Veronica Mars Just Changed Everything — Here's What The Cast Was Like Before Things Got Real

In case you temporarily stopped using social media for the past few days, you missed Veronica Mars fans, a.k.a. Marshmallows, freaking out when Hulu unexpectedly dropped the entire new 8-episode Veronica Mars season a week early. A whopping 15 years after the series premiered on UPN, private investigator Veronica is back with the main Veronica Mars cast (minus Piz and Mac, unfortunately). It's like being reunited with an old friend.

Veronica Mars, which ran on UPN and The CW From 2004 to 2007, was a teen drama and noir mystery warped into one show. (As fans who've seen the end of Veronica Mars season 4 know, the teen part has practically been looped off.) The series put Kristen Bell on Hollywood’s radar, and while she has certainly had many recognizable roles throughout her career (Anna from Frozen, anyone?) in a way, she will always be Veronica Mars. Like Veronica, the other characters in the series are partly so beloved by the show’s devoted fan base because of the talented actors who play them. All of the main, original actors returned for the 2014 Veronica Mars film, funded by fans, and thankfully, many of them returned again to reprise their roles in the Hulu revival.

Now that the series has returned to us again, with a much darker bent, it seems like a pretty good time to remember where it all started — Veronica Mars has always been dark, but things just got really real. Here's a look back at when everything was a little less, well, intense.