She's Better Now

"Welcome to Mona 2.0"

- Spencer

She's Better Now is the 14th episode and the winter premiere of Season 3 of Pretty Little Liars. It aired on Tuesday, January 8, 2013.

Synopsis
At the start of the episode, we see somebody skateboarding in a black hoodie through the streets of Rosewood.

Mona visits Hanna in the middle of the night. She tells Hanna that she is cured and that her parents are forcing her to go back to school, and she needs somebody to stand by her. Mona says that she has changed and that she is now cured and she begs Hanna to believe her, but Hanna is doubtful of Mona's honesty. Hanna's grandmother knocks on the door and asks if Hanna she is talking to someone. Hanna lies and says, "No it's just me. I'm reading out loud." Mona thanks Hanna for not ratting her out.

The scene then goes back to the unknown skateboarder. A car starts chasing the skateboarder until the skateboarder jumps onto the sidewalk and runs away. We are then shown that the driver is Toby Cavanaugh as "A."

Emily is in her room when she receives a text from Hanna telling her that Mona is back. A ladder then leans up against Emily's window. As she goes to see where the ladder has come from, her dad enters the room and tells her that they are installing a new alarm system on all the windows in the house. Wayne tells Emily that Garrett's mother called. She is going to the Rosewood police to talk about her son's death. Emily ends the discussion by saying she is going for a run to train for the 10k Varsity Club Fundraiser tomorrow night for school, but Wayne tells her that he and her mother do not want her to be running at night with all that has happened.

Spencer and Aria are discussing Mona's release. Aria suggests they ignore her but Spencer says she may know things that they want to know. Spencer asks Aria if she ever asked her dad about what Garrett told them on Halloween about Aria's dad and Ali having a argument. Aria says that she is finally getting along with her dad and that she has no reason to believe Garrett.

Hanna walks into the kitchen and her grandma tells her that some muffins were left on the doorstep with a card signed -M. Hanna says they are from Mona. Her grandma tells her a story about one of their cousins who had some mental problems and was sent away for 4 months. When he came back, he was completely fine. Her grandma then suggests that she give Mona a chance.

The girls are talking about Mona at school, and Emily suggests that they all befriend Mona thinking that maybe Mona will tell them something about what happened the night of Halloween, specifically about Aria's dad. Aria leaves and is angry at the girls for thinking that he could be involved. Mona starts to climb the steps to go into the school while everyone says rude comments about her. She says, "Hi," to Aria as Aria passes her on the steps, but Aria just stares at her. Emily apologizes to Aria later and they walk to class together. Aria tells Emily that she still hasn't told Ezra about his son. They then walk into their history class where Meredith is seen to be their new teacher. During class, Meredith asks Aria a question to which she does not know the answer to as she is texting the rest of the girls. Meredith takes Aria's phone and asks her to stay after class. Aria, however, does not stay alone. Spencer, Hanna, and Emily also stay and Meredith asks them to not stop texting about her history with Byron during class.

Hanna catches up to Mona and they walk to her locker. When Mona opens it, there is a brain stuck into the locker with a knife. There is a note pinned above saying "It takes one mad cow to know another". She then takes the brain and the knife and slowly walks down the hallway. Everyone moves aside. She gets to the bin and dumps the brain in it. She stands with the knife in a stabbing position for a few seconds before putting the knife in as well. She then walks over to Lucas and whispers something in his ear. Hanna asks Lucas what she said and who stuck the brain in her locker but he doesn't answer and walks off, limping.

Aria, Spencer, and Emily are talking about the locker incident when Mona walks in. Emily asks Mona if she thinks the girls had anything to do with the locker incident. Mona says no since she helped them find out who killed Maya, but even so she knows that she needs to re-earn their trust.

Caleb and Hanna are talking about the locker incident. Hanna suggests that Lucas may be limping after Aria stabbed someone through the box she was locked in on the Halloween train. Emily's dad calls to check on her. She then notices Mona talking to a janitor and realizes that the janitor is the same man from the Lost Woods Resort. Spencer and Toby have lunch together and see Mona hug Jason. Hanna and Emily go to the school basement and spy on the janitor. They see that he has Mona's stuff in his office, including the Halloween costume with the baby mask. He hears them talking, but they hide.

