The Actor Replacement In Pretty Little Liars That Bothered Some Fans
For seven seasons, the teen drama "Pretty Little Liars" captivated audiences with its mystery thriller plot. Based on the novel of the same name by Sara Shepard, "Pretty Little Liars" follows four estranged friends — Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario), Hanna Marin (Ashley Benson), Aria Montgomery (Lucy Hale), and Emily Fields (Shay Mitchell) — who reunite when they begin receiving mysterious text messages signed "A" a year after their friend (and the leader of their clique), Alison DiLaurentis (Sasha Pieterse), goes missing.
The series, while extremely popular, was also chock full of details and scenes that didn't make much sense. From Aria flying a plane with no experience to the girls removing microchips from their heads, there are a whole lot of things that even the fans admit are a bit ridiculous. Still, nonsensical or not, the fans love "Pretty Little Liars" in all of its soapiness.
One thing that the fans do not love, however, is a specific actor replacement. While having one actor take over for another is somewhat normal for film and television, fans have not been able to get over this one particular actor replacement in "Pretty Little Liars" for a few different reasons.
Fans were bothered by how Jason's replacement changed the character
In a Reddit thread from a few years ago, a Redditor brought up how many characters had actor replacements throughout the show, writing, "Jessica, Jason, Toby, and Ian all changed." Right away, fans in the comments zeroed in on one of those examples listed: Jason. Jason DiLaurentis, who is the half-brother of Alison, was played by Parker Bagley in Season 1 before Drew Van Acker took over the role for the rest of the series.
The big issue fans took with the Jason replacement was that the characterization felt quite different. Rather than two actors clearly playing the same character, Bagley's Jason seemed a stark contrast from Van Acker's Jason. This caused u/erikaa37 to say, "They also acted like he was a completely new character ..." In another thread on the subject of Jason, u/cursedbymonogamy wrote, "It just makes me laugh how in season 1 they described Jason as 'Ali's emo brother' and then Drew [Van Acker] looks like a surf model."
Another fan responding to the first thread, u/spencersbangs, was in full agreement and deemed the change "jarring." They continued, "OG Jason was Ivy League and a socialite while Second Jason seemed like a college dropout and a loner." Then, in the spirit of the nonsensical world of "Pretty Little Liars," they jokingly posited an explanation, writing, "My personal theory is that somehow both Kenneth and Peter impregnated Jessica at the same time and she gave birth to fraternal half-sibling twins and named them both Jason, and OG Jason is Kenneth's while Second Jason is Peter's. It's the only thing that makes sense."