Romance has always been one of (if not the) most important parts of teen television. Teenage viewers root for couples, follow romances breathlessly, and decry the couples they dislike. Pretty Little Liars, I. Marlene King's series that followed a group of high school girls as they were threatened by a series of anonymous individuals, is no exception here. Relationships dominate much of the conflict found in the show, as the Liars dated person after person, causing drama after drama.
With so many couples in the show, there was no way they were all going to be winners. Aria, Hanna, Spencer, Emily, Alison, and company got into their fair share of dubious romances--and that's not even counting the couples amongst the side characters. The ensemble cast, led by Troian Bellisario, Lucy Hale, Ashley Benson, Shay Mitchell, and Sasha Pieterse, gamely went along for the ride, selling these relationships with everything they had, but that doesn't mean there weren't plenty of on screen couples that hurt the show.
This list counts down the worst of those couples, with the best of the best thrown in to even things out. It's not like every relationship on the show was bad-- it could hardly have become one of the most-tweeted shows ever without some genuine love from the fans. Couples won't just be graded on how well they were received in the moment (though that is definitely a factor), but also how fans look back on them with the benefit of hindsight. Enough about the criteria, let's get started.
This is 12 Couples That Hurt Pretty Little Liars (And 8 That Saved It).
20 Hurt: Mike/Mona
On the whole this relationship was more of a bane than a boon to the show.
Like many of Mona's actions in the show, it was originally just a ploy to get closer to the Liars.
She says that she eventually developed genuine feelings for Mike, but any relationship started on deception isn't built to last.
In general, a relationship begun just to stalk and irritate another character shouldn't last long on a show, but this couple was was around for three seasons, meaning most fans just got tired of it.
Mike was Aria's younger brother, so most of the Liars just felt uncomfortable about the whole thing, leading to a romance that always felt like its days were numbered.
19 Saved: Emily/Samara
Emily had some of the best relationships on the show, and that extended even to her more minor flings. After her first girlfriend, Maya, Emily moved on to Paige and then Samara, who introduced Emily to a more comfortable, easy kind of relationship. for a while. After sort of stealing Emily away from Paige, Samara ended the relationship when it seemed like Emily was flirting with other girls.
While it lasted, Emily and Samara had a great relationship, with Samara working for an LGBTQ+ Pride organization allowing for a much more liberated existence for Emily.
This couple showed that Pretty Little Liars supported LGBTQ+ people, instead of depicting it as just something to hide from one's parents.
18 Hurt: Aria/Ezra
Even for day-one fans of Pretty Little Liars, there were some core elements of the show that were uncomfortable. Chief among those was the coupling of Aria and Ezra, the tempestuous relationship that dominated much of the show's seven seasons.
They begin the show as high school student and teacher, making their relationship not just uncomfortable but illegal and immoral.
We shouldn't have to explain to you why a grown man dating his own young student is wrong, and the show's insistence that this was a good and true love felt downright creepy.
To make matters worse, Ezra never suffered any severe consequences for this--he left his teaching job, but later successfully opened a café and the town never punished him.
17 Saved: Spencer/Toby
Spencer and Toby are one of the most iconic couples in the Pretty Little Liars fandom, so it shouldn't be a surprise to see it here.
How else could a rank a relationship so good that when Alex Drake tried to steal Spencer's whole life, one of her first orders of business was to impersonate Spencer and hook up with Toby under false pretenses? If your boyfriend is worth stealing, he can't be all bad.
Spencer and Toby had their ups and downs, to be sure, but like many of the longest-running ships in the show, fans were game to go along for the ride.
16 Hurt: Garrett/Jenna
Pretty Little Liars had a pronounced problem of showcasing relationships between grown men and teenagers and normalizing them as though they were romantic. The trend started with Aria and Ezra, but continued with Jenna and Garrett, a high schooler and an adult police officer.
Jenna was a manipulative, popular teenager and Garrett was a cop in Rosewood.
They had a secret relationship, hidden from the other students and townspeople. Thankfully, this all ended when Garrett was arrested for unrelated reasons, but it still showed that the show still thought such relationships were compelling drama, a problem that would plague the entire series.
15 Hurt: Spencer/Ian
Relationships told entirely through flashbacks are a tricky thing to do well, and it should be no surprise that Pretty Little Liars, a show reliant on flashbacks, tried its hand and did poorly. Ian Thomas was Melissa Hastings' husband, marrying her after a whirlwind romance. But in true Pretty Little Liars fashion, there were complications.