Aria visits Ezra where he gives her a special necklace he always wore when he ran marathons. Aria has to leave quickly as Hanna wants to meet at The Brew to talk about what they found in the janitor's office. Outside his apartment, there is a gift basket with an "It's A Boy" balloon attached. The 'A' on the ballon is red, while the other letters are white. There is a note warning Aria to tell Ezra about his son, saying lies grow bigger the more you wait. Spencer and Toby come back from a run and see Jason. Spencer warns Jason to be careful of Mona but he brushes it off. Caleb, Hanna, Emily and Aria meet, and Caleb tells them that he found a transcript of the principal's conversation with Mona's parents, stating that Mona's parents didn't want her going back to school. Instead, Mona begged them to send her.

Spencer and Toby are in Spencer's hot tub discussing Jason when Spencer hears a noise. Toby isn't worried and tells her to relax but she goes inside. Aria's dad comes into Aria's room and tells her that he is proud that she handled Meredith in a grown-up way. Aria then asks him if he liked Ali and if they ever spent any time together. He seems a bit nervous but says he liked all her friends and brushes it off. He walks out of the room but comes back and watches Aria as she stares at Ezra's necklace, thinking.

Hanna is watching a video that Mona has uploaded about her recovery. In the video, Mona cries while talking about how she was bullied and out-casted all throughout her school life. Upon seeing this, Hanna's grandma stops thinking that Hanna should give her a chance.Lucas knocks on the door with the last of the money he owed Caleb. Hanna asks him about his leg and he says that he got in a skateboarding accident. Hanna asks Lucas what's going on between him and Mona but he says nothing, apart from telling her that Mona had been sneaking out of Radley Sanitarium for a long time, and he won't say why.

At the school's 10k, everyone else seems to have forgiven Mona after watching her emotional video. Aria and Caleb can't believe this. Aria asks what it was like to grow up without a dad. Caleb says he would look for him. However, he gave up when he was 13 because he was tired of focusing on someone he never met and started focusing on himself. He does admit, though, that sometimes he does wish that he could meet his dad to replace the person he always imagined with a real person. Hanna's grandma offers to sing the national anthem at the event. Hanna, Aria and Spencer plan to cut the track and get back to school to look in the janitor's office.

Emily is sitting at home under house arrest when her dad tells her he's going out for a few hours. She quickly swaps their phones over when he isn't looking so that she can turn off the alarm system. She climbs out of the window and meets the girls at the janitor's office. They unlock the door but find that Mona's stuff is gone. However, they find the book he was writing in, which they discover to be Ali's diary. They find a page of Ali's diary that talks about how she was blackmailing Byron about Meredith. They hear a noise and Aria rips the page out and they quickly leave. They run into the janitor, who questions them what they were doing down and snatches the page in Aria's hand there but are saved when Toby comes down looking for them. Aria takes back the paper and they quickly leave. Outside, they hear a scream and see that somebody has set fire to the storage shed in front of the school, while someone screamed Mona's name.

Emily's dad receives a call saying that Meredith was harmed in the fire. He asks why Emily is being so secretive with him. Hanna is in the kitchen re-watching the video Mona sent to everyone, and her grandmother tells her she should to bed. Meanwhile, Aria's dad tells Aria that he has just taken Meredith home from hospital and he shows her a note. The note was left on Meredith's clipboard leading her to where the fire started. Byron thinks Aria and her friends are behind the fire but she tells him that they're not. He says that she should just admit that she did it because secrets like this could come back to haunt her. She responds by asking, "What about yours?"

Jason tells Spencer that he listened to her caution about Mona. But when Spencer leaves, Mona emerges from Jason's house and starts cleaning a bloody puncture wound in Jason's side.

Aria calls Spencer to tell her that "A" set them up with the fire. Aria hears a creak outside her door and says she has to go. Spencer offers to let Aria stay at her house, but Aria knows her dad wouldn't let her and ends the call quickly. We see that Byron is standing outside Aria's door listening to her conversation with Spencer, so now he also knows about "A".

In the end, we see "A" fiddling with someone's bike wheel at the school. The owner, a member of the Academic  Decathlon  team quickly falls off the bike after riding it.

Main Cast

 * Troian Bellisario as Spencer Hastings
 * Ashley Benson as Hanna Marin
 * Lucy Hale as Aria Montgomery
 * Shay Mitchell as Emily Fields
 * Sasha Pieterse as Alison DiLaurentis

Supporting Cast/Guest Cast

 * Janel Parrish as Mona Vanderwaal
 * Betty Buckley as Regina Marin
 * Keegan Allen as Toby Cavanaugh
 * Ian Harding as Ezra Fitz
 * Tyler Blackburn as Caleb Rivers
 * Chad Lowe as Byron Montgomery
 * Brendan Robinson as Lucas Gottesman
 * Amanda Schull as Meredith Sorenson
 * Drew Van Acker as Jason DiLaurentis
 * Travis Richley as Harold Crane