This season has seen Gryffindor Aria grow ever more present in the world, like a Slytherin, making choices and decisions like a Ravenclaw, and bringing her private dreams into reality, as Gryffindors so seldom really do. I think a lot of this is just her development into a grownup, but I also think it's partially a reward for the work she did being Anita with Jenna that time -- and again, the emotional work of negotiating her relationship and her family bonds, including Mikey.

Hanna has gone from being A's favorite victim to being one of the most powerful Liars, because A has forced her to step outside her own selfishness and protect everyone -- starting with Ashley, then Caleb, then the world -- to the point where her wisdom now far exceeds her knowledge. She took the scary step into Gryffindor authenticity with Anne's help, and has been busily rejecting the physical world and consumer objects that used to define her.

Emily started out this year taking it in the body, which is the one thing that was always hers to command, but she had it even rougher last year, doing the heavy lifting of figuring out who she was and what she wanted. If anything, she's now more in the position of negotiating with shadow intuition -- lately she's been doing Spencer's suspicious, paranoid, nasty stuff -- and being haunted by the unreal fantasies and fears of what's going on with Maya. She's had to think harder, and faster, and be braver in a more active way, ever since the day they got that phone -- and that journey started with her own visit from Alison. And so on.

So you've got the Black Swan, who sometimes represents less the Dark Half than she does the Totality of a person, which is what this show is always driving towards: Not the things you want to define you, but the things that you hide away and end up controlling you. If Alison is an Angel of Disclosure, it's because the natural action of life and the world is about driving you away from the safe places and into the zones where you're less comfortable, and that means -- especially on this fever-dream of a show that's entirely about secrets and surveillance and the terrible fearsome loneliness of forging an identity -- that the Black Swan isn't what we're running from, but what we should be running to.