“We used to be friends,” the Veronica Mars theme song by the dandy Warhols reminds us at the beginning of each episode. Sassy “bad-ass” Veronica was once one of Neptune high School’s in-crowd, a friend of the powerful elite. She was also innocent and naïve. however, when we first met Veronica in her hometown of Neptune, california, all of that was in the past. her best friend had been murdered, her mother had abandoned her, she’d lost her virginity under circumstances she couldn’t remember, and she was no longer one of the favored. The seventeen-year-old social pariah was a far cry from what she’d been only a year before, when she was a member of the pep squad (for P.E. credit, not to attract boys) and welcome at the best lunch table at school. She was jaded. her hair was shorter, her clothes edgy, and her attitude—well, authority? What’s that?

But Veronica was far more than a girl whose world had been shattered. She’d been fast-tracked to a maturity she might never have experienced if Lilly Kane hadn’t been murdered. To understand her transformation, we need to look at what she would have been like if Lilly were still alive. Would she still be one of the in-crowd? And why does she continue to long for the life she believes she’s lost?

The writers gave us Veronica’s own answer to the first question in the dream sequence in the last episode of season two, “Not Pictured” (2-22). here we saw Veronica’s vision  …