[Warning: Spoilers ahead from the series premiere.]
Was Ravenswood everything you thought it'd be?
The Pretty Little Liars spinoff premiered after the flagship's annual Halloween episode and quickly established itself to be creepier, scarier and more mysterious. Ravenswood transplant Caleb Rivers (Tyler Blackburn) ventured into the town limits seeking answers after discovering an image of his look-a-like on a tombstone. Turns out, he wasn't the only one with a similar mission.
The Hollywood Reporter breaks down the characters and compiles the highlights from the Oct. 22 premiere, including how their stories all come together.
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Caleb Rivers
Stepping foot in Ravenswood is a far cry from Rosewood. After discovering his image on a tombstone, Caleb investigates further, going back to the cemetery only to see a different mug shot of a guy named Carl Ridgley. His suspicion that Miranda's mysterious uncle, Raymond Collins, is behind it -- and weird happenings around the house -- begins to affect his time in the town, when at one point he finds himself taking a bath (he's really a shower guy) only to nearly drown when the shower curtain is mysteriously taken off its rings and the bathtub runs amok. It's only then that he's sure that something fishy is going on in Ravenswood.
Miranda Collins
Miranda is a foster child like Caleb and when she returns to Ravenswood to reunite with her uncle, their first meeting is frosty at best. Miranda wants answers from her uncle about her past, but Carla Grunwald assures her that he needs some time. And as promised, Miranda has a breakthrough with her uncle, who gives her a tattered photo album, complete with photographs of her mother and a letter she had written prior to her birth. During this time, Miranda -- staying in her mother's old bedroom -- experiences supernatural occurrences, which only cement Ravenswood's creepiness.
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Olivia and Luke Matheson
Twins Luke and Olivia are Ravenswood's crown jewels -- or at least one of them still is. Following the death of their father, the teens are having trouble adjusting to the townspeople's suspicions that their own mother was responsible for his passing -- cleaning up a graffiti'd headstone in the cemetery. Luke, once popular and now "a hermit," bears the brunt of it (he lied to cover up for his mother), while his sister continues to live her life as homecoming queen like things never changed. But she suffers a major setback when she gets doused at the Ravenswood town parade. It's also Luke who warns Olivia about her friend Tessa (Haley Lu Richardson), telling her not to trust her. And though Luke may seem to be the one in his mother's corner, he raises the question that their mother could've committed the murder.
Remy Beaumont
Remy, who works at the town paper with her father, is in a frowned-upon romance with Luke, but that doesn't stop her from seeking out the truth when she first encounters Caleb at the newspaper. By the way, her father Simon (Henry Simmons) disapproves of Remy's relationship with Luke (mainly due to the Matheson murder). Her mother Terry (Sophina Brown) is also a war veteran, who is having difficulty transitioning back into to every day life.
The Big Mystery
The five all meet at various points in the premiere, but they're connected when it's explained -- via Remy -- that in the 19th century there were five teens (classmates) who were killed days after a POW returned home, who wasn't 100 percent sure how he survived. Two of those teens were Miranda and Caleb's look-a-likes, who were in a relationship together.
This parallels the present-day, where Remy's mother, a solder who recently returned from Afghanistan, was the lone survivor in her unit following an attack and uttered the same words the previous POW had said. The five main characters find themselves in a car together at the end of the episode as they ready to cross the town bridge before Miranda sees a silhouette of a girl standing in the middle of the road, causing Remy to swerve off the bridge and into the river below. Something tells me they'll all get out alive ...
What did you think of the premiere?
Ravenswood airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on ABC Family.
E-mail: Philiana.Ng@THR.com
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