The new batch of characters are just as intricate and complex as in the original, with a dynamic friendship to match. But crucially, Caitlin, Ava, and Dylan aren’t just dolls being micromanaged by a manipulative gamemaker, a difference that feels particularly marked for how the show depicts women characters

Pretty Little Liars was grounded in treating teenage girls like dolls, figuratively and literally. In the beginning, Mona treated the five liars — Alison, Emily, Aria, Hanna and Spencer — like her puppets, controlling them with threats that urged them to follow her commands. Even when Mona was outed as being A, it didn’t stop there. CeCe Drake soon took over as the mysterious villain in all black. Let’s not forget about the literal dollhouse (more like a dungeon) that CeCe trapped the girls in during season five. Through different torture methods, she made them follow her every command, even forcing them to make decisions about the kinds of pain the other girls might receive. The teens eventually broke free, but nothing could rid them of the trauma they’d experienced from the many years of being treated like inanimate objects.

And that’s precisely the problem: Reducing women down to being doll-like reduces their agency completely, making them be viewed as helpless victims in an unhealthy and dangerous situation they can never seem to escape. Dolls, afterall, are inanimate objects that have no capacity to fight for themselves or speak their mind. To view women in this way sets them up to be, inadvertently or not, weak, fragile, and — literally and figuratively — plastic. The original Pretty Little Liars dug into so far into this symbolism, in fact, that it was hard to break out of it. At the start of The Perfectionists, Allison reveals that Emily just couldn’t let go of the past, which is a large part of the reason their relationship didn’t work out.

Despite the original show’s attempts to build strong female friendships, there was no way they could ever break free — even many years later — of the grasp and control “A” had on them. Treating the original liars like dolls not only victimized them, but traumatized them in lasting ways. It was a repulsive thing to witness: While evil male characters like Noel Kahn seem to get away with being terrible, women like Mona and Ali, and even occasionally Spencer or Aria, were made out to be the villains, all because “A” manipulated them into acting that way towards one another.

But the heroines of Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists are not so easily manipulated. Ava and Caitlin have a complicated relationship: They aren’t quite friends when the season starts. Nolan only made it appear that way in order for everyone at Beacon Heights to believe he had the perfect posse. In a way, Nolan was the gamemaker at the start of the show, treating his three “friends” like dolls. But Pretty Little Liars: The Perfectionists does away with that quickly, killing him off in the first episode. From there, Ava and Caitlin must see if there’s a true friendship between them.