Wren Kingston had the potential to be one of the most iconic villains in all of teen television. But of course, as they did with all the good potential villains on Pretty Little Liars, the writers wasted him. But what if they didn’t?
What if the showrunners were more concerned with crafting a great story with compelling villains and logical explanations rather than shock value and unpredictability?
What if Wren was A?
Recap
In the OG timeline, Wren was introduced to us with four facts.
- He’s British.
- He’s engaged to Spencer’s older sister, Melissa.
- He’s a medical resident, doing his rotations at the point of the pilot.
- He had an alcoholic father who was in and out of mental hospitals his whole life.
After Melissa brings Wren home, he immediately takes to Spencer. He creates little secrets between them and is outwardly physically inappropriate with her. Eventually, he finds himself in her bedroom – even though he lives outside in the converted barn- and makes his move on the teenager.
Melissa, his adult fiancée, sees this and calls off the wedding, then shoves the brunt of the blame onto her sister. It is a possibility that Melissa had confided in Wren about her previous partner, Ian, and his infatuation with younger girls. Given the kind of character Melissa is, I’m sure her perspective would frame it as him being a baby nip or something. Some way to blame the young girls rather than blame her man. A predator like Wren would pick up on that and take advantage.
We see Wren sporadically throughout the rest of the series. Especially around season 3, when the game had just been stolen from Mona. In the canon timeline, he was pretty suspicious and got involved in some shady situations, but ultimately was never the villain who was targeting the girls. But what if Wren had a much more sinister involvement in the plot of the story?
What if Wren was A?
The Alternate Ending
I did come up with an actual alternate ending that I briefly addressed on TikTok, and the people really seemed to like it, so shoutout to you if you came from over there. But we’re getting into the full-fledged deep dive where I’ve taken the time to really hone in on the rewrite, so let’s really hang out and chat for a bit, friends.
In my series of events, Wren’s father killed his mother when he was very young. His baby sister was adopted by an American family, and he never saw her again. His father was institutionalized due to his psychotic history, and Wren was sent to multiple group homes until he was about 15, when he met a young Alex Drake. There, he became obsessed with Alex and groomed her. We’re keeping the age gap in mind, friends, so we can’t just say they fell in love. They’re about 7 years apart in the canon timeline, so this makes Alex about 8 years old at the time they met.
Now, fast-forward about 10 years: Wren has finished grad school, gotten engaged to a rich American girl, and when he goes home to meet her family, he meets her sister, Spencer. A girl who reminds him of Alex, who, in his twisted mind, was his first true love. He becomes infatuated with Spencer and starts grooming her, much like he did with Alex all those years ago.
Then things pretty much go exactly the same as in canon until the season 2 finale. Now, in canon, Cece goes into Mona’s room in a red bathrobe, and Mona thinks she’s Alison and spills her guts. Now, this can still be included. But what I will change is that rather than Cece being the one who steals the game, it will instead be Wren who does it. Cece isn’t this evil mastermind genius here. She’s just a normal trans character who was victimized by her parents and put in a mental institution for being different.
Now, during his rotation at Radley and time in Rosewood, Wren will make 3 major discoveries. One or two would have made an impact, but all 3 for sure were just way too much for him.
So number one, we’ll also say that by this point Wren has fully discovered the truth about Spencer and Alex’s mother. He knows they’re twins who were separated at birth. He knows they were born in Radley. And he knows that Mary Drake is still alive. We’ll say he had a falling out with Alex, which is what caused him to leave London in the first place, so they’re no longer on good terms. Last he heard, she moved to Paris.
The second discovery will be that the younger sister, who was adopted by an American family, was also admitted to Radley. And that sister grew up to be *drumroll please* BETHANY YOUNG. So the only family he had left had been missing for almost two years at this point. And she disappeared when she escaped to go whoop some Dilaurentis ass on the same night Alison also went missing. He’ll know there’s a connection and become obsessed with finding out the truth.
The final discovery will be that the schizophrenic father who ultimately killed his mother, abused him, and had been in and out of mental institutions his whole life had a brother. And that brother was Byron Montgomery. This makes Mike and Aria his cousins. But they all came out fine.
