| This article is about Rose Waters. You may be looking for the alias and murderer, Bloody Rose. |
| This article contains information regarding sexual assault, suicide, and abuse. Reader discretion is advised. |
| “ | Don't you see? This is why you were hurt. You invited it! | ” |
— Rose to Angela
| ||
Rose Waters is a recurring character in the television series, Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin on Max. She is portrayed by Susan Barnes Walker, Jeanette Bonner and Abby Satty.
The strict, unrelenting mother of Angela Waters who lost her mind after her daughter's death.
Biography[]
Rose Waters was born in Millwood, Pennsylvania to religious parents. In high school, Rose had a clandestine affair with Marshall Clanton that resulted in a pregnancy with twins Angela Waters and Archie Waters. They had plans to run away together that were thwarted when Rose and her family left Millwood with their unborn children. Rose's parents moved her out of town so she could quietly give birth. However, Rose was an abusive mother and an untreated schizophrenic who suffered from religious delusions. She inflicted her pain onto Angela and Archie, the latter of whom she never let out of the house and caged because "he had a face only a mother could love".
14 years later, Rose returned and stayed in Millwood with her children to enroll Angela in Millwood High School. Marshall was now a teacher at the school and agreed with Rose's request not to tell Angela his identity as her father. She led the public, and Marshall, to believe Angela was her only child, while secretly imprisoning Archie at home. Angela was a popular student for a short time until she was sexually assaulted by Tom Beasley. Rose blamed Angela for the incident because of the way she dressed and her decision to wear makeup. Angela suffered greatly from depression, which was amplified by her peers bullying. The bullying contributed to her suicide at 16.
Rose snapped after Angela's death and attacked students with a butcher knife at Millwood High School. She was arrested and sentenced to the Radley Sanitarium in Rosewood. She was treated, in part, by Dr. Anne Sullivan. Rose remained a patient there for over a decade, until the sanitarium was shut down for mistreating patients.
Personality[]
Rose is a strict, unrelenting mother who believes deeply in religious values. She sought to protect Angela by keeping her close to home, hiding the verbal abuse she inflicted on Angela behind the façade of a protective mother. Everyone in Millwood knew that Rose was the "crazy lady", which didn't help Rose's untreated schizophrenia. She took her anger and displeasure out on her children, whether it be verbally or physically. She viewed her son Archie as hideous, having a face that only she could love, so she sheltered him at home and refused to let him go to school.
After Angela's death and years of intensive psychiatric treatment and subsequent homelessness, Rose has become a recluse who, still suffering with her mental illness, has become terrified of her own son and his actions.
Physical Appearance[]
Rose was a Caucasian woman with black hair and brown eyes. As both a teenager and adult she wore conservative clothing that distracted from her admittedly attractive features. She also wore a cross around her neck, alluding to her religious beliefs.
Series[]
Season 1[]
Imogen and Tabby visit Joseph England at the train yard to discuss Angela Waters and her friendship with their moms. Tabby asks if he knows why Angela killed herself. He thinks it's because she couldn't keep up with the girls and came crashing down on Y2K night. Imogen asks about Angela's family. Her mother Rose was Angela's only family. After she died, Rose snapped and showed up to Millwood High distraught with an old kitchen butcher knife. She attacked the students who tried to clamor out of the way. Rose was there for revenge and tried to stab multiple students, but not the girls who adopted Angela - a group of boys. One of the teachers stopped her before anyone was hurt. They took her away to an asylum called The Radley Sanitarium in Rosewood. She could still be there.
The next day, The Little Liars gather in the library, with Imogen filling in the group on what she and Tabby learned from Joseph England. Faran isn't sure they can trust a man who lives in a train car, causing Noa and Tabby to point to her in agreement. Mouse asks if there's any universe in which a creepy train guy could be A. Imogen agrees instantly, though Tabby adds that he didn't try to kill them, though he's still a person of interest. Imogen looked up The Radley Sanitarium and a few years ago, it was shut down and turned into a hotel. Mr. England - aka Crazy Jo - confirmed what they suspected about their moms being connected to Angela Waters, which might be why A is targeting them. Therefore, if they can find out what happened between Angela and their moms they might figure out who A is. They want to skip the rest of the day and road trip to Rosewood. They can find someone who knows Rose Waters, or maybe even find her. The hotel has a spa and Imogen has party cash. Faran can't as a recruiter from ABT is there, her mom, and Swan Lake is tomorrow. Noa has to keep an eye on her mom, while Mouse has a date with Ash. The girls become excited for her. Noa ships them and proclaims that Mash needs to be canon. Mouse is nervous but excited. Imogen tells Tabby it's just the two of them.
