LGBTQ representation. It rates Paula Yoo at 70 for books about Asian American activism and racial injustice, and Daniel Pearle at 37. Gina Girolamo is rated 42, while most other listed writers, directors, and producers are rated 0 to 25. The group gives moderate supporting context, not proof that every episode is activist.
30%
Production
TV Show · 2022
A prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town, and a maths teacher trapped in a cellar cross paths in the most unexpected way.
TV Show · 2020
Hiding a twisted past, a man maintains his facade as the perfect husband to his detective wife — until she begins investigating a series of murders.
TV Show · 2024
A rising politician and his mute wife's tense marriage begins to unravel after a call from a kidnapper turns their lives upside down.
TV Show · 2020
Grace and Jonathan Fraser are living the only lives they ever wanted. Overnight a chasm opens in their lives: a violent death and a chain of terrible revelations.
TV Show · 2020
A family's lives are irreparably disrupted when the 14-year-old son is accused of murdering a fellow classmate.
TV Show · 2021
A detective in a small Pennsylvania town investigates a local murder while trying to keep her life from falling apart.
TV Show · 2021
Facing an existential threat that could bring down the Crime Lab, a brilliant team of forensic investigators must welcome back old friends and deploy new techniques to preserve…
TV Show · 2021
When family man Nick Brewer is abducted in a crime with a sinister online twist, those closest to him race to uncover who is behind it and why.