Aside from a little adultery, Byron was a good dad. It wasn’t fair. Why did he get such a shitty deal, and they got the college professor with a beautiful home and a mom who’s alive? It also kind of explains why he’s so easy on Aria, and we can say it’s because she’s his cousin, and while he does still like to torment her, he kind of has a soft spot for her.
Now, when Wren puts all these pieces together, he is absolutely furious. And something inside of him kind of snaps. But with all of this information he’s discovering, on top of being insanely intrigued by Mona’s game, Wren takes it over.
Now this has some major implications, right?
This means that Wren is the one who forces Spencer to end things with Toby and then eventually orchestrates him faking his death and her admission to Radley, where he would still be working, by the way, in this timeline. He was the one manipulating Mona’s visitor access and secretly recording her, as shown in the “A” closing of “Crazy” in season 3.
He didn’t like that he couldn’t take Hannah away from Caleb with that whole ambiguous loss storyline, so he drove them apart as best as he could using A. That’s also when Hannah started getting a lot of e
I would swap Toby’s mom’s storyline for a storyline introducing Mary Drake. This way, it makes Toby not look so fucking selfish. This way, his joining the “A” team was really to protect Spencer and to find out the truth about her family.
Obviously, Wren being “A” would change a lot about the dollhouse, but maybe not too much? I would keep the games Cece played with them. That was so demented. I would keep Mona in the Alison cosplay plus the hole, but for different reasons than Cece. Wren doesn’t favor Alison at all. He just hates Mona, and remember, he was her doctor for years. He knows this would break her. So I would keep all the torture and games for sure, but of course, the vault would be different. We would see things from Europe, instead of all the Charles Dilaurentis stuff. Maybe instead of that stupid prom, he makes Spencer be a bride, and he could force the other girls to be bridesmaids? Idk, feel free to help me out with how you think the dollhouse would be different with Wren in the comments.
There’s one point in the show where Melissa and Wren just kinda pick up and move to London, and it’s really random. Now at least we can say that Wren reconnected with Alex overseas and eventually broke things off with Melissa around this time. She can’t understand him the way Alex does. Not even Spencer can understand him the way Alex does. He tells her about the game and how addicted he got to it, and she becomes obsessed too. At one point, it’s all she ever wants to talk about, and she is the one who comes up with the idea for the dollhouse. She never got dolls as a kid. They both had to grow up way too young. Alex asks Wren to gift the liars to her so she can finally play with her very own dolls. And he complies.
But Alex gets bored with just observing the dolls. She wants to be included in the fun. Wren is so in love with her messed-up head that he obliges and allows her to kill and replace Spencer. He’s stalked her for years, and Alex studied her every move for months. And it was a thrill for them both.
I would have a scene of Hannah hearing Spencer scream, followed by a fight, a crash, and silence. Later on, we will discover that this was the sound of Alex startling Spencer awake, fighting her, and eventually killing her. She will join the girls in the dollhouse and pretend to be her for the remainder of the show. And when we get this reveal in later seasons, we will see what Hannah heard from Alex’s perspective.
With this timeline, I will exclude the part where Alison leads their escape and instead give that agency to Caleb, who works with Mike Montgomery and Emily’s father. I always wished they gave Mike more agency in the show, so here ya go. And I feel like if his baby girl was kidnapped by some psycho, Papa Fields would find a way to come home and pull some Liam Neeson shit, ya know? Also, in any version I write of this show where Ezra himself isn’t A, just assume he was arrested back in, like, the first two seasons.
Now the guys won’t be successful in finding the girls, but instead we’ll have Alex cosplaying as Spencer find a way out. I’m also cutting everything to do with Sara Harvey from the show because it was stupid and bad, and I hated it.
But I also like this theory because it still ties into Alison since, if it weren’t for her bullying of Mona and eventual disappearance, Wren would never have met Mona and started the game.
But personally, this is my favorite “A” replacement theory. I cannot wait to chat about it with y’all in the comments! If you’ve stayed this long, I think it’s safe to say we’re internet friends now.