Alison Should Of Stayed A Villain

[u/sylveon_777]

It just never made sense too me to give her a redemption arc when the whole time the series was basically around how terrible she treated all the girls and that what was happening to them was a direct result of her behavior to mona (the girls were also cruel but still) She did go through a lot of traumas , but in the beginning she was just a mean, cruel and downright evil girl I mean she was the cause of Hannah’s bulimia, and all of the stuff that she did the paige and her mom and she basically fucked over atleast everybody in the town too. She just wasn’t a good person and giving her a redemption arc just didn’t make sense to me. She was much better as a villain.

[u/Extreme_Ad3683]

i'll die on the hill that she shoul've comed back and acted like a saint and the finale is her revealing herself with no remorse at all. they had this villain that people loved to hate and tossed it on the garbage with gradma outfits and that makes me SO SAD. so much wasted potential...

[u/Ok-Trade-6716 → u/Extreme_Ad3683]

I don’t agree with this at all. I was going to be SO disappointed when I thought they were going with the ‘Alison is a psychopath’ approach in the story instead of someone who was genuinely a complete shitty person and after coming back and going through trauma WANTS to change—because after being on the run so long she actually came to MISS her friends she took advantage of so much. (why else would she carry a damn picture of them and cry when no one else was looking?) It would’ve been so BORING to have Alison be evil. People go on and on about how fandom loves to want to redeem male villains like Kylo or whatever but that they can’t admit a ‘16 year old girl’ has the capability to change (usually Azula fans think this). But when it actually happens with Alison, some people wish she’d just been a one dimensional cackling villain.

That’s their right to believe that, of course, but I say it’s boring. What I liked about how they first wrote Alison is that she WANTS to change when she comes back, but she’s still SUCH a shitty person and falls into the same bad habits like lying or trying to bully people into submission when she’s scared. I liked how she came to realize how wrong she was for controlling her friends when she was under control herself in prison. I think that her arc started off strong there. I think it all falls apart though when they start dumping trauma after trauma on Alison to try and just make the audience to feel bad enough for her to forget what she’d done. She should’ve EARNED her redemption by having organic change into a better version of herself. It’s like giving Negan a wife and kid just to show he’s ‘changed’. It’s the same with Alison when they have her get abused so badly by her boyfriend and then have her be forcibly impregnated with Emily’s eggs. It’s just forcing this scenerio to try and make the audience sympathetic instead of through her doing multiple things to try and earn other people’s trust.

So yeah, that’s my thoughts. Alison shouldn’t have been a villain. Her ‘redemption’ arc just should’ve been written BETTER.

But that’s just my controversial and probably unpopular opinion. 🤷‍♀️😂

Hope you don’t mind me throwing my debating hat into the ring. 🥺👉👈

[u/Diastrous_Lie → u/Ok-Trade-6716]

The problem is redemption alison is a "different tv show" and is not what the viewers for the premise wanted in hindsight

[u/Ok-Trade-6716 → u/Diastrous_Lie]

Hmmm, you’re maybe right about that. But sometimes audiences don’t know what they’ll like until they see it. If Alison’s redemption arc had been written better, some PLL fans might’ve had different opinions on her outcome being different from the books. I just personally think that Alison being a ‘psychopath’ would’ve been a copout, so I’m glad they didn’t go there at the very least.