'Riverdale': Head-to-head with her dad and mob kingpin, Veronica is forced to focus on takedown plans rather than fashion
This article contains spoilers for Riverdale Season 1 to Season 4
Rich girl Veronica Lodge - now Veronica (Vee) Luna - was diagnosed with 'daddy issues' by Riverdale High's guidance counselor and although that may be, we do know one thing: she won't give up the cat and mouse game with her father, Hiram Lodge. An obsession that started with dirty secrets revealing the indecency that is the Lodge family legacy, it stumped the Harvard shoo-in and youngest Lodge. While she has tried more than once to force her father's hand to get on the right side of the tracks but it was to no avail. Now there seems to be only one way that a mobster can be defeated - you gotta get him out of the game.
Being a New Yorker, Vee brought more than nonchalant money to Riverdale, she also brought her biting attitude and her classy outfits. It didn't take her long to start to fit in with Archie, Betty and Jughead. Well protected both financially and physically, all she had to do was be a Riverdale Vixen and prepare for senior college interviews, little did she know that her father was involved in a drug business so vile, that teenagers were forced to take him down.
With a mother that kept her away from dangerous family secrets, Veronica wasn't ready to admit that even sweet Hermoine Lodge is capable of murderous drug antics. Being part of a group of teenagers that had more than school on their minds, Vee separated herself from the Lodge's dirty laundry and joined them on a mission to take down her father. Surviving in a mob world where criminal connections are considered family, the teens unravel Riverdale's darkest secrets leading them to the Lodge family.
With Hiram introducing drugs to the town and the towns near it, children were immersed in a deadly fictitious game, but hey, how else are you supposed to run a drug empire out of a highschool-turned-prison and a convent? Taking advantage of young vulnerable minds is a low act, but Hiram had nuns selling drugs for him so we and Vee aren't that surprised. In the search of a kingdom and a legacy, Hiram has taken the Lodge family for an intense ride - how does his daughter fit into all this? He wants her to be his right hand to help him oversee 'the new order'. Also, he tried to kill Archie - Vee's boyfriend - more than once, a twisted way to get his daughter to participate in a dance that she might not be leading.
A young girl that had outfits, squad formations, and college applications to worry about has managed to have been outsmarted by her father too much. With a mother showing hints of slight Stockholm syndrome, Hiram has crawled his way back into the Lodge home in Season 4. Not wanting to be loyal to a legacy that is being orchestrated to be hers, and with it taking years and four seasons to get Hiram Lodge in prison, one which he owned and walked out of any time he pleased, what is going to work now?
Veronica may be part of a rotten family, but her influence and charm have got her to a point where the contacts on her phone align with the perspective of Riverdale's bombshell and they have Hiram Lodge as an enemy. Maybe those vocal cords and an acceptance to an Ivy League could take her far away from this town, but she might have also helped cover up Jughead's murder - so the teenagers aren't going anywhere for now.
The youngest Lodge through all this mess still has a flawless image to portray but does not want to be associated with dire criminals. She echoes these sentiments to her mom in true Lodge fashion saying, "We're out there fighting a holy war, Mom. I need something I can use as a shield against everything that's coming our way. Protection from everybody out there who hates us, who's out for our blood." Somehow still in her father's inside circle, she has managed to unearth his true intentions and while that may have changed her view of the protective monster, it has awakened a sense of determination in her. He's not going to give up being a mobster, who says she has to give up taking down one?