Two days later, Imogen and Tabby sit with Eddie Lamb in the breakfast area of the Radley. Tabby asks why he kept working there after the sanitarium closed. He was offered a job to help with the transition and he had a mortgage, so he needed the money. Imogen looks through the logs and Eddie tells her that all visitors have to sign in and that was the book. Imogen points to the page, which says that Rose Waters was visited by an A. Waters, though there are different signatures - five of them. He remarks that she caught that. There were five young ladies who traded off and visited under the name “A. Waters”, the A presumably standing for Angela. Imogen asks if he would recognize them and shows him a photo of The Little Liars's moms from 1999. He confirms they were the five girls who visited Rose. He figured it was some sort of community service for school to visit the crazy lady. She was being treated for trauma induced psychosis and then schizophrenia. She never got out, as she was here until the asylum shut down. Some of the patients were sent to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy over in Riverdale, but others like Rose, were released and bussed out of town. Imogen heard a story about Rose attacking a bunch of students at Millwood High School. Eddie confirms that it's true. Rose had a psychotic break after her daughter was raped and then killed herself. Imogen and Tabby are taken aback by the revelation of Angela's rape. According to Rose, it was right before she jumped to her death.[1]
Once back in Millwood, Imogen thanks Joseph for seeing her gain. They went to the Radley and found a sign-in book that lists everyone who visited Rose Waters. They matched five of the signatures, signed A. Waters, but there's a sixth one they can't match. She shows it to him but he doesn't have any clue who it is. She asks if it's him but he thinks they should leave now. Tabby starts to go but Imogen asks if he knows Angela was raped. He questions if someone told her that. She realizes that he didn't think they would find out, and only sent them to Rosewood thinking it would be a dead-end. They don't know what they're getting themselves into. She offers more money but he doesn't want her money. He wants them to drop this, or it will be very bad for them. Tabby hurries her away.
Chip and Imogen serve food at the soup kitchen. They watch a worker diffuse an argument, which triggers a memory for Imogen. Davie stares at a woman across the room before going to talk with her. The woman is upset with Davie and jerks away. Imogen watches until a man asks her for more beans. She looks back up and the woman is sitting alone. Davie tells her they need to leave, now. In the present, Chip asks if Imogen is okay and she is, she's just having a moment.
Imogen tells Tabby about the exchange as she thinks it could be Rose Waters, who returned to Millwood after her release from Radley Sanitarium. They have to find the Waters House. If Rose is there, she'll have the answers they're looking for. Sidney eavesdrops on their conversation from the hallway.
Imogen visits Angela Waters' old house. The home is run-down, uncared for, and seemingly abandoned. No one answers, so she opens the unlocked door, cautiously stepping inside to begin her investigation. She finds newspapers scattered across the floor and the house in disarray. She sees a young girl's bed with ropes tied to the posts. In another room is a metal cage full of straw, a giant metal lock hanging from it. She goes upstairs and becomes scared by A's mask hanging on the wall. She examines it before running down the steps. She runs down to see Joseph England entering. She quickly apologizes, but he warns that he told her to let it go. He questions why she couldn't. He pulls out a knife and she runs upstairs, hiding in a room. He bursts through so she knocks a bookcase over, using the distraction to flee to another room. She hides behind the door, struggling to catch her breath. As he peaks around the corner, she slides down the wall and gasps in horror at a corpse on the mattress. A large porcelain doll is next to the corpse, which wears a dress. Joseph sees her and she slams a vase into his skull, cursing as she does. She looks back at the corpse then runs out of the home and down the street, struggling to catch her quickened breath.
When Imogen returns with her friends, the corpse and Joseph are both gone. They track Joseph to the train yard where they find his body hanging from the ceiling, seemingly suicide. Back at the Haworthe House, Tabby remarks that it's so fucked up and shows Imogen the suicide note compared to the sixth signature. They're a match. Joe, who was in love with Angela, visited Rose Waters and didn't want them to know. Imogen shows her the yearbook where all the mom's faces have been scratched out. He hated them for what they did to Angela and wanted to punish them. Crazy Joe was A. She asks if it could really be that simple. Tabby deduces that based on every horror movie she's ever seen, it never is.[2]
In a flashback to December 31, 1999 at 10:45 PM in the Waters house, a crying Rose Waters asks Angela to look at her face, as she's even showing off her body. Angela might not be able to see it, but this is why she was hurt, because she invited it. Angela refutes this claim as all the girls wear makeup and pretty dresses. She doesn't see anything wrong with wanting to go to a party with her friends. She shows a bug-eyed Rose the party flier. They want her there, and she's going. She starts to leave as Rose begs her not to. She grabs her daughter's arm and clutches it tightly. Angela screams for her mom to let go and pulls from her grasp, fleeing to the door. Rose yells out at her daughter, so Angela turns to look at her for a moment before leaving. Rose watches with an intense look.
