Unraveling the Clues: Lucas is Uber A
After finishing Season 6B of Pretty Little Liars, I feel fairly confident in saying that Lucas is the mysterious Uber A who has been tormenting the Liars. I’ve been following his clues throughout the season and he is the suspect who makes the most sense to me with Uber A’s actions so far. I’ll go through the episodes of 6B a bit and show how I developed the theory as the season went on. Without further ado, let’s get started.
I don’t have too much from 6x11 or 6x12 since those were before Lucas reappeared and before I began suspecting him, however there is one obvious clue from these episodes: Uber A’s car. We see Uber A twice in these episodes, once at Charlotte’s funeral and once at Charlotte’s grave. Both times Uber A is in a limo. The fact that Uber A’s favored mode of transportation is a limo instantly shows us that Uber A is someone with plenty of money if they are always able to afford a limo. When Lucas returns, we find out that he is now very wealthy, which means he can definitely afford a limo. But why does Uber A need a limo? The first thought would be that it is someone who can’t drive and needs a driver to drive them around. However the only character who might fit this is Sara Harvey, but Emily sees her driving her own car in 6x19 which means she is perfectly capable of driving. The other reason Uber A might need a limo is for anonymity. This brings me back to Lucas. On 6x13 Hanna noticed Lucas’s silver Jaguar outside of the Brew before she even knew it was his, which shows that Lucas’s expensive car stands out pretty well. If it stands out parked on the street, just imagine how much it would stand out while stalking the Liars. Instead, by driving around in a generic limo, he does not stand out so much and prevents the risk of being immediately recognized by his own car. Lucas has the most reason to get around in a car other than his own because it enables him to avoid detection.
Let’s move onto the events of 6x13, the episode where Lucas reappears and the episode where I began suspecting him. It’s an interesting coincidence that we see Uber A’s first message on the same episode that Lucas first comes back. It gets even more interesting in the context of Lucas’s role in the episode. Uber A’s first message “You know who did it and I’m going to make you talk” shows that Uber A has reason to suspect that the liars have information regarding Charlotte’s death and since this is when he sent his first message, it means he probably just recently gained information causing him to suspect them. This is the episode where Hanna asks Lucas to lie about his whereabouts and be her alibi, but she never tells him why she and her friends need an alibi. This means that Lucas, just like Uber A, has reason to suspect that the Liars know more about the night Charlotte died than they are telling people. Additionally, the timeline of Lucas learning the Liars syncs up with when Uber A would have likely learned that information considering the first text is sent shortly afterward. Another clue from the fact that Lucas was able to be Hanna’s alibi is that it confirms he has been in Rosewood since Charlotte’s death. This means that he was in Rosewood at the right time to have been the mysterious person in the limo at Charlotte’s funeral and gravesite. Not to mention, Lucas was pretty personally effected by the A game too both with his involvement in early Season 3 and his involvement with Mona around the time she was kidnapped. Even though Charlotte had a personal effect on him, he was nowhere to be seen at her funeral. Maybe he just didn’t care to go, but this could be further evidence that he was really the one in the limo at the end since we know he was in town and yet he was absent.
Another point of interest is Lucas’s apartment. It was very generous for him to just give it away to Hanna and I think he may have had an ulterior motive for doing it. I’ll talk more about it later, but multiple times Uber A has had knowledge from private conversations the Liars had in Lucas’s apartment. I think he may have bugged it with recording devices and then given it to Hanna so that he can spy on the Liars’ private conversations. This explains how Uber A knows so much information about the Liars. It also serves a bit of a narrative purpose if Lucas is A. Even though he is not on every episode, we won’t forget about him because we see his apartment every single episode. This is a way for the producers to make Uber A a character who does not appear as often as others do because even when he does not appear, his presence is not forgotten.
