Troian Bellisario Teases PLL Finale, Reveal of Red Coat, Status of Toby

Pretty Little Liars Season 3 season comes to a close tonight - and if fans have been freaking out over what’s transpired so far, you’re going to want to hold on tight for what’s coming next.

Is Spencer really joining the A-Team? If she does, could she end up getting drunk on the power? Is Toby truly dead? And how surprised will be at the identity of Red Coat?

Who better to tease us a little more than Troian Bellisario, who has seen her alter ego, Spencer, go off the deep end with the (supposed) death of Toby, as well via more than a little nudging by A-Team member Mona. Read on, my PLL Fanatics…

TV Fanatic: So Spencer definitely seems unhinged but I keep wondering if she’s maybe more in control than we realize. What would you say to that?
Troian Bellisario: What was so much fun for me to play this season was really that I believe that Spencer is reacting in the way that it is appropriate for what has been going on with A. Since the first season, I try joking with everybody. ‘Why aren’t these girls going crazy? They’re going to end up in a loony bin. I would just check out. I would go insane.’

So when that story line actually came up and that was something for Spencer to explore…she is so tightly wound and then what we got into was ‘what does that take? How do you really break somebody?’ Spencer was the one that, with the betrayal of Toby, was set up for the biggest break.

What I’ve navigated with her is once you’ve lost everything, what’s the point? Is it because you have to find out the answer? Does the answer even matter? Do you stick with your friends? She is really at a point where she is questioning all of these things to try to value her life. Because she lost her value for a while. This is what she kind of talks about in her group therapy session. She lost the value of her life.

TVF: Do you think she is conscious of her choices right now or is she not making the best choices because of her emotional state?
TB: I think it’s both. She’s suffering from a mental breakdown essentially. She had a psychotic breakdown, but she is now following a line of logic that for her is reasonable. Now, it might not be [reasonable to] any of the other girls or to anyone sane which is why they’re saying ‘Spencer’s gone crazy,’ but she is following her own reason and I think that is kind of interesting, because Spencer has always been a very intellectual character.

She values reason and intellect, sometimes, actually a lot, over morality. Which does not mean that she is not moral or caring or loving or empathetic but she is somebody who is almost bordering on sociopathic at times because she cares so much about the end result, which I think kind of set her up for this destruction. She had the girls and loved them but Toby was one of the first people that she actually opened up her heart to and let in and cared about emotionally…it was truly her first love.

They became each other’s lives. She lost her virginity to him. To then be proven wrong by that emotional instinct? There is no other choice but for her to snap.

TVF: We know that Spencer finds out the identity of Red Coat in this episode. Will the viewers find out?
TB: You will find out who is under the red hood. And it will be very, very surprising. But I can tell you, I’m never really surprised. I always have an inkling or a feeling or I somehow seek out the answers from the writers and they totally blindsided me on this one.

TVF: Now, we always see A and the A-Team kind of get the upper hand on the girls. Any chance they are going to come out on top in the finale?
TB: I think that’s what kind of cool about the finale, is that it’s been so one-sided you really only see the girls and then A’s point-of-view of the girls. How A works has been a really big mystery. And so what is kind of fun about having our four protagonists cross over into the A-Team is you get to see all of the inside. You get to see how the Mother Ship works and so there are a lot of fun discoveries in for our audience to find out how Mona has been working and how now Spencer will be working with her, and that also provides kind of a counter balance so we can see the flaws in A’s plan, as well.

TVF: What worries me most is that Spencer is going to get involved in this darker world, and she might like it. Is there a chance of that happening?
TB: That is the danger with Spencer. She actually enjoys the sleuthing and the planning and the sneaking. The funny thing about Spencer and Mona, and the more we see them together we will realize, they are very, very much, cut from the same cloth. Fortunately, when Spencer was younger, Alison sort of befriended her and didn’t make fun of her and let her in and made her a part of the group, and she alienated Mona, and Mona spins out of control one way and Spencer kind of spins out of control the other way.

So once you get these  two – kind of like tuning forks or something – in the same room, Mona and Spencer, you kind of start to hear the same tone and it’s kind of scary. Because I don’t know how long Spencer can last standing in the room with her and not begin to understand her logic.

TVF: I personally never believed Toby was dead but are we going to at least find out Toby’s status in the finale?
TB: I think that one of the main reasons that Spencer crosses over is because she just can’t take not knowing what happened to Toby. She is fully convinced that he’s dead and then Mona comes in and plants that nasty little seed of ‘if I killed Toby, why would I be talking to you?’ Plus, there was a body found in the woods. All I can tell you is that you and Spencer will get an answer as to whether or not Toby is dead.

Jim Halterman is the West Coast Editor of TV Fanatic and the owner of JimHalterman.com. Follow him on Twitter.