In the present day, Imogen and her friends investigate the Waters house and discover signs of a third person living at the home, someone other than Angela and Rose. Tabby gets excited as she references a secret deformed brother no one talks about, like in People Under the Stairs. Noa calls for the girls to quickly come into a room where she and Tabby are standing. A metal crate is in front of them. In the back of the cage are crayons. Noa wonders why crayons are in the back of an animal cage. Faran incredulously asks if someone was kept in it. Imogen tells them to keep looking as they are so close. She finds a polaroid under the fridge that she shows the girls. In the photo are two kids in Halloween costumes. Tabby is right, Angela wasn't an only child.
A lures the girls to Millwood High School where he's holding their moms hostage. After passing his twisted tests, they meet him in the gymnasium where his partner reveals himself - Marshall Clanton. The girls demand the truth - if he's Angela's brother. Clanton walks across the stage to stand in the middle, holding a gun. He remarks A's real name is Archie. He instructs them to have a seat. Mouse questions what Clanton is doing there. He's truly impressed with the girls as they uncovered the identity of the man who violated his poor Angela. Faran calls him out on his use of “his” poor Angela. He reveals that she was his daughter, and Archie is his son. Imogen scoffs that “A” is for Archie not Angela. Elodie doesn't understand how they didn't know he was Angela's father, as it doesn't add up. It does, and he decides to explain.
He grew up in Millwood and was classmates with Rose Waters, Angela's mother. As teens, they sang in the school choir together. Eventually, she took a liking to him, and after spending some time together, Rose got pregnant with twins. His parents didn't approve and the Waters family needed money, so the Clanton's paid them off to move to another town, never to return. Clanton stayed in town and became a teacher at Millwood High, and eventually vice principal. That's when Rose came back to Millwood. She wanted Angela to attend Millwood High and get a decent education.
Imogen asks why it was just Angela and not Archie. Clanton relents that Rose wanted Archie at home, as he had a face only a mother could love. No one could ever know the truth about their past, and Rose understood. He watched his daughter go from class to class, arm-in-arm with Davie Adams and her clique. But then, Angela took her own life. Not because of the assault, but afterwards, because of something Corey Bryant, Marjorie Olivar, Sidney Haworthe, Elodie Honrada did, and it's time for the truth.
Clanton repeats that Angela took her life not because of what Tom did to her, but because of something else. Something insidious that happened right under their noses. Imogen thinks she knows what Principal Clanton is talking about. She takes out Davie's diary pages that were with her mother. They say “erase her” on almost every page. She asks what it means. The moms exchange a look.
The girls need to know the truth, with Tabby and Imogen pushing Sidney to tell the truth. Back in 1999, Davie talks to Angela at the lockers, as Sidney told them about what happened to her. She wants to make sure she's okay, asking if she knows who did it. Angela nervously admits that it was Tommy. It wasn't her fault as he did it to her. Davie reels from the revelation and hisses out that Angela's a liar. Tom was her boyfriend, so Davie had to pick a side - Angela or Tommy. She picked Tommy. Instead of helping Angela, she lamed her. In the bathroom, Davie tells the girls that Angela is lying about what happened. The girls wonder if she isn't lying, with Davie calling them dense as it's clear Angela's just trying to get attention, like always. Corey and Sidney thinks it's different this time, angering Davie who doubles-down that Angela's out of control. They need to teach her a lesson. They have to ignore her, pretend that she doesn't exist. They're going to erase Angela Waters. But not just them, everyone else too. They'll turn Angela into a ghost, making her invisible as if she were nothing. The student body slams into Angela and knocks her to the ground, making her drop her papers. The students step on them and ignore her as Davie and her friends laugh from the lockers. Things just kept getting worse, and there was one last final humiliation. One last nail that Davie wanted to put in Angela's coffin - an even more public shaming. Davie approaches Angela at the swings to apologize for everything that happened. Especially for not believing her. She's been a real biatch. She wants to make it up to her, they all do. She hands her the Y2K rave flier. They're all going and Angela has to come, as it'll be fun. After that, they'll have a fresh start. When Angela arrived at the party she was a mess, like she had crawled through the woods. But Davie still made them ignore her, shun her, even though Angela was clearly in distress. They didn't know it would lead to her death. She concludes that is what "erase her" means.
