[heatherannehogan]

Paige was an object of scorn when she arrived on this show. Scorn from Emily, scorn from the Liars, even scorn from Ali, who, it turns out, is the one who hated her first and most of all. The instiller of her deepest fears. Pretty Little Liars plays with some dark themes, and I’m not talking about murder. I’m not talking about the things that go bump in the night. I’m talking about the gross, hard, awful things this world does to women, the things most of us can’t even figure out how to fight because what kind of damage does a sword do to the shadows? And it has been Paige who has embodied so many of those struggles. She has felt shame so deep that she almost killed herself, fear of being terrorized so intense that it emotionally paralyzed her. She has been objectified, manipulated, surveilled, and forced to repeatedly make decisions that any male character would get a pass on but that she has always been villainized for.

When she got on that plane, I paused the TV and sobbed into my hands for I don’t even know how long. Because it was heartbreaking, yeah. Because I’m going to miss the way Paige made me feel known in my bones. But mostly I sobbed because they did it. They told the story. They hit the high notes and they hit the low notes and they refused to back away from the grey. Paige crawled through the mire on her knees, repenting, until she realized the only thing she had to do was stand up and love who she loved. Within the show’s narrative world and outside in the show’s fandoms, Paige could have easily been Pretty Little Liars‘ biggest victim, but she became Pretty Little Liars‘ most triumphant hero. She let herself love and be loved by Emily — but so much better even than that: the girl who whirled onto our screens like a tornado of self-hate five years ago left because she learned to love herself.

My recap of this week’s Pretty Little Liars on Autostraddle