Veronica Mars (character)
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Veronica Mars is the fictional lead character on The CW television series, Veronica Mars, which debuted on UPN during the fall 2004 season. She is portrayed by Kristen Bell.
Character History
Background
Daughter of the sheriff of Balboa County, California, Veronica Mars lived a carefree life as one of the popular teens at Neptune High. Her best friend was popular junior Lilly Kane, whose brother Duncan was Veronica's boyfriend. Along with Lilly's boyfriend Logan Echolls, the four were at the forefront of the school's wealthy and popular "'09er" clique (named after the 90909 zip code where the richer part of Neptune lives) that ruled Neptune High's social scene.
Sadly this carefree world would not last for Veronica. One day, out of the blue, Duncan stopped talking to Veronica and made his sister tell Veronica that their relationship was over. Lilly sought to console her friend but days after Veronica was dumped, Lilly was brutally murdered at her wealthy family's home. Veronica's father, Sheriff Keith Mars, accused Lilly's father, software mogul Jake Kane, of the murder of his daughter. The town was horrified at the fact that Keith would accuse the wealthy Jake Kane of murder and Keith quickly found himself voted out of office in an emergency recall election and turned into a pariah by the wealthy 09er community. Keith's pariahdom was increased when his replacement as Sheriff, former Deputy Sheriff Don Lamb arrested disgruntled former Kane employee Abel Koontz for Lilly's murder.
The shock destroyed the Mars family as Veronica's mother abandoned the family several months later. Veronica further sealed her fate regarding joining her father as a pariah when she refused to denounce her father. Logan denounced Veronica as the enemy and Veronica found herself banished from the exclusive 09er social scene and all of her former friends.
Two months after Lilly's death, Veronica crashed an 09er party in order to defy Logan and his friends blackballing her and show that she did not care what her former friends said about her. Veronica was given a drink made of "rum, coke and roofie" (later learned to be laced with GHB) by longtime enemy Madison Sinclair (she did not know it contained GHB; the drugged drink was meant for her but she unknowingly gave it to Veronica after spitting in it).
Veronica woke up in bed with her underwear removed and no memory of the night before. She went to the police to report her rape. When she visited Sheriff Lamb and told him her story, Lamb called her a liar and forced her out of his office. Veronica later discovered that it had been Duncan who "raped" her, but Logan later revealed to Veronica that Duncan was under the influence of the same drug given to Veronica when he had sex with her. Duncan told Veronica that she had consented under her influenced state, so Duncan had truly not done it with malice.
These events left Veronica changed forever; she became a cynic and filled with contempt and disgust towards her classmates and the elitist class system of Neptune. A pariah like her father, she funnelled her time and energy into helping her father form his own detective agency. But when a chance encounter with a new transfer student Wallace Fennel led to her gaining a new friend, she began to use her investigation talents and energy to help her fellow students and to go head to head with her former friends and their corrupt ways.
Detective
Since her dad became a private investigator, Veronica has had an after-school job as a secretary at Mars Investigations, his PI business. Though she is often forbidden to handle certain cases, she often oversteps her boundaries and sometimes even completely solves the case before her father. On top of that, she is the small-time private investigator for Neptune High, uncovering anything from tracking down computer hackers, digging up dirt on parents, to finding out who stole the school's mascot. While Veronica's activities have put her at odds with the 09er social clique, it has helped Veronica make new friends and allies at Neptune High. She has also undeniably committed many illegal and duplicitous acts in the course of doing her detective work, leading many to openly question the moral consequences of her vendetta against the Neptune High status quo.
She manages to keep one step ahead of her father and Vice-Principal Clemmons through the occasional help of her best friend Wallace —(Watson to her Holmes)—and fellow classmate Weevil, the leader of the PCH Biker Gang.
Veronica has also helped her sometimes-friend, sometimes-enemy Logan Echolls (Jason Dorhing). Once a close friend, Logan helped organize the blacklisting of Veronica from the '09er clique. The two crossed swords on several occasions before Logan came to Veronica for help in order to find out if his mother Lynn Echolls, might have faked her death when she jumped into the ocean. Still reeling from the abandonment of her own mother shortly after Lilly's death, Veronica empathized with Logan's pain, and the two reconciled their differences.
Love Life
Besides Duncan Kane, Veronica has dated Troy Vandegraff and the rookie Deputy Leo D'Amato. Both relationships ended badly for Veronica. Troy turned out to be a smarmy manipulator who sought to involve an unwitting Veronica in a plot to smuggle drugs from Mexico into the US. Leo meanwhile turned out to be too naive for his own good, as Veronica's manipulation of him to gain access to evidence in the death of Lilly Kane resulted in him being suspended from his job. Leo and Veronica reconcile when he learns why she did it and they get together at a dance at the high school. She broke up with Leo after Logan kissed her, stating that she was an emotional mess and she didn't want to hurt him.
