TV

This Is Why We Should All Be Excited For The Return Of ‘Veronica Mars’

This is more than a reboot -- we need Veronica Mars in 2019.

by Kara Eva Schlegl  10 May 2019
Veronica Mars season 4

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Hold onto your tits boys, because Veronica Mars is coming back to our screens and she isn’t screwing around — is how I would start this article if I had her level of confidence.

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Good News, Marshmallows: The First Trailer For 'Veronica Mars' Season 4 Has Arrived

What I have instead is the spirited nostalgia of a woman old enough to have once illegally burned this TV show onto a blank DVD. Yes, either arrest me or get me on one of those life insurance pyramid schemes, I’m nearing the end.

CW: Sexual Assault

It’s been announced that iconic naughties show Veronica Mars will be returning for a long-awaited fourth season. The new eight-episode series sees a more adult Veronica head back to Neptune just in time for Spring Break. We’re just so excited.

Veronica Mars was originally pitched as a film noir Nancy Drew, which can only mean the studios were probably quite shocked when they were handed scripts about rape, incest and murder. I don’t quite remember coming across ‘The Mystery of Nancy Drew and the Blow Job Sex Tape’ as a kid, but if the show is anything to go by, it would’ve been a killer read.

Created by TV veteran Rob Thomas, the show follows Veronica Mars, a high schooler and junior private investigator played by The Good Place’s Kristen Bell.

This show swaggered into 2004 like it was angry about something. It’s an attitude shared by Veronica herself, who is sharp, cynical and entirely without fucks to give. She spends her nights photographing husbands and wives literally screwing each other over, and her days sleeping in class.

“Life’s a bitch, until you die” she tells us, speaking directly to my soul. It’s an attitude we need in 2019.

Cancel Culture

Cancelled in 2007, because the studios are cowards, Veronica Mars broke records by funding a film through Kickstarter, earning $5.7 million and convincing an entire generation that Kickstarter was a thing.

This show had a cult following, a cult that was possibly run by myself through a fan forum. We loved this show so much we paid our hard earned McDonald’s front clerk cash for them to write a middling movie, just to see the characters kiss each other again.


I need this to live!

Then we moved on, got less well-paying jobs writing bullshit on the internet, and found solace in forcing new friends to watch re-runs by pressing their nose to the screen and whispering “look”.

The fans might be more surprised than anyone that Veronica Mars is back. As socially anxious misfits who use the label “marshmallow” un-ironically, we aren’t used to big wins. But there is one reason why I’m not surprised.

The show was hailed in its debut as ahead of its time, tackling themes that are rarely explored, even today, despite Game of Thrones and its full frontal nudity.

If Veronica Mars was once ahead of its time, then I think its time could be now.

The OC, But Dark

In the 2000’s our screens were littered with aspirational melodramas driven by wealthy, white teens.

This may have been caused by our collective thirst for Cruel Intentions (1999) mega-stars Sarah Michelle-Gellar and Ryan Philippe, who epitomised that deranged meeting place between entitlement and horniness.

Before Gossip Girl (2008) straight up lifted this formula, The OC (2003) showed us what life was like inside the bubble of Orange Country’s elites — those awarded most likely to be BFFs with Paris Hilton.

Veronica’s hometown, Neptune, California, is a fictitious subversion of Orange Country, showing us this bubble of millennial elites from the outside.

Veronica introduces us to Neptune as “a town without a middle class”, saying “this is my high school, if you go here, your parents are either millionaires or work for millionaires.” This division is made all the more apparent when Veronica’s closest allies become Wallace Fennel (Percy Daggs), who is the son of a single working mum, and Eli “Weevil” Navaro (Francis Capra), the leader of a biker gang.

Her enemies, on the other hand, are tech billionaire Jake Kane (Kyle Secor) and his illustrious network of friends — an awkward hostility, because she used to date his son.

Incidentally, Paris Hilton cameos in the first season of Veronica Mars as a spoiled rich girl, not only to foreshadow Hilton’s distinguished acting career, but also to underscore the show’s most provocative and engaging theme — class.

Class division in the show isn’t so much a barrier as it is a bulldozer crushing the working class. We watch through the characters how class intersects with race, gender and institutions like schools and the legal system, pre-empting a kind of intersectional feminism that’s still in the works.

When we think we have a grip on Veronica as our Marxist hero, here to crush to bourgeoise, the show pulls some star crossed lovers shit with Logan Echolls’ (Jason Dohring) abs that forces us to recognise rich people as human, and the bulldozer itself as the enemy.

#VeronicaToo

Veronica Mars is a super hero.

She isn’t physically strong like Buffy, and she doesn’t own a magical whip. Rather, her power lies in her wits, and also, she’s a snappy dresser. She’s able to outsmart her opponents at every turn, like if Sherlock Holmes was a tiny blonde armed with a taser.

And, as all great super heroes do, she has a back story.

At the risk of spoiling anyone who I haven’t already locked in a basement with the DVDs, I’ll try to skirt detail and give you only the bare bones premise of the show: Veronica’s best friend is murdered, and in the wake of that murder, after being dumped by her boyfriend and ostracised by her friend group, Veronica is drugged at a party and then sexual assaulted.

This isn’t a common backstory for a hero protagonist, but it allows for a unique focus.

Her mystery solving is coloured with an outrage for what has happened, not only to her friend, but to her, and a strong desire for vengeance. As we follow her down this dark and twisted path, we learn about the nuances of rape culture through a number of interweaving mysteries, with stories involving intoxication, sharing nudes online, contraception, STIs, coercion, pedophilia and campus rape.

Not since Degrassi Jnr High has a show been so on the nose about sexual politics. But unlike Degrassi, we aren’t left with a PSA aimed at fourth graders.

What we are given is a sophisticated and nuanced thesis on consent, one that feels at home in a post #MeToo era.

To Thine Own Self Be a Marshmallow

After helping him out of a bind in the pilot episode, Wallace observes that underneath Veronica’s angry exterior is a “slightly less angry woman”.

“You’re a marshmallow, Veronica Mars,” he tells her.

Veronica is defensive and stubborn, but slowly, very slowly, she chooses not to let her past trauma define who she is and how she navigates the world.

She is a character routinely put in conflict with herself, challenged by moral conundrums, and ultimately made better for it. Credit is due to Rob Thomas with his ability to write a protagonist who begins with all of her walls up, and then pulls them down on her own terms.

Even today, there are very few characters like her.

She is a bit like Sansa Stark, if Sansa had a sense of humour. Or Jessica Jones, if that show hadn’t been cancelled too. More often we are subjected to women characters whose trauma is either resolved in a single episode, or else the trauma is a destructive force existing only to tear them down, as in the exploitative and much maligned 13 Reasons Why.

Social media has forced us to turn a mirror on ourselves, heightening our expectations for more nuanced representation and transforming critique into a horrifying plague, attempting to cancel us all.

Luckily Veronica Mars is built for a self-aware world — or at least more self-aware than a generation who walked around in cargo cut-offs.

She is a contemporary hero, and a sardonic voice for my generation that I, a fellow marshmallow, have dearly missed. We should be so excited for her return.

Veronica Mars Season 4 will debut on Hulu on July 26. No word yet on an Australian release date, but we’ll keep you posted, marshmallows.

Kara Eva Schlegl is a writer, comedian and producer out of Sydney. She writes for SBS Comedy, co-founded Sydney comedy room Wolf Comedy and hosts Little Tiny History Podcast.