The clues got even more interesting in 6x14. First, there was a random scene of Uber A taking pictures of Spencer from a car. This scene seems to have no point since we never see A’s pictures and there is no further reference to them. However, they included this scene for some reason so I think its purpose is as a clue. The character who has been most associated with photography is Aria, however it doesn’t really make any sense for her to be Uber A since she has been in the same place as Uber A multiple times already. Let’s not forget that Lucas previously worked as a photographer’s assistant. This seemingly unimportant scene of A photographing Spencer could really be a clever hint about Lucas’s past connection with photography.
Also in 6x14, Uber A sends the Liars the picture of the nine iron and they recognize the background as the floor of a room in the Radley Hotel. So why was Uber A living in the Radley Hotel instead of a permanent residence? This means Uber A is not a natural resident of Rosewood anymore because he was living in a hotel room. But what is even more interesting is the fact that Uber A is living in a hotel the very episode after Lucas gives away his apartment to Hanna. The hotel isn’t a very permanent lair and seems more like a place A would stay at while looking for a new place to make a lair, which means Uber A had probably just recently lost a place to live and Lucas is the only character who recently lost his only place to live in Rosewood (Technically he could live with his parents but he was supposed to be out of Rosewood and that wouldn’t provide much subtlety for him).
Uber A’s choice of costume is also interesting. As his message said, he is “hiding in plain sight”. But why does A need to stay hidden in plain sight, such as at the election event at the hotel at the end of 6x14, which was a public event with a lot of people present. The only real reason I can think of that A would need to be disguised at a public event like that is if it is someone who is not supposed to be in Rosewood and is pretending to be out of town. The only characters who had appeared already and were supposed to be out of town were Lucas, Ali, and Rollins (I can’t remember if Melissa had already left for London or not, but she may have been out of town then too). However, Ali and Rollins were away together and referenced their trip in private on a later episode, so neither of them could have been in Rosewood without the other knowing. So this means the only character who was supposed to be out of town and would need to be hidden in a public place was Lucas, and possibly maybe Melissa if she was already supposed to be in London then. Either way, it is not a very big list.
It gets interesting with Emily’s eggs storyline because Uber A has to be someone who knows that Emily is donating her eggs. The other Liars knew about it, but it seems pretty unlikely for any of them to be Uber A at this point. Ali and Rollins were both aware of what Emily was doing from when they came by the apartment, but they were both out of town at the time when Uber A was walking around in the old man mask. This leaves one other possibility for who would have know about Emily’s eggs. She was staying in Lucas’s apartment at the time and had her conversation with Rollins about the eggs inside of Lucas’s apartment. If my earlier theory about Lucas bugging the apartment is true, he would have been able to overhear everything about Emily donating her eggs and he would have had specific information about where she was donating them so he would know where to steal them. Additionally, A shut down the technology at the egg storing place in order to steal them which suggests he has some pretty good technology skills to be able to pull that off and we know that Lucas owns a tech company. Lucas appears to be the only character with the knowledge and ability to steal Emily’s eggs.
Uber A also seems to have a fixation on Hanna’s fiancé Jordan. In the middle part of the season, A made multiple threats to hurt Jordan if Hanna did not listen. This is what began to drive a wedge between them and caused Hanna to grow more distant from Jordan. However, A did not do anything to drive Aria away from Liam or Spencer away from Caleb (Maybe the election leak, but A did not actually take credit for that so I am not convinced that A was responsible yet). This special focus on Hanna and Jordan’s relationship makes me think A is someone who wants to break them up and who would want that more than Lucas, who is still single and definitely seems to still have feelings for Hanna. Also, Uber A’s first act of direct violence against the Liars was with the fire at Hanna’s wedding shower. Could this sudden lashing out be related to anger Lucas might have about Hanna’s wedding? He should have finally had his chance with her once she broke up with Caleb, yet he finds out that she has already moved on and is engaged to another guy. This would definitely make him upset and could cause him to lash out at Hanna’s wedding shower as A did. Another clue that Lucas orchestrated the wedding shower attack is the fact that it used the technology in his loft. He would have both the familiarity with the system and the technical skills necessary to orchestrate the attack with a universal remote.
