It’s a hot June day outside the Veronica Mars movie set, but the real heat is taking place inside the Edison lounge in downtown Los Angeles. Filming a scene at the Neptune High 10-year reunion, Jason Dohring‘s Logan weaves his way through the crowd. He pauses ever-so-briefly as his eyes momentarily lock with Veronica’s across the room.
Yes, in case you had any doubt, Dohring can still smolder. And yes, years later, there are definitely still sparks between former lovers Veronica and Logan, a fact TVLine can attest to after visiting the film’s set last summer.
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“Both of them, obviously, have moved on in their own ways,” says Dohring while taking a break from shooting. Veronica is now a soon-to-be hotshot New York City lawyer with a boyfriend, and Logan is in “a good place” having found “more discipline in his life.” (He’s not all mature, though: Logan — as well as V’s male pals and her sweetie Piz — get into a brawl at the reunion because of “some mistreatment of Veronica that is not acceptable,” teases Dohring.)
At the movie’s start, the one-time couple hasn’t talked in nine years, “so it’s been rough,” describes the actor. “Despite his trying to reach out to her, she hasn’t been very receptive, necessarily, because of the way things ended in Season 3… She says, ‘That’s it.’ That’s where we are, and then we have to rebuild from there.”
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Still, even after nearly a decade of radio silence following their tumultuous – not to mention, frustratingly open-ended – conclusion in the show’s series finale, “LoVe,” as ‘shippers dubbed the pairing, is still alive and kicking.
When Logan calls upon his ex for her P.I. help after being accused of murdering his pop-star girlfriend, Veronica comes to his aid and the two pick up right where they left off — witty banter, sexually-loaded glances and all.
“Once you have that type of… relationship, I think it always stays,” says Dohring. “And whenever I even look at Kristen [Bell], I just start feeling that way.”
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“When I see Kristen, I’m just in love with her as a person. She’s amazing,” he adds. “When I do scenes with her, I just love to work with her, and I think that’s what comes through [during] Veronica/Logan [moments].”
So can viewers expect the “epic” lovers to find their way back to each other, romantically? “That’s what the [Kickstarter] backers [who financed the film] paid to see,” replies Dohring. “I’d hate to see what they’d do if that’s not the case.”
But this is the dark, complex world of Veronica Mars, so he hastens to add, “[Creator] Rob [Thomas] doesn’t write everything really cut-and-dried, so it’s not like it’s all well and good in the end. But I think people will be happy.”
The Veronica Mars movie hits theaters and online retailers March 14.
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