Pretty Little Liars alums Lucy Hale and Ian Harding staged a very public reunion — and fans of the hit teen drama are eager to see what the pair might be up to together.
Hale, 36, and Harding, 39, appeared in a Wednesday, December 17, joint Instagram video. In the clip, Hale looks at the camera and fixes her hair before Harding enters the frame, holding two drinks. He hands her a latte and she thanks him.
“Cheers,” Harding says as the two sip their beverages.
Then, in tandem, they smile and say, “It’s good to be back,” happily leaning into each other. The actors captioned their post: “Hale and Harding take 2.”
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Harding reposted the video in his Instagram Stories, writing, “Back at it.”
Neither clarified the reason for the reunion, though some fans speculated that they were filming a Hallmark movie. Others wondered if a follow-up to Pretty Little Liars, the ABC Family mystery series on which they starred from 2010 to 2017, was in the works.
Hale portrayed Aria Montgomery and Harding played Ezra Fitz on the show. Their characters had a controversial age-gap romance, but ending up getting married during the series finale. (Fans dubbed them “Ezria.”)
“It was a different time,” Hale explained to The Hollywood Reporter earlier this year. “Would that story line exist if it were being made now? I’m not sure, but probably not. At the time I was cast as Aria, I was 19 years old and I wasn’t really thinking about the bigger themes of it all. I was just stoked to be cast in a TV show.”
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Hale added at the time, “Of course, it hits differently at my age now and I think about the bigger message in anything I play. I don’t have regrets, though. I stand behind their love story forever. That forbidden love story drew a lot of people in.”
In the show’s pilot, Aria met Ezra in a bar and they hooked up in the bathroom. Later, Ezra was revealed to be Aria’s new English teacher on the first day of her junior year at Rosewood High School.
Aria secretly dated Ezra on and off while she was in high school, and they later reunited after a time jump.
“What we tried to demonstrate over and over was that there was a meaningful connection,” Harding told The Hollywood Reporter in June. “Hopefully, that was enough to justify the deeply problematic relationship that was certainly not great at the time. Especially as society has progressed, we realized how wildly inappropriate it was.”
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Harding admitted that he was “happy with the way it turned out because maybe that makes it a little less icky, which is always tough to say because I also love those characters. I love Ezra and as an actor, you have to advocate for this person, no matter who they are.”
He noted: “They both found happiness, and there was little collateral damage or pain inflicted by the relationship. There was plenty of pain and horror everywhere on the show, but oddly enough, their relationship seemed to be a safe haven in the storm.”
Pretty Little Liars was adapted from Ina Marlene King’s book series. In a THR retrospective focused on the show, the author said, “What we know now about grooming, that was not something we talked about 15 years ago. I’ve always thought that if we revisit the world, we would have to deal with that. That would be a story line we’d have to pay attention to and give focus to. But, I think they can have their happily ever after because they were everybody’s favorite couple.”
When Pretty Little Liars spinoff Original Sin premiered in 2022 on HBO Max, it was revealed that lead character Imogen (Bailee Madison) planned to give her baby up for adoption to Ezra and Aria. However, the second season reversed the decision, with Imogen noting that she got a “weird vibe from that Ezra dude.” The teen gave her child up to a young gay couple instead.
