No hardcore fandom has ever died so quickly and so completely as Veronica Mars. This is the story of its murder.
They should study Veronica Mars in Hollywood.Iâm serious.
Itâs an incredible story of how to go from âloud, passionate fanbase with its own fandom name that campaigns and advocates constantly for itâ to âabsolutely zero fucking interestâ damn near OVERNIGHT with just ONE epically terri-bad decision.
If you werenât there, you donât understand: From 2007 to 2014, the fandom â the âMarshmallows,â as they called themselves â were everywhere in the Internetâs geek spaces, my friends. They routinely beat the drum about the seriesâ three seasons and its excellence, lamented its cancellation, pushed others to give the show a try, and always - ALWAYS - proudly and loudly called for the series to be revived.
FULL DISCLOSURE/CONFESSION: Iâve not even watched that much Veronica Mars, frankly⌠? Yeah, Iâm sorry! it does seem pretty good from like the four-or-five hours Iâve experienced firsthand. I just never took the time to sit down with it. Regardless, I find fandoms and their dynamics â both how they operate internally and how they display to others externally â deeply fascinating. And I honestly find them easier to study from the outside than the inside. Like, if Iâm IN a fandom, Iâm more likely to stay in my corner and ignore places that seem negative. But being on the outside lets me just⌠absorb whatâs out there, looking into every forum without judgment. Itâs like studying pop-culture sociology or something? And it helps that Iâm very close to some serious(-ly burnt) Marshmallows. It makes it so much easier to find and absorb the gamut of the fandom.
Besides: There is NO fandom story Iâve ever seen thatâs anything like what happened to Veronica Mars and the Marshmallows.
(Time to insert a brief explainer for the uninitiated: Veronica Mars was a TV series that aired from 2004-2007 on the now-deceased UPN network wherein Kristen Bell played the titular character, a high school girl whose single dad was a private detective in the fictional community of Neptune, California. She grew up working âunofficiallyâ as his assistant, which meant that she herself was effectively a teenage private detective.
The three core elements of the series were: 1) Veronica investigating each weekâs big mystery with plenty of quips and snark, 2) Watching Veronicaâs various relationships develop and shift, with most of the focus given to a) her relationship to her father and b) Her romantic pursuits (which began as the Veronica/Duncan/Logan triangle before eventually becoming focused on the slow-burn, off-on Veronica/Logan love story), and 3) The gradual development of that seasonâs âmytharcâ â the overarching BIG MYSTERY that doesnât get resolved or wrapped until the season finale. So it went over the course of two seasons that took place in high school and the third, shorter season that was at the start of Veronicaâs collegiate career.)
Just how big and how passionate were the Marshmallows? WELL! When series creator Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy) and star Kristen Bell announced the Kickstarter campaign for the Veronica Mars movie in March 2013, it achieved its heretofore-unprecedented goal of TWO MILLION GODDAMN DOLLARS within less than 12 hours. At that time, it was the biggest Kickstarter goal to ever succeed â and certainly the fastest to reach that kind of height. Fans fell OVER themselves to pay out for it. Hell, my own significant other was DEEP in the tank for VM at the time and invested enough to get multiple t-shirts as backer rewards as well as a disk copy of the movie when it eventually came home.
And AFTER the movie hit in 2014? It was thankfully beloved and embraced! The once-teenage characters were adults who were actually out living on their own and working for a living, but the fandom had grown up with them, so it wasnât like they were begging for them to stay young students. They embraced Adult Veronica and her new adventure. The fandom rejoiced loudly and continued to be all over the geek side of the Internet⌠where they, of course, still wanted more. Sure, there were new novels in the aftermath (which were written by the creator of the series), but most of the Marshmallows were calling for more movies or a streaming revival.
And then, at long last⌠season four was actually announced. And there was much (premature) rejoicing yet again.
Yes, Veronica Mars returned for a fourth season on Hulu in 2019. It was just eight episodes, and it was heavily centered on one season-long mystery instead of sprinkling that amongst a bunch of smaller ones, but it would still feature the same olâ Veronica. They promised a new, more âadultâ mystery/investigation plus a strong focus on Veronica and Loganâs love story.
New Hulu purchased the rights to the first three seasons and hyped up its presence on the platform while marketing the return for the new run. The marketing team played up the most popular quips from the showâs history plus put out TONS of stuff centered on the Logan/Veronica ship to pump up the fans.
