Somehow I came out of this season ultimately hating Fitz more than I ever had before. He went from being “ugh the worst” to “I WISH HE’D DIE OF THAT GUNSHOT WOUND”.
So what happened in season four to make Fitz more hateable than ever?
Some of it isn’t technically his fault – it’s the writers.
(I mean, I guess if you want to get really technical, everything is the fault of the writers since Ezra Fitz, fictional character, doesn’t have agency over his own life.)
In season three, we learn that Fitz got his high school sweetheart pregnant, and that she had the child and kept it secret from him for years after his mom blackmailed her into disappearing.
…And in season four that is quickly disposed of because actually she was lying, the kid wasn’t his, it was someone else’s, and she let Fitz believe he was the father for…reasons? She and her son move away and uh that’s…it.
I’m in season six and she has never been mentioned again. What was the point of this storyline? To break Aria and Fitz up? Because there’s many other reasons they could have and should have broken up that have nothing to do with, “Here’s your kid! Oh no he’s not your kid. Okay well everything back to normal I guess.”
When it seemed like this was going to be his season four story, I was in that “grumpy and bored” place. But then we find out that he knew Alison before he ever met Aria or the others, that they may have been involved (gross, though at least then, she’d lied about her age), and that he might be A.
The evidence stacks up against him. He has a secret apartment in another town full of what has to be tens of thousands of dollars of surveillance equipment. He’s stalked the girls and their families. He’s working with Mona. When Spencer starts seeming to get suspicious, Fitz tells Aria that she’s addicted to ADHD meds. That turns out to be true, but it sure looked like something he was using as a convenient distraction and way to discredit her. He also starts isolating Aria more and more, taking her out to a cabin with no cell reception, away from her friends.
Add all of that up, and it really looked like he might be A. I was sure believing it!