Show: Pretty Little Liars
Character Status: Regular
Current LI: Female
Current Season: On Show
Endgame: TBD
Orientation: Lesbian
Show Status: Still Airing
Tropes: All Lesbians have Kids, Dead Love Interest, Lesbian with a Man, Substance Abuse, Tortured
Introduced in: 2010-2011 / Final season: TBD
Appeared in seasons: 2010-2011, 2011-2012, 2012-2013, 2013-2014, 2014-2015, 2015-2016, 2016-2017
Emily is one of the lead characters, from a military family and a competitive swimmer. At the start of season 1 she had a boyfriend, Ben, and she befriended her new next-door neighbor Maya. The two grew closer and eventually kissed. Previously, Emily also had feelings for her best friend Alison, who was missing and thought dead.
Ben sensed that Emily was losing interest in him and tried to force himself on her but she was saved. She was eventually outed to her friends and came out to her parents, who struggled to accept her. After meeting Maya, Emily’s father started to accept her sexuality, her mother however told her she was disgusted by her and made sure Maya got sent away to a camp for juvenile delinquents.
Later in season 1 Paige, a competitive teammate, started harassing Emily, making homophobic insults towards her and later attempting to drown her in order to intimidate her. Paige afterwards apologized, kissed her and the two secretly started dating. They eventually broke up because Emily didn’t want to hide the relationship anymore, and because of Paige’s jealousy over Emily’s growing friendship with Samara.
Emily briefly dated Samara, before she got back together with Maya. She also hallucinated kissing Alison due to carbon monoxide poisoning.
Maya was desperate to avoid getting sent back to the camp. Emily later found out it was because her soon-to-be killer was there and Maya wanted Emily to go with her to San Francisco to save her. When Emily rejected leaving, Maya disappeared. A distraught Emily attempted to find Maya, to no avail.
Paige also tried rekindle her relationship with Emily but they decided to just be friends. In the season 2 finale Emily arrived home to a crime scene and found out Maya had been murdered.
Emily dealt with Maya’s death by excessive drinking. She distanced herself from her friends and found comfort in Maya’s cousin Nate. On a night she blacked out from drinking, she went to visit Paige, kissed her and realized afterwards she wanted to be with her. The two rekindled their relationship.
Emily discovered that Maya had been hiding in a cabin, and had never actually left. Upset by this, Emily and Nate comforted each other and eventually kissed. Emily joined Nate for a weekend away in a cabin. Nate admitted he wasn’t actually Maya’s cousin and killed Maya due to being angry at Emily for “taking” Maya away from him.
He revealed he had kidnapped Paige and planned to murder her in front of Emily. Emily escaped, but was caught in a nearby lighthouse while attempting to call 911. During the ensuing struggle, she stabbed Nate and killed him.
In season 4 Emily and Paige were in a stable relationship, coping with Emily’s shoulder injury which kept her from attending the same college as Paige. They came to the conclusion they would not be able to be together because of their different college plans. Meanwhile Emily found out Alison was still alive. By the end of the season Alison sent a message she wanted to come back to town and talk to Emily.
When season 5 started Emily and Paige were fighting. After a couple of awkward encounters they decided they were better off as friends. With Alison returning to the town and school, Paige dropped by again to tell Emily to stay away from Alison as she had hurt a lot of people in the past, manipulated and used Emily and her friends throughout their entire friendship.
Alison confessed to Emily she had feelings for her and they shared a kiss but Alison kept lying to her and Emily’s storyline revolved around the love triangle with Paige and Alison. Towards the end of the season Emily and Paige got together again shortly before Paige left for California.
In the second half of season 5 Talia was introduced, a chef hired to help Emily. One night Talia revealed she had feelings for Emily and they began a relationship until Emily found out Talia was married. Talia told her that her husband was aware of Talia’s interest in woman. In the following episode, her husband came into The Brew looking for Talia and told Emily he was okay with Talia experimenting because he would get to love her forever.
Emily angrily broke off the relationship and Talia quit her job. Before leaving town, Talia told Emily she had come out to her husband and was kicked out of the house.
