Pretty Little Liars finally spilled all of its secrets and revealed its ultimate villain. In yet another familial twist, Spencer (Troian Bellisario) was revealed to have a secret identical twin named Alex Drake (A.D.!) who was hell-bent on taking over her sister's more privileged life. However, it wasn't merely Alex's presence that was so jaw-dropping: it turns out that Wren Kingston (Julian Morris) was Alex's lover, before Alex murdered him to pursue Operation Become Spencer Hastings. Apparently, Wren wasn't always supposed to be just a helper — according to a new interview, the English doc could have earned his own A badge.
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Back in season 5, Wren was a popular candidate for Big A — many fans thought he was Charles DiLaurentis, Alison's (Sasha Pieterse) long-lost brother. That wasn't the case — Charles was actually Charlotte, a.k.a. Cece Drake — but that didn't make Wren any less shady. In a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, the Pretty Little Liars showrunner, I. Marlene King, revealed he could have been a lot shadier.
"Originally my mind was going to Wren as A.D.," she told the outlet. "But we had to be realistic and there have been times when we really needed a character who wasn’t a series regular and we couldn’t get them on the show. The show is so deeply rooted in mythology and I’ve always said you have to know the ending before you know the beginning or else it won’t make sense, so that dictated that we needed to make A.D. someone who was a series regular."
Morris' last appearance on PLL, before showing up in the airport with Twincer in season 7, was in season 4 — which was way back in 2013. Whoever A.D. ultimately became had to give a great villain monologue in the show's finale, and given Morris' roles on shows like New Girl and Hand Of God, it makes sense why King would be hesitant to give him such a huge part in the show's mythology.
That's not to say that Wren never wore the black hoodie. King cleared up that it was Wren — not Alex — who visited Mona (Janel Parrish) in the mental institution at the beginning of the series finale. The showrunner also told Entertainment Weekly that a death scene for Wren (Alex killed him and made his ashes into a diamond) was written, and it sounds disturbing as hell.
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"We thought we had [Morris] for more days than we did. I had written a death scene, and in that scene that we never shot, he says to Alex, 'I even created life for you.' So Wren knew that he was the father of [Alison and Emily's] babies."
Wren may have never had the opportunity to play A, but at least his character got quite the send-off in the finale — even if he was technically a necklace in his final appearance.
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