"Pretty Little Liars" is done playing games. With A behind them, the PLLs come face to face with a new evil in Season 6 -- and this Big Bad is seriously deadly.

"The situations are more life or death, so it's not just all dolls and games," Ashley Benson told MTV News, explaining how this new villain is lot "different" than A. "There's none of that stuff. It's definitely not fun and games -- he's not trying to play with them. He threatens them."

"It's definitely life or death, and it's smarter and edgier and deadlier," Lucy Hale added. "The stakes are definitely a lot higher. It's not 'I'm going to expose your secrets.' It's 'I'm going to kill you if you don't give me what I want.'"

We got a glimpse of the Liars' enigmatic new threat in the flash-forward at the end of the midseason finale -- that actually takes place months after the Season 6B premiere on January 12 -- and "he" didn't sound pleasant. And like most things in Rosewood, the root cause of all of this drama has something to do with a dead body. As for who that dead body belongs to, well, "that becomes the mystery moving forward," said executive producer Marlene King.

"This Big Bad has an agenda, and it's to find out why this person passes away -- and to seek revenge on the person responsible," King told MTV News. "And it will not stop until that person pays, and [the Big Bad] will kill people to get that answer."

"Time doesn't move slowly in Rosewood anymore," she added. "It's speeding up, and we're going very quickly. This is a mystery where in every finale, you're going to get a third of the way to the end."

Whether that promise holds true or not, one thing is clear: this Big Bad isn't afraid to get its hands a little bloody.

"This season is deadly," Sasha Pieterse said. "Charlotte was much more about playing the game. That's what kept her going. That's what fed her damaged soul. But this is a whole new animal. This new villain has a whole new motive -- and it's really deadly. It's like. 'Do this, or I'll kill you.' Charlotte and her games look like child's play in comparison."