Imogen chokes out tears as that's why her mom killed herself. She quickly asks if they killed her, but Clanton denies it as they sent her a gift, the flier, as a reminder for what she had done. Imogen protests as her mom had changed. She became a different person, a good, kind person. What she did to Angela was horrible, yes, but she was so much more than that. He has to believe her that Davie changed, and they can all change. Like he said, they can be better and do better. Clanton surmises that even if she did change, it was too late to save Angela. Since Davie took the coward's way out, the sins of the mother must fall upon the child. Clanton has Archie attack Imogen after giving the pregnant girl a head start. Imogen and A have a fight at her house that results in A being stabbed several times, Imogen's water breaking, and both going to the hospital where A is arrested.[3]
Season 2[]
Following Archie's arrest and trial, myths and rumors about the Waters family circulate, especially on the online community of SpookySpaghetti.com. Users write stories and short films about Rose, Archie, and Angela. The most disturbing is that of Bloody Rose, who is allegedly Archie and Angela's bad to the bone mother whose face was skinned to create Archie's "A" mask. She is now on the loose in Millwood and hanging around places that are important to A's former victims, The Little Liars. Mouse worries that Bloody Rose is real, though her friends are skeptical that she's real, let alone the real Rose Waters.[4]
Mouse decides to track down the real Rose Waters to determine if she's actually Bloody Rose. She posts on Spookyspaghetti to ask users for help in finding the missing woman. She gets a lot of replies and teams up with her boyfriend to track her down. Mouse finds a solid lead of Rose living off the grid in tent city, under a bridge. The Little Liars assemble to find her her, to ensure she wasn’t the one tormenting them. After they tell her her son is still alive, Rose is terrified. She jumps off the top of the bridge, despite the girls' protests.[5] They aren't sure if Rose survived the fall, with Imogen remarking it wasn't a tall bridge.[6]
Imogen begins to suspect Dr. Sullivan is the real Bloody Rose, though the girls remind her the true connection has to be to Rose Waters. Dr. Sullivan admits to Imogen that, during her treatment with Rose, she mentioned a boy in a cage that she left behind. Sullivan went to the old Waters House and found the cage - and a young Archie Waters whose horrific features scarred Sullivan. She called the police days later, but Archie was gone. She believes he became her Bogeyman and followed her for years, including to the town of Rosewood. Her son Sebastian was murdered in the woods while out for a jog, and Sullivan believes Archie stabbed him several times with his iconic bowing knife for not helping him or Rose. Mouse returns home one night to find Rose talking to her grandmother in her living room.[7]
Lola introduces Rose to Mouse as an old friend, as she is Angela's mother, and Angela is friends with Mouse's mom. Mouse asks Rose what she's doing here and what she wants. Rose was safe before she was found. Now, everywhere she goes people, whom Mouse assumes are the Spookyspaghetti teens, are looking at her and following her. Mouse takes Rose to Crazy Jo's train car to keep her safe, but gets distracted by an attack by Bloody Rose. When the girls do head to the train car, they find Rose's bed empty with just rose petal on the bed.
Tabby is kidnapped by Bloody Rose and held captive in Our Mother of Holy Grace. She's sealed inside with wooden boards nailed to the door. She beats on the door while screaming to be let out. She sees a message on the wall telling her to "Confess Your Sins". She doesn't know what she did. She opens the confessional window and sees Rose Waters in the other booth - dead with her face cut off. Tabby screams in horror.[8]
Appearances[]
- Chapter Six: Scars
- Chapter Eight: Bad Blood
- Chapter Nine: Dead and Buried (Mentioned)
- Chapter Ten: Final Girls
- Chapter Eleven: SpookySpaghetti.com (Mentioned)
- Chapter Fourteen: When A Stranger Calls Back
- Chapter Seventeen: The Bogeyman
- Chapter Eighteen: Final Exam
Trivia[]
- Rose's character seems to be based on popular horror film figure Margaret White from the 1976 movie Carrie. Both are are very religious and overprotective of their daughters, who were harassed by popular girls. Both also "prohibited" their daughters from attending a school dance (prom in Margaret's case and Y2K for Rose) and abused their daughters.
Quotes[]
Rose: Look at yourself. Your face, showing off your body. Angela: Please, Mom. All the girls wear makeup and dresses. Rose: Don't you see? This is why you were hurt. You invited it! Angela: No, I didn't. Don't blame me. What's bad about wanting to go to a party with my friends? Rose: Your friends? Angela: I was invited. They want me... and I'm going. |