Alright marshmallows! After almost an entire year, I finally buckled down to watch the fourth season of Veronica Mars, and I was not disappointed! I mean, I read a lot of spoilers when it first came out because I knew I wasn’t going to watch it right away and I saw an abundance of outrage across the internet. I get why everyone was upset, but truthfully, I wasn’t.
Either way, let’s do a brief recap. If you watched the sequential 2014 Veronica Mars movie, then you know that Veronica gets back with Logan and moves back to Neptune, much to the chagrin of her dad. This fourth season is a direct follow-up to that. Veronica is living with Logan and begins sleuthing with her dad again at Mars Investigations. They’ve definitely got their hands full in the eight-episode order, that’s for sure!
It all gets ugly with a motel bombing where the owner, a pervy spring-breaker, the brother of a Congressman, and the nephew of a Mexican cartel leader are all killed. This sets off a very intricate web of stories that are obviously all connected in some way. Aside from getting Veronica and her dad involved, there is also a pizza guy named Penn who is the leader of the “murder heads” who also try to figure out who the bomber is. Veronica also takes Matty, the daughter of the motel owner, under her investigative wing.
The web goes like this. Big Dick Casablancas is loving these bombings because it’s making his campaign, along with former and fellow Chino inmate, Clyde, for gentrification of Neptune seem like a more real possibility. Someone who is totally against this is Nicole, the owner of popular spring break bar, Comrade Quacks. It would make keeping her bar open almost impossible. Two cartel members are ordered to bring back the head of the bomber that killed the nephew. While those two try to find the bomber, they inadvertently get involved with the Congressman who is being violently harassed by his brother’s fiance’s family for the engagement ring.
Aside from Veronica and her dad looking into this giant mess, Logan gets recruited as the Congressman’s bodyguard. That’s great that Logan’s around after being on duty for so long, but Veronica sours his homecoming a little bit by turning down a proposal. Also, her dad is having some pretty disrupting memory issues that he keeps hidden for quite some time. Penn proves to be both helpful and annoying to the case, but for good reason.
He’s the bomber! At least for all the subsequent explosions. The initial bomb was planted by some thugs that Big Dick hired to scare the motel owner into selling at a low price. When Penn removed a nail from his back, he determined that now was the time to strike back at all of the disrespectful spring breakers that flood the town every year. There are plenty of red herrings before we reach this conclusion, and it’s an extremely entertaining ride. At the end of it all, you think you finally see Veronica get her happy ending by marrying Logan, but Penn had one more bomb planted…so yeah, goodbye Logan.
I know this move was very ill-received by a lot of people and I get it. I really do. But as someone who was never “team Logan,” I wasn’t as broken up about it. Sure, he completely changed his life (and he had way too many one liners that I liked this season), but I agree with creator Rob Thomas, that Veronica is never really meant to find true happiness or contentment rather. Aside from that bomb (pun intended), I was disappointed with the lack of involvement from the other original cast members. There just wasn’t enough Dick! Or Wallace or Weevil for that matter. And Mac just wasn’t even in it. A lot of time was spent on a whole host of new characters. Some of which I liked, like Penn, but I could have done without Nicole really. Also, a lot of time was spent with Vinnie and Leo…for what? Character focus was off for me, but ultimately, I still really enjoyed the season.
I will say that even though I wasn’t completely destroyed by Logan’s fate, I do really wonder what the show will look like if it gets picked up for another season. The ending shows Veronica leaving Neptune to go solve cases on the road. I feel like she will struggle with this, especially not having any network to rely on. I also think it will be strange not seeing her interact with possibly anyone from the original show. She doesn’t need to if she’s not in Neptune! Although I will always hold out for Piz (team Piz 100%!). Regardless, I would like to see what Thomas can do with Veronica for another season, so get to it Hulu!