Namely, before Ian married Melissa, he briefly dated her sister Spencer. Ian was much older than Spencer, making this yet another instance of grown men dating one of the girls on the show.
This bit of drama didn't go anywhere particularly interesting, meaning there wasn't really any payoff for the creepy backstory.
14 Saved: Emily/Maya
The first girl Emily ever dated, Maya St. Germain was a bold step forward for LGBT representation on the show. Essentially leaving her boyfriend for her, the change in Emily was immediate, as she seemed noticeably more at peace with herself.
Maya may have gotten an ignominious end on the show, but her time with EMily will be remembered fondly.
Watching Emily and Maya explore their relationship (full of all kinds of firsts for Emily) was sweet, and had the added conflict of Emily not immediately coming out to her family. Fans may have been frustrated with the lack of reasons behind Maya's eventually passing in the show (especially when "MAYA KNEW" turned out to be largely irrelevant) but they enjoyed it while it lasted.
13 Hurt: Ashley/Darren Wilden
Creepy characters are hardly an uncommon occurrence in Pretty Little Liars, but seemingly rational, caring people hooking up with them is still pretty weird. Yet that was exactly what happened when Ashley Marin (Hanna's mother) started dating police officer Darren Wilden while he was investigating her daughter for a pair of crimes.
It's one thing for a mother to parade her new boyfriend around her house with her teenage daughter around, but another thing entirely for her to date him while he harasses her daughter and her friends.
Officer Wilden was wildly unprofessional, and Ashley having an affair with him in spite of this just damaged her ability to seem like a caring, involved mother.
12 Saved: Jenna/Noel
Jenna Marshall appears a few times on this list, mostly in the "Hurt" section, but this one was the exception. Jenna's other relationships all felt more like abuse than actual couples, but in Noel Kahn, she found her match.
Noel was as evil and manipulative as Jenna was, and watching the two characters scheme together was just fun.
It didn't hurt that actors Tammin Sursok and Brant Daugherty had good chemistry together, and fans realized that they were much more interesting to watch when they had an equal to bounce off of. They made for great antagonists, but all good things must come to an end, especially when Noel perished in the final season.
11 Hurt: Caleb/Miranda
Perhaps it's unfair to call this a bad couple, but if there was ever anything that hurt Pretty Little Liars, it was its spinoff, Ravenswood. This show debuted ostensibly set within the same world as PLL, but with supernatural occurrences (meanwhile, Rosewood, the setting for PLL, had no such things).
To get fans interested in the new show, a character from the original, Caleb Rivers, was transported over to the other town. He was immediately embroiled in a new romance with the lead character, Miranda, all while leaving a Caleb-sized hole in Pretty Little Liars.
Fans didn't flock to the new show and it was canceled after just one season, and some were miffed that Caleb and Hanna's relationship was interrupted for it.
10 Saved: Aria/Jake
Ah, yet another perfectly good pairing ruined by the writers' insistence that Aria and Ezra were endgame. Aria met Jake, a martial arts instructor, in the fourth season, and there was an immediate attraction between them.
This was a couple that could have gone the distance, if Aria hadn't met him while still pining for Ezra Fitz.
This was still uncomfortable for fans who didn't like seeing grown men date high schoolers, but Jake was college age (three years younger than Ezra) and had the added benefit of not being her actual teacher.
This couple was far from perfect, but at least it didn't feel outright sleazy. Fans who didn't like Aria and Ezra found the romance to be a welcome break, at least until Aria dumped Jake for Ezra.
9 Hurt: Wren/Spencer
What is it with Spencer Hastings and the men who date her sister? While Troian Bellisario and Julian Morris had incredible chemistry, this couple combined two hallmarks of several negative relationships on Pretty Little Liars-- an adult dating a teenager and betrayal.
Things got even messier later on, when Wren got romantically involved with both Hanna and Spencer's secret, evil twin, Alex Drake.
This couple, which started out as another in a long line of creepy relationships involving grown men was also used as part of a lackluster twist at the very end of season 7. Yeah, it was not great.
8 Hurt: Alison/Ian
Alison DiLaurentis had a habit of dating men who had bad relationships with one of the Liars, and then somehow having a worse relationship with that man. This was the case with Ian Thomas, as his relationship with Spencer definitely wasn't great, but his involvement with Alison was just weird.
Another relationship that occurs entirely through flashbacks, Alison and Ian secretly dated while he was on a break with Melissa.