Logan and Veronica
After breaking up with Leo, Veronica and Logan began dating, to both their surprise. The relationship was kept secret due to Veronica's unpopularity with Logan's friends and a desire to keep Duncan from finding out about the relationship. When their relationship was made public, Logan let it be known that he would disown any friend who would not accept Veronica as his girlfriend. Logan's edict to his fellow '09ers regarding accepting Veronica back into the fold or lose his friendship has helped ease tensions between Veronica and her former friends, though some still harbored dark resentments towards Veronica, and likewize.
Their fledgling relationship seemed like it would be able to weather the revelation that Logan was the one who brought the GHB to the party where Veronica got raped as well as Veronica accusing Logan of murdering Lilly when it was revealed he had lied about his alibi on the day of Lilly's murder. When Logan revealed to Veronica the existence of proof that he did not murder Lilly, it led to Veronica discovering that Logan's abusive father Aaron was the true killer, having killed Lilly after she found and stole tapes he made of the two having sex. Aaron attempted to murder both Veronica and her father in order to acquire the tapes from them but was ultimately defeated and arrested for Lilly's murder.
At the same time though, Logan was being beaten by members of the PCH bike club and framed for the murder of the group's second-in-command. This led to an escalating war between the '09ers and the bikers, as the District Attorney decided to not charge Logan with murder due to lack of evidence. With Logan's mental state deteriorating due to the destruction of his family and the town believing he was a murderer, Logan and Veronica broke up after a nasty fight in which Veronica accused Logan of enjoying being hated by the town since it meant he had a free excuse to act like a jerk to everyone around him.
The pairing of Veronica and Logan helped fuel the series into a new level of popularity amongst viewers due to the chemistry between Kristen Bell and Jason Dohring. The relationship (sometimes referred to as "LoVe" by fans of the pairing)[[Citing sources citation needed]] and the possibility of the two getting together again was a running theme of season two of Veronica Mars, as Logan ultimately realized how much he loved Veronica and drunkenly confessed his feelings towards her during an "alterna-prom" party Logan organized. Veronica ran out on Logan after his speech, out of shock that he still loved her and believed that they were "epic". When she discovered that her rejection led a drunken Logan to find comfort in the arms of temptress Kendall Casablancas, Veronica was heartbroken as she realized that she was still in love with Logan.
In the episode Not Pictured they get back together after Logan helps her through a tramatic event. For details on this, see Bus Crash.
The crisis caused the two lovers to reunite, though their reunion would be short-lived due to Veronica's leaving for a post-graduation trip to New York with her father. They share this moment before Logan takes her to the airport:
- Logan:So.....
- [As Veronica is walking out, Logan puts her bags down and starts to kiss her.]
- Veronica: [laughing] What are you doing?
- Logan: I'm not going to see you for a whole week. That's like...a month.
- Veronica: Yeah, but then I'll be back and everything will be fine.
- [Logan kisses Veronica on her neck.]
- Logan: You say that but I don't know.
- Veronica: I know. I can feel it.
- Logan: And you're never wrong?
- [Veronica shakes her head.]
- Logan: No?
Paternity/Dating Duncan
For much of her junior year, Veronica was thought to be the possible half-sister of Duncan and Lilly—there was an underlying suspicion that she may have been fathered by Jake Kane, who had been carrying on an affair with Veronica's mother. Veronica arranged for a paternity test to be secretly performed to determine the truth, but destroyed the results without looking at them. Meanwhile, Keith had his own paternity test done when his investigation of the Lilly Kane murder led him to realize that Jake Kane and his wife were together in a motel room when Lilly was murdered.
This second test confirmed that Keith was indeed Veronica's biological father. Therefore, Veronica and Duncan, who still have feelings for one another, began dating again after Veronica broke up with Logan. The reunion was shortlived though, when Duncan's ex-girlfriend and Veronica's friend Meg Manning was left in a coma after a violent bus explosion that killed nearly a dozen students. It was revealed after the crash that Meg had been pregnant and that the father was Duncan. Meg awoke long enough to give birth and to apologize to Veronica for being so harsh with Veronica when Duncan broke up with her, before dying due to a blood clot. Shortly afterwords, Duncan was forced to flee the country with his child to keep the baby from being raised by Meg's abusive parents.
Bus Crash
Veronica spent most of her senior year at Neptune High concentrating her energies on her studies so that she could win the coveted "Kane Scholarship" so that she could go to the college of her choice, Stanford University. However, when a bus out for a school field trip goes careening over a guard rail and into the ocean, Veronica knows she has to do something. The spectre of the bus crash and her new friends being in danger due to an assortment of crises led to Veronica continue investigating the seedy underbelly of Neptune.
