Veronica Mars (character)
| Veronica Mars | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| File:Veronica MarsProfile.jpg | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Veronica Mars is the fictional lead character on The CW television series, Veronica Mars, which debuted during the fall 2004 season. She is portrayed by Kristen Bell.
Character History
Background
Daughter of the sheriff of the Southern California town of Neptune, Veronica Mars lived a carefree life as one of the popular teens at Neptune High. Her best friend was popular senior 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 Donald 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. 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.
Shortly afterwards, 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 (the drugged drink was meant for her but she unknowingly gave it to Veronica after spitting in it). The drugged Veronica was molested by her fellow 09ers, culminating in both Cassidy "Beaver" Cassablancas and Veronica's former boyfriend Duncan Kane having sex with the unconscious Veronica. (Logan Echolls later told Veronica that Duncan was under the influence of the same drug given to Veronica when he had sex with her, while Beaver willingly raped Veronica and lied to everyone afterwards that he couldn't go through with it).
Veronica woke up in bed with her underwear removed and 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.
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 (later Principal) Clemmons through the occasional help of her best friend Wallace Fennel--(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 occassions 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. This led to Veronica dumping Leo though the two have remained friends.
Lo/Ve
After dumping Leo, Veronica began to date Logan Echolls. The relationship was kept secret due to Veronica's unpopularity with Logan's friends. 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.
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 Kane when Beaver Cassablancas informed Veronica that Logan 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 Attoney 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 being 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 refered to as "Lo/Ve" by fans of the pairing) 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, partially out of shock that he still loved her and out necessity due to her recently discovering that she had chlamydia and not wanting to give Logan the disease. When she discovered that her rejection led a drunken Logan to find comfort in the arms of temptress Kendall Cassablancas, 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 saves her life from Cassidy (Beaver) Casablancas who is trying to kill her. Cassidy tried to kill her because she found out that he was the one that bombed the bus and gaved her an STD. The three of them get into a fight because they are trying to get the gun away from Cassidy and Veronica ends up getting it. Logan talks her out of killing even though he raped her and gave her an STD, killed eight students, a teacher and a bus driver, and killed everyone on the plane, including her father. He was her shoulder to lean on when Veronica thought her father was dead and was still there for her when she found out that Keith was in fact, alive.
The crisis caused the two lovers to reunite though their reunion would be short-lived due to Veronica leaving for a post-graduation trip to New York with her father. In spite of their joint realizations that they love each other still, the two acknowledge that their reconciliation may not last during the following exchange:
- 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: Ya, 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': (shaking her head no) No?
Paternity question
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 Meg Manning was left in a coma after a violent bus explosion that killed nearly a dozen students. It was revealed that Meg was pregnant after the crash and that the father was Duncan. Meg awoke long enough to give birth and to provide Veronica and Duncan her blessing to continue their relationship, 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. However, the spectre of the bus crash and her new friends being in danger due to an assortment of crisises (Logan and Wallace being framed for crimes they didn't commit, Meg's death, Duncan's attempt to gain custody of his daughter) 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, she would have been on the bus when it exploded. 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 Veronica discovered that she had chlamydia and ditched her final high school exam 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 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 as he revealed that he raped her and gave her Chlamydia. He also revealed that he put a bomb on the plane Veronica's father was using to transport Woody back to Neptune in and blew 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 used her tazer to torture her. While Beaver revealed his plan to drop Veronica off the roof and taunted Veronica with the possibility that he had murdered his girlfriend/Veronica's friend Cindy "Mac" MacKenzie, 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 and to her great relief, was 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, in order 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 as he drove her to the airport. 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 was not shown in the season two finale, but whatever it was, it was enough motivation for Keith to not arrive at the airport to leave with his beloved daughter.
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 the same length as it was in the season one flashbacks. This reflected her attitude becoming less cynical and more adjusted.
Romantic Interests
Veronica Mars has been romantically linked to the following characters:
Trivia
References
- Veronica Mars: The Complete First Season, Warner Home Video, 2005, UPC 01256972774.