The season was dropped all at once using the classic Netflix âbingeâ model in July 2019. And then⌠afterwards?
There was a brief explosion of LOUD RAGE from the Marshmallows at what series creator Rob Thomas had to done to burn and spite the fandom and ruin his own goodwill.
SPOILERS FOR SEASON 4: See, at the end of the movie, Veronica and Logan finally entered into a long-term relationship. In season four, theyâve been dating for years, and Logan proposes marriage. But of course there has to be drama/obstacles: In this case, Veronica isnât sure sheâs ready to marry⌠or capable of being in a marriage. Ah, but of course she eventually realizes how much Logan means to her. The two are married, and, in the season finale⌠Logan is killed by a car bomb in the penultimate scene. The final scene is a flashfoward to a year later, where Veronica leaves Neptune alone.
For most fandoms, thatâd be a memorable point of pain. A big olâ speed bump that ultimately throws some people off the bus, leaving only the die-hards. But the fact that fans had been invested in this relationship for literally 15 years and that Hulu (and creator Rob Thomas) had heavily marketed the new season as being a big romantic event for the ship⌠it was too much. Unlike the aftermath of the Star Wars sequels, there was no lingering group of die-hard fans who were open to whatever was next â at least no significant one. I did some Googling and could only find TWO people who still wanted another season.
Funnily enough? Critics LOVED this. Hell, Vanity Fair infamously penned an editorial about how Veronica Mars had âfinally grown upâ with this finale. I suppose all the other murders and deaths and drug overdoses and r*pe werenât âmatureâ enough before now for⌠some⌠reason. (The same editorial also featured the author openly hating on Veronica ever being in a relationship because it causes âarrested developmentâ and declaring that the movie â which was acclaimed by both critics AND fans alike, I remind you â was a lame dud. So. The writer must be a reeeaaaal fun person.)
But a series doesnât live based on critical acclaim, as it turns out. The fandom was murdered overnight. âMarshmallowsâ stopped appearing in geek spaces online entirely. No one expressed interest in seeing the next season or the next movie. The constant flow of fan AMVs on YouTube and fanfics on AO3 dried up to nothing or damn nearly so.
Since 2019 ? Nothing. Chirping crickets. An intensely dedicated fandom of 12 years was just⌠vaporized.
Iâve never seen anything like it before OR since.
Thatâs why itâs so fucking fascinating.
So what went wrong?
Creator Rob Thomas was adamant about two things: ONE, the series was intended to be a noir show, which meant there couldnât be any happiness for its protagonist. And TWO, the death of Logan was necessary to evolve and grow the series.
Thomas thought that having Veronica in a relationship would be holding her back, and that a marriage would absolutely kill the series and leave her stagnant. It never even occurred to him that marriage isnât the end of a characterâs life and growth. It never occurred to him that plenty of drama can be had AFTER someone is married, or that development/growth could be that the characters mature enough to be capable of maintaining a committed relationship. Thomasâ view of his own universe was so myopic that he couldnât conceive of any possible way that Veronica could still be a private detective involved in life-threatening investigations AND be married at the same time. Futhermore, he felt that fans just wanted Veronica to become a pregnant housewife, which is about as far from what Marshmallows were after as you can get without straight-up killing Veronica and/or Logan. He managed to do the only thing wronger than what he wrongly thought was their insistence.
On top of the above, Rob Thomas only viewed ânoirâ as a vehicle for total fatalism⌠despite the fact that many of the most famous noir stories are cynical and full of moral ambiguity, but they still feature a positive outcome. The Big Sleep still has the protagonist get the girl. The Set-Up arguably ends with the happiest possible ending in spite of the beating the hero receives.
Perhaps most importantly? Despite Thomas own insistence that Veronica Mars was always ânoir,â the majority of both TV critics and fans did not think that designation ever truly applied. I suspect thatâs the reason why Thomas decided to go as dark and fatalistic as possible: He wanted to be noir, and he was being told that he wasnât. So he went so far into noir that he killed his own most popular property.
He was adamant that it was the only way for the series to grow. But as it turns out, it was instead the only way for the series to permanently end. Without that season four finale, a passionate group of fans would still be begging for more. With it? Itâs over. Nobody fucking cares now.
