I like my villains the same way I like my Starbucks order – complex.
And I like heroes, too. In fact, I like both heroes and villains. I like antiheroes. I like characters who are diabolical, who are too intelligent for their own good. I like characters who are redeemable, who grow and change and develop over the course of their journey. I like characters who are humanized, who are fallible, who make mistakes and atone for them, who urge us to feel something be it compassion or anger or admiration. I like characters who constantly surprise me, too.
I like characters like Mona Vanderwaal. No, I love characters like Mona Vanderwaal. From the moment that she arrived on screen, I was instantly drawn to her. She's a dynamic presence, an unassuming character in the first and second seasons, and utterly brilliant. She is probably the most complex character to ever exist on Pretty Little Liars and in "Taking This One to the Grave," we saw the fatal end of Mona. It was sad (I knew that someone would die and had the distinct feeling that it would be between her and Melissa) to see this character depart from PLL but to be honest, she went out with a bang and in the best way she possibly could have.
So, in celebration of Mona's life on the series and her characterization, I thought I would take some time throughout this post to discuss the many facets of her and her characterization over the course of the last five years. And it's as much of a celebration of "crazy Mona" as it is a celebration of Janel Parrish who did some utterly fantastic work with portraying this character and her journey from "loser Mona" to queen bee to "A" to "crazy Mona" to redeemable genius.
If you're ready, let's take a deeper look into some of Mona's best and most interesting character traits.