This tryst ended when Alison disappeared, and it doesn't really add much to the overall story. Pretty Little Liars was chock full of plot twists that went nowhere and creepy relationships, and somehow this couple managed to combine both.
7 Saved: Emily/Alison
How do you redeem a character known primarily for her ice-cold, calculating nature? One of the best ways has always been to put them in a relationship with the purest character around.
Emily Fields was always the most caring and loyal of the Liars, and while her attraction to manipulative queen bee Alison puzzled some, it soon became one of the most popular couples in the fandom.
Hints of their relationship began in the flashbacks, and ignited when Emily appeared to hallucinate Alison saving her life and telling her she missed her the most. By the end of the series, Emily and Alison had children together and were planning to get married, hoping to spend the rest of their lives together. Fans wouldn't have it any other way.
6 Hurt: Hanna Travis
If you're going to write a TV romance, go all the way, with no half measures. This should have been a lesson the writers of PLL took to heart, but alas, this couple proves they didn't. Hanna and Travis had a relationship between seasons four and five, and there was never a moment between them that felt particularly compelling.
Hanna was essentially using Travis to keep her mother out of prison, and Travis wanted things to be more serious.
As it was, the relationship was always stuck in neutral, never boasting the highs and lows of the other stormy affairs on the show. This couple was just too bland to survive on a show as sensational as Pretty Little Liars, and no one was too sad to see Travis go.
5 Saved: Spencer/Caleb
Sometimes, all a TV relationship needs to do is stir up some drama. That's definitely what the on screen pairing of Spencer and Caleb did, as these two characters didn't actually get together until the final season.
There was an attraction between them and obvious chemistry between the actors, but there was one problem: Caleb was Hanna's biggest romantic interest in the series, making it all feel like a betrayal.
Hanna and Caleb had been one of the most central couples of the whole show, and fans were shocked when they broke up during the timeskip. Compounding the drama was Caleb's new relationship with Spencer-- the only time in the series two of the Liars went for the same person. This couple may not have lasted, but it gave the last season just the kick it needed.
4 Hurt: Ella/Zack
Relationships featuring the parents of high school main characters are always a tricky gambit for a television show, and they're made harder when there's crossover with the kids themselves. Ella Montgomery fell into this trap when she went out with Zack, and later became engaged.
The engagement was called off when Ella found out Zack had hit on one of her daughter's friends at The Brew, the café he owned, even giving her his number. Zack is soon written out of the show after that, which makes it seem like the whole point of his character was to complicate Aria's mom's dating life by being a creep. Aside from just being gross, this also felt useless to the show overall.
3 Hurt: Jenna/Toby
We've mentioned this here before, but Jenna Marshall is one of the more manipulative people on a show full of manipulative people.
Played by Tammin Sursok, Jenna radiated an aggressively selfish, vindictive energy that most normal characters on the show just tried to avoid. One who didn't succeed was Toby Cavanaugh.
Toby was Jenna's stepbrother, and thus forced to spend time with her.
This ended up being severely unpleasant, as Jenna coerced him into a relationship with her by saying she'd claim he forced himself on her if he didn't cooperate. This led to a "couple" characterized by abuse and violation, hardly something that fans were ever excited to see play out.
2 Saved: Hanna/Caleb
For a show with so many twists and turns, so many plot reveals that went in directions no one expected, it was nice to see Pretty Little Liars stick with something familiar in the end. Caleb and Hanna had been one of the primary relationships throughout the entire series, beloved by fans of the characters.
While their romance may have hit some bumps in the road (ill-planned spinoffs, certain friends named Spencer), fans always expected Hanna and Caleb to figure it out in the end. It just wouldn't have made sense for the two to end up with anyone else, and having to work through some problems along the way only added to the final triumph.
1 Hurt: Ezra/Alison
What's worse than an ongoing romance where a grown man dates his high school student? Why, finding out that he also had a thing with her friend of the same age.
It began before Alison disappeared, when she met Ezra at a bar and told him she was eighteen.
Fans who were already weirded out by Ezra's relationship with Aria can't have been overjoyed when they saw that, and fans who loved Ezra and Aria weren't happy about it, so this was really a lose-lose.
To make matters worse, this encounter is what drives Ezra to stalk pursue Aria in the first place, as he becomes obsessed with the mystery of Alison's disappearance.
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Who was your favorite couple on Pretty Little Liars? Let us know in the comments!
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