Veronica Mars’ 9 Most Nefarious Enemies

© UPN / Courtesy Everett Collection

When you’re as highly skilled a teen private investigator as Veronica Mars is on the UPN/CW series of the same name, you need to have a lot of well-placed allies. But there’s another side to that coin. You’re also bound to have a lot of enemies and assorted big bads around you. There’s no doubt Veronica has them, ranging from more or less socially nasty to shady to downright black-hearted and detestable. Here are the worst of the worst in Veronica’s world:

 9. Madison Sinclair

Don’t get used to seeing female villains on this list, but Madison is the top of that small food chain. She’s just nasty; the epitome of the “09er” elite, who looks down on anyone not in their club of rich, immoral cheaters and thugs. She likes to spit in people’s drinks, which is nasty enough, but on one tragic occasion it set off a series of events that results in Veronica’s rape. She vandalizes Veronica’s car, shows herself to be homophobic (taunting a gay student), and she sleeps with Logan when he and Veronica were broken up, just to get under Veronica’s skin. But, as any fan knows, Veronica always got hers – she was always able to fight back with her sharp wit… and in the movie it all culminated with a sharp right hook to Madison’s jaw.

Source: CW

8. Dick Casablancas

“It’s a sorority party. It’s why I left the womb.” In many ways, that quote just about sums up Dick through most of the series. He’s a womanizer, likes to party and, as hateable as he can be, he’s pretty funny. But there’s a lot more to Dick than that. (Veronica might snarkily say, “No, there’s a lot less to Dick than that.”) In the early episodes, he’s pretty much the epitome of the evil, entitled rich kid. He’s horribly mean to Veronica and anyone else who’s not “cool.” He’s particularly cruel to his younger brother, Cassidy. And, perhaps most horribly, he did everything to facilitate Veronica’s rape, aside from actually performing the act. Ultimately, Cassidy commits suicide, leading to feelings of extreme guilt for Dick, and he changes his ways to some degree. He still loves girls, parties, surfing and wise cracking (Veronica would say, “Cracking, yes. Wise, no.”), but he does help Veronica, in his way, toward the end of the final season, and in the movie.

Patrick Ecclesine / © The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

7. Don Lamb

Don was less an innocent lamb and more a conniving weasel. He was the Sheriff in town for most of the series’ run and was constantly butting heads with Veronica and her father Keith, who was his predecessor as Sheriff and former mentor. He was unapologetically in the pocket of the Neptune elite – the “09ers.” For starters, he lazily let the Kane family manipulate him into arresting an innocent man for the murder of their daughter. Then he rather disgustingly refused to hear Veronica’s statement about her rape, sarcastically mocking her by asking, “Should I just round up the sons of the most important families in town?” That was pretty gross. Despite that really unforgiveable encounter, many of their other interactions prove to be some of the most amusing of the series – because Veronica hates him so much and has no respect for his abilities as a cop, her biting wit always gets the better of him.

Source: UPN

6. Jake Kane

As we see in flashbacks, before the series began Veronica dated Duncan Kane, the son of billionaire Jake Kane. But everything turned sour when Veronica’s best friend/Jake’s daughter Lilly was murdered and Veronica’s dad Keith pointed his finger at Jake for the crime. Turns out he didn’t do it, but for a while Jake thought Duncan did, so he obstructed justice to protect him. In the process of it all, he managed to force Keith to lose out on being Sheriff twice: first because of the wrongful accusation and second because Keith, much like Jake himself, obstructed justice to protect his daughter from Jake. In the end, we learn that Jake is the leader of The Castle, a super-secret, shady society that seems to be involved in many immoral and illegal acts. And this is all aside from the fact that Jake carries on an affair with Veronica’s absentee mother.

Source: CW

5. Tim Foyle

Imagine you’re really good at your job and your boss loves you for it. Then some new person comes along and they’re even better at what you do and your boss likes them better. That would suck. And that’s the situation Tim finds himself in. He just doesn’t deal with it so well. He’s a teaching assistant for Professor Landry’s criminology class. Veronica quickly beats his score in a detective game and unstable Tim immediately plots revenge, accusing her of plagiarism. Ultimately, he uses Veronica’s plan from her “plan a perfect murder” paper to kill Hearst College’s dean and make it look like a suicide. Later, when evidence mounts against suicide, he tries to frame Landry because Landry had blocked him from getting another job.

Source: CW

4. Mercer Hayes

Unlike some of the older villains in Veronica’s world, Mercer doesn’t go to too much effort to hide his wicked ways. He’s a campus DJ at Hearst College, but also runs an illegal casino. So there’s the first notch against him. Notch number two: his Alex DeLarge Halloween costume. DeLarge was the main character in the film A Clockwork Orange, a rapist, robber and all-around ultraviolent sociopath. Foreshadowing? You betcha. Quickly, Mercer becomes accused of a rape, but Veronica finds evidence of innocence. But that evidence soon proves faulty and Veronica catches him in the act of attempting to rape another girl. Our intrepid teen PI finds herself in a violent showdown with Mercer and his accomplice, Moe. Fortunately, she gets the better of them and, ultimately, her dad comes through to arrest them.

Michael Desmond / © The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

3. Cassidy “Beaver” Casablancas

Those Casablancas boys. Cassidy is Dick’s younger brother and, in season one, he kind of tags along with Dick and Logan while they get into trouble. But Dick and their father pretty much bully the kid into desperation… and perhaps into being a psychopathic rapist and murderer. It’s ultimately revealed that he is the one who raped Veronica prior to the first season, after she’d been drugged, only after Dick encouraged him to do it. In season two, he horrifically orchestrated a bus crash that killed eight of his schoolmates. But Cassidy was a truly tragic evildoer. Not only did he suffer all that abuse at the hands of his father and brother, but he was also molested by Woody Goodman, a powerful local businessman. Cassidy goes on to blow up a plane that Goodman is flying in – and Veronica originally thought her father was on board, leading her to point a gun at Cassidy. Eventually, unable to cope with everything, he leaps off a building to his death.

Source: UPN

2. Woody Goodman

Well, there’s an ironic last name if we’ve ever seen one. Goodman was by no means a good man. Like many of the rich men in Neptune, he put on a fantastically friendly, do-gooder public face. In fact, he was the happy public face/owner of two of the most American things in town: the Neptune Sharks baseball team and Woody’s Burgers. So what made him such a bad guy? Well, in private, he was a serial child molester. Bad enough for you? Not surprisingly, considering he had those atrocities in him, he committed lesser crimes as well. For example, he had an affair with an unconscious woman and made it look like Keith, Veronica’s dad, was actually the one sneaking out of a motel room with that unconscious woman.

Source: UPN

1. Aaron Echolls

Remember the Batman villain Two-Face? That’s Aaron Echolls (Strange trivia: the name is said to be a play on real-life actor Aaron Eckhart, who went on to play Two-Face in The Dark Knight). Face number one is the A-list movie star who is always there for his fans with a smile and an act of kindness. Face number two is a wife-beater, child abuser, and murderer. Did we say murderer? Yes, it turns out one of the biggest stars in the world killed a teenage girl. Veronica ultimately discovers that it was Aaron who killed Lilly Kane, Veronica’s best friend and Logan’s girlfriend at the time. Oh, and he tried to kill Veronica too, by locking her in a refrigerator and setting it on fire. Also, as Logan’s father, Aaron is the reason Veronica’s on-again, off-again boyfriend is so messed up, after a lifetime of physical and verbal abuse. Not a good guy.

© UPN / Courtesy Everett Collection
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Kevin Wilson

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