Season 6 started with Emily and her friends rescued from being kept prisoners. Sara Harvey was saved along with them and she and Emily bonded, grew closer and eventually kissed. In the mid-season finale Sara was revealed to work with ‘A’ all along though she alluded to caring about Emily and her friends.
Mid-season 6 there was a 5 year time jump. Emily lost her father, stopped studying and started bartending. She started taking pills and donated her eggs for money at a clinic, she met Sabrina and developed an interest in her. Sara came back to town and continued tormenting Emily and her friends until she was killed off in Season 7.
Emily grew closer to Sabrina, they started dating but Emily’s tendency to lie and keep secrets put a lot of strain on the relationship. Paige also came back to the show, and we found out that during the 5 year time jump, Paige and Emily had been happy together at Stanford until Emily’s dad died. After their break-up, Paige was training for the Olympics when a car accident damaged her knee and ruined her chances. While reminiscing about the past, Emily told Paige that while Sabrina was nice, she did not see a future with her.
In the mid-season finale, Emily spent the night at Alison’s house, Alison revealed she was pregnant and Emily comforted her, promised to support her and they kissed.
(Episodes 7×11-7×14)
After the hiatus, Emily’s relationship with Ali took a step back. She continued to try to be supportive, while Ali told her the pregnancy was her nightmare to deal with, and acted distant, pushing her away. Emily asked Alison whether when she had kissed her it was because she wanted to or because she didn’t want her to leave. Alison didn’t know. Emily: “please don’t kiss me again, not until you know.”
Emily and Paige were both hired at the school, and working together, with Emily often caught in between Paige and Alison fighting or acting passive aggressive towards each other.
Plot-wise, the liars were also caught up in an A.D. created board game that promised to unravel the season’s mystery, with each of them reluctantly getting pulled into the game – when it was Emily’s turn in episode 7×12, she was manipulated into blackmailing a 10th grader, who was in turn trying to blackmail her.
In episode 7×14, Paige told Emily she had gotten a job offer, and was thinking of taking it and moving away. They shared several scenes in the episode, with Emily confessing she wanted another chance at a relationship, and Paige eventually deciding to stay – they kissed and hugged, both happy.
In the meantime, Alison, who earlier on made an appointment to terminate the pregnancy because she wanted her life back, found out the baby she was carrying was Emily’s: A.D. had stolen Emily’s eggs and Alison recalled how she had been strapped down and forced into the procedure. She told Emily, and then cancelled her appointment at the clinic.
Relationship story arc with a woman: Yes
Relationship story arc with a man: Yes
Male love interest after being identified as a lesbian? Yes
Storyline during sweeps? No
[1] A relationship story arc is defined as explicit, developed on screen, and lasting more than 3 episodes. It is listed as questionable or subtext if romance is only implied, mentioned instead of shown on screen, part of a dream sequence, or otherwise not explicit for the viewer.
[2] Sweeps episodes air in February, May, July and November, the periods when advertising rates are set. A character is marked as "sweeps" when there is a very limited number of episodes that address their sexuality, all air during sweeps period, and the storyline is otherwise ignore/dropped.
One company dropped its advertising for our show in one of the early seasons, because they didn’t agree with the relationship. And I was like, “No shit, our relationship is illegal!” And Marlene said, “No, it’s not yours, it’s Emily’s relationship [that’s the problem].” So I could be seen as a statutory rapist, and people are like, “I know, but love knows no bounds, as long as there is a penis and a vagina involved.”
— Cosmopolitan, Actor Ian Harding, who plays a male teacher involved with a (female) student.
Ian Harding
April 17, 2017
— Twitter, Showrunner Marlene King, using the "It's just a TV show" argument.
Marlene King
November 17, 2016
Well, I felt terrible that people were so upset about Maya’s death. It was an important part of the storytelling, though, and important for Emily’s character to have to deal with that. I don’t really regret it, but it’s unfortunate that people were personally so upset about it.
— Vulture, Showrunner Marlene King when asked if she had any regrets.
Marlene King
January 12, 2016
Leave a Reply
Be the First to Comment!