The bus crash itself was a major spectre over Veronica's life due to the fact that had it not been for Weevil, who she saw at a gas station when the bus stopped for gas, she would have been in the crash. Also, her good friend Meg Manning had been on the bus, and she and Veronica had not been on good terms when the bus crashed. Meg was the sole survivor of the bus crash; however, she later died. Veronica's survivor's guilt and the vast number of possible suspects for the mastermind behind the crash further made Veronica's hopes to avenging the deaths of her classmates seem less and less likely. Things were made worse when later in the year Veronica discovered that she had Chlamydia and ditched her final high school exam, effectively losing her the Kane Scholarship, in order to watch the verdict be handed down on the Aaron Echolls trial, only to find that Aaron had been acquitted.
Ultimately it would be another investigation, towards Mayor Woody Goodman's being a pedophile, that would lead to Veronica discovering the mastermind behind the bus crash. Cassidy "Beaver" Cassablancas was the one behind the crash, in order to keep two students on the bus from coming forward with the fact that Goodman had molested them and Beaver. Confronted on the rooftop of a nearby hotel, Beaver overpowered Veronica and used her own tazer against her. Veronica had figured out that he raped her on the night of the party where she was drugged, and gave her Chlamydia. He also revealed that he had put a bomb on the plane Veronica's father was using to transport Woody back to Neptune in, and proceeded to blow the plane up as it flew over Neptune, while Veronica watched in horror. While Veronica collapsed in anguish over Beaver murdering her father, the deranged teen continued to use her tazer to torture her. While Beaver mused, Veronica sent an SOS message via her cell phone to Logan, who rushed to the rooftop and overpowered Beaver to save Veronica's life. The two then watched in horror as Beaver jumped off the roof of the hotel rooftop they were on, rather than face arrest for his crime.
Logan took the emotionally destroyed Veronica home. The next morning she was, to her great relief, greeted by her father Keith. At the last minute, before the plane carrying Woody took off, Sheriff Lamb contacted the authorities transporting Woody back to Neptune and had demanded Keith Mars be kept off the flight back to Neptune to ensure Keith didn't receive credit for catching Woody. As the second season of the series ended, Veronica and Logan finally became a couple.
Veronica and her father had planned to go on a vacation to New York after graduation. But as Veronica waited in the airport lobby, Keith Mars was confronted by Kendall Casablancas. Kendall needed Keith's help and opened a briefcase in front of him. The contents of the briefcase were not shown in the season two finale, but whatever the briefcase held was enough motivation for Keith to not arrive at the airport. The season closed with Veronica waiting alone for her father, who never arrived.
Appearances
In the first season the character Veronica Mars sported two different looks, in regards to the various flashbacks towards the time before the death of Veronica's best friend Lilly Kane.
Veronica, during these flashbacks, was extremely plain looking with no make-up and long hair parted in the middle to expose actress Kristen Bell's forehead. This was contrasted by the "present-day" Veronica, whose hairstyle alternated between being short and being put into a pony-tail. Present-day Veronica also wore make-up, which sharply contrasted the all-natural look Veronica had during the flashbacks.
In season two, Veronica grew her hair long, to almost the same length as it was in the season one flashbacks (the hair in the flashbacks is longer).
Romantic interests
Veronica Mars has been romantically linked to the following characters:
- Duncan Kane
- Troy Vandegraff
- Leo D'Amato
- Logan Echolls
Trivia
- According to series creator Rob Thomas Veronica's birthday is in August.
- Amanda Seyfried (Lilly Kane) and Alona Tal (Meg Manning) auditioned for the role of Veronica.
References
- Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season, Warner Home Video, 2005, UPC 01256972774.
External links
| Veronica Mars Episode List | [Official Website'''] | ||
| Current Main Characters | Veronica Mars | Keith Mars | Wallace Fennel | Logan Echolls Eli "Weevil" Navarro | Dick Casablancas | Sheriff Don Lamb | Cindy “Mac” Mackenzie | |
| Former Main Characters | Duncan Kane | Cassidy "Beaver" Casablancas | Jackie Cook | Mallory Dent | |
| Family | Kendall Casablancas | Terrence Cook | Aaron Echolls | Lynn Echolls | Trina Echolls Alicia Fennel | Celeste Kane | Jake Kane | Lilly Kane | Lianne Mars | |
| Neptune High | Van Clemmons | Vincent Clemmons | Corny | Gia Goodman Hannah Griffith | Rebecca James | Meg Manning | Madison Sinclair | |
| Citizens of Neptune | Leo D’Amato | Woody Goodman | Abel Koontz Cliff McCormack | Vinnie Van Lowe | Clarence Wiedman | |
| Places | Neptune, California | |
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