Veronica Lodge. She’s a mystery that rolls into town just before the new school year, according to Jughead the narrator. Formerly a rich girl who lived in New York City, Veronica drops mentions of the Met Ball and her old life all the time. But she’s also a lot kinder than you would think. Camila Mendes explained that “In RIVERDALE, Veronica isn’t so unlikable as she might have been in the comics. It’s funny, because I was researching the name Veronica, and how a lot of people hate that name because they associate it with Veronica in the comics, and it’s like, ‘Oh, she’s snooty. She sounds like a rich, spoiled brat name.’ I think because we’ve added this element to Veronica, we’ve added dimensionality to her, and the fact that her father is involved with all this fraud and embezzlement, got arrested, and kind of forced the family to readjust their lifestyle, and now we have no money, and my mom [Hermione] and I are kind of on our own, I think that’s really humbled Veronica. So I think in that way, it’s kind of really easy to sympathize with her.”
She’s clearly drawn to Archie right off the bat, but when she learns that Betty is interested in him she’s happy to back off a bit for the bond of sisterhood. In fact, Mendes says that “I think she sees all this potential in [Betty] that is being pushed down, because of her mother [Alice Cooper], and her mother really has a negative effect on her life. I think Veronica recognizes that and is trying to bring all of the good things about her, all the strength in Betty, out so that the world can see it. “
Veronica might be the person who is most tangentially connected to Jason’s murder, having arrived in town long after it happened. “I think it’s kind of eerie for her to walk into this world, already so different from where she comes from, and also to walk into the peak of drama. She doesn’t really know these people, and they all know each other, and they know all these secrets about each other. So I think she’s kind of sitting back and watching, and trying to help when she can, but at the end of the day, she’s pretty separate from all of that.” And while she’ll be drawn into the mystery because it affects her new friends (for example, “Betty kind of plays detective in some of the episodes, and Veronica will chime in”), Mendes hinted that “I think [for] Veronica, her overall objective, is to redeem her family name, and to take hold of her own identity, and separate it from that of her parents.”