ABC Family has ordered a Pretty Little Liars spinoff series, proving once again that teenagers love watching pretty girls stuck in horrible situations. Ravenswood comes from PLL’s production company and executive producer Marlene King, and it tells the story of the cursed town of Ravenswood—conveniently located just down the road from PLL’s Rosewood, Pennsylvania. The plot and characters for Ravenswood will be introduced during the third annual Pretty Little Liars Halloween special, during which a lot of lovely young women will probably wear adorable but skimpy costumes.
This news has inevitably caused a lot of fans to shriek, “BUT WHAT ABOUT BUNHEADS!” But in all fairness, Pretty Little Liars is a much bigger show for ABC Family, and it makes sense that they would greenlight a (probably successful) spin-off before deciding on the fate of something a little more tenuous. As Deadline notes, the season three finale of Liars drew a 6.9 rating in the teenage market, and was the “No. 1 ‘most social’ series episode on record,” racking up more than 1 million related tweets during its hour-long airing. Season three of Liars was also the most-watched season of the series for adults 18-34 and for women, and it was ABC Family’s most-watched original series ever for its target demographic of 18-34 year olds. It’s also the No. 1 show across all TV for female teens. So yeah, it’s pretty popular. The stars of PLL are even on magazine covers.
In Bunheads’ defense, it did okay during its time slot, drawing about 1 million viewers to its finale, and rating about a .4 in the 18-34 demo. Pretty Little Liars, on the other hand, drew a 1.2 rating in the demo and about 2.87 million viewers for its finale.
Season four of Pretty Little Liars kicks off Tuesday, June 11.