Lucas’s second appearance in 6x19 also had some interesting clues about him. First, he does not seem at all concerned that A just lit a giant fire in his apartment. Wouldn’t he at least be a little upset or even worried about it happening again? Of course if he was the one who caused the fire, he would have no cause to be upset over it. Then we find out that he just purchased an abandoned factory with his company’s money, which to me sounds like the perfect spot for A’s new lair. He also makes a comment about how he could “give Rosewood a second chance”. Aside from just sounding pretty creepy, this comment also suggests that he still has some bitter feelings toward the town and could want to get some revenge as A. Finally, at the end of the episode, A is seen sitting at a table completely covered with electronic devices. Lucas is the only character other than Caleb who we know works in a technology field so it makes the most sense for him to be the one who would use all of those electronic devices.
The final nail in the coffin for me was how A kidnapped Hanna from the Lost Woods resort. Hanna did not tell A the meeting location until she was in position, so he would not gave had enough time to dig a tunnel under the hotel before she was kidnapped. This means the Uber A had to have knowledge of Hanna’s plan beforehand in order to have enough time to tunnel under the hotel and set up the trapdoor to kidnap her. The only people who knew about the plan ahead of time were the liars and the boyfriends; however, all of them were already occupied when Hanna was kidnapped. Mary Drake was on the footage outside of the hotel, so couldn’t have kidnapped Hanna from the inside. Since Mary and Elliot did not mention kidnapping Charlotte’s supposed killer in their conversation about how much they love her, I doubt Rollins was also at the lodge because they seemingly would have mentioned it in that case. This means that all of the people with knowledge of the plan were occupied and their possible accomplices couldn’t have done the kidnapping, so who could have done it? This brings me back to the idea that Lucas’s apartment is bugged. When looking at 6x19 and 6x20, Hanna and Caleb pretty much did all of their planning in Lucas’s apartment which means he would know every detail of their plan and would know to dig a tunnel ahead of time. This is the only scenario I can think of where a character would both have the means to learn of the plan so far in advance and also have the availability to kidnap Hanna.
The only piece I haven’t explained yet is why would Lucas avenge Charlotte and why would Mary Drake work with him? (Marlene confirmed Mary is working with Uber A) I think the key to both of these questions lies in the final text message of 6B, which was signed by AD. Marlene has confirmed that AD is Uber A, so it must stand for something important. My main thought is that the D stands for Drake, meaning Mary had another child. I originally thought Uber A would be Charlotte’s secret boyfriend, who would be Lucas, but that doesn’t work anymore now that Rollins is her secret boyfriend. But the other connection that could drive someone to get revenge for Charlotte is a family connection. This is why I believe Lucas’s real name is not Lucas Gottesman, but A Drake (The A could be any male name probably something like Aiden or Alex). This gives Lucas a motive to avenge Charlotte and could also explain why he is working with Mary. Marlene said that Mary is the true villain of PLL, but since she isn’t Uber A maybe she is the puppet master giving commands to Uber A. If this is true, then it makes a lot of sense for a mother to be ordering her son around. Lucas was seen visiting Mona in Radley toward the beginning of Season 3, so maybe he met his sister and mother while he was there and learned his true identity. He never liked Ali and was already doing some work for the A team, so what if he just made Mona think he was only on the A team because he was being blackmailed and was really in on it all along helping Charlotte. Lucas has always been involved in the A team. Back on 2x13 he was in the same costume as Ali’s attacker and the first A sending her messages. Also, he was helping Mona back when she was A by giving Emily’s massage. He was involved again once Charlotte took over and if he was only a minor member, why did Toby try to run him over? Even though it wasn’t a real A group, he was also involved in Mona’s anti-Ali group. Lucas has always been involved in sketchy groups and the evidence seems to indicate he is still involved, but now he is the one behind the texts.
