Don’t get me wrong, Veronica’s by no means a soft touch. Especially in later seasons, she’s brutally cutthroat, frequently callous, and clever in a very sinister way; it’s not hard to imagine a story where her particular brand of cunning makes her the villain... and there are characters in her story that would argue she already is.

Still, though, it’s the warmth she’s able to maintain in her personal relationships that sets her apart from most noir detectives; Sam Spade is a lonely man who banters with his secretary, hates his partner, and despises the woman he’s having an affair with. Veronica, on the other hand, spends most of her off-time palling around with her support staff (namely Mac and Wallace), loves her father, and has half a dozen close friends she’d die for- and she frequently risks doing exactly that. She’s the rare noir protagonist who’s able to do the job without sacrificing too much of her humanity- though she certainly coughs up most of her innocence over the course of the first season- and it makes her a lot more compelling, and a much more well-drawn character, than she’d be if she were just “Spade, but female and also in high school.”

For all her trauma, Veronica’s able to hang onto enough of her idealism and heart that when we see her ten years later in the movie, she hasn’t become Spade or Marlowe or some of the other women I’m gonna talk about on this list; she’s still got friends, she’s in a healthy-ish relationship, and she doesn’t even have the traditional PI’s drinking problem. She’s not weaker for the absence, either; she’s still got Spade’s rigid moral compass, Marlowe’s wry cynicism, and the self-destructive tenacity of certain lesser sleuths in the genre (*cough*Mina Davis*cough*). She’s just also got enough strength of character not to let them haunt her to the extent her peers do.

Ultimately, Veronica Mars is so strong as a character that she defies the conventional miseries and vices of the genre, and it feels totally earned… mostly because she earns it.

Veronica Mars is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.



3: Renee Montoya, Batman the Animated Series, Gotham Central, Detective Comics, 52