Be aware there are spoilers for Veronica Mars Season 4.

From show creator Rob Thomas, Hulu’s revival of Veronica Mars is an eight-episode mystery that sees Mars Investigations hired by the family of a spring break murder victim in Neptune. While someone is decimating the seaside town’s tourist industry, Veronica Mars (Kristen Bell) gets pulled in so deep that, even though she will get to the bottom of what’s going on, it will rock the foundation of her world, forever.

During this 1-on-1 phone interview with Collider, executive producer Rob Thomas talked about knowing that fans would have a strong reaction to the fact that they decided to kill off one of the main characters this season, knowing that would be a part of the story from the time they pitched the revival of the series to networks, why he felt it was a necessary decision, how hard it was to let the actor know the character’s fate, the intentional misdirection in the voice-over throughout the season, whether the very important Veronica-Keith (Enrico Colantoni) relationship will stay a part of the series, and what the series could evolve into next, if there are more seasons to come.

Collider: While I am grateful for another season of Veronica Mars, I’m also angry at the ending, like many people are, which I’m sure you expected when you made it.

ROB THOMAS: Yes, absolutely. I knew that would be the case.

After you made the movie, did you always know that there would be more Veronica Mars, at some point, or did it take time to figure out what exactly it would be and where it could find a home?

THOMAS: I did not know whether there would ever be more Veronica Mars, after the movie. We hoped so, but there was no guarantee, at all. It was probably a coin flip. And if the movie had been the final chapter in the Veronica Mars story, I would have been perfectly happy with Logan and Veronica being together. Veronica sitting back in her dad’s chair, in Mars Investigations, would’ve been a fine ending. But in a world where now I think we’re going to get to do more of these, I just couldn’t figure out a way that seemed interesting to me, where we played our bad-ass female detective with a boyfriend or husband at home. I didn’t see a way that we could keep integrating Logan into Veronica Mars’ mysteries. That just felt like it would devalue him.

I think there’s a really good reason that shows tend to be over when you get the two big romantic love interests together. There’s no more fodder for story. I don’t know how happy fans would have been, if I broke them up and put them back together, or Logan returned to his dark side. I really wanted to strip the show of its soap opera elements, as well. I want Veronica Mars, as this moves forward, to be a mystery show. That feels like the path to survival. It seems like the way we could keep doing Veronica Mars stories, if we treat the show as a mystery, rather than the teen soap/mystery hybrid that it was, when we got started.

Do you feel like if you had been doing the show this whole time that that would’ve been a relationship that would have broken up and she would have moved on from, many seasons ago, if you had been doing seasons of the show, all this time?

THOMAS: Yeah. If we were literally in Season 15 of Veronica Mars, we would not have 10 seasons of Veronica Mars and Logan, happily a couple. That just sounds really boring to me. Then, you’ve have to make Logan a detective, too, and include him in her mysteries, and that just makes me start to roll my eyes.

Obviously, if you were going to take him out, a car bomb makes sense in this, considering what the rest of your story was. But why did you also decide to give him that moment of happiness, with the marriage, and then take him out in the last 10 minutes of the season? Were you looking for it to have a more emotional impact, as a result?

THOMAS: Yes. I don’t know which would have been more tragic, if he’d gotten killed on the way to the wedding, or immediately after the wedding. Either was going to be cruel. I could have done it either way. Both of them would have hurt. I liked seeing Veronica commit to him, but I suppose she could have already been committed, and he could have gotten killed on the way. That would’ve been another way to do it.

A lot of times, when writers are going to kill off such a beloved character, they first try to find ways where maybe it doesn’t have to happen. Did you ever try to write a version of this season, where you had a different ending and he had a different outcome?

THOMAS: No. I pitched this, when I took out the pitch. I had a phone call with Jason [Dohring], before we started the season, saying, “Here’s my plan.” Making that call was as hard as any call I’ve ever made to break up with a girlfriend. That was rough because I adore Jason, and I love the Logan character. It was like cutting off a limb to save the life. That’s how I viewed it.

Once it came out, and you started hearing feedback from the fans, how did it compare to what you expected? Did you expect such a strong fan reaction?

THOMAS: I’ve been off the internet. The day after we launched, Hulu had a fan event in L.A., and probably three-quarters of them had already watched the series, including the big group from Neptune Rising, which is one of the two really big Veronica Mars fan sites, and that group collectively said that it hurt, but they got it, which is where I hoped dedicated fans would be. I understand that there will be big a section of the Veronica Mars fan base that will not forgive me for this. It felt like making a bet. I feel like this show is going to be better, moving forward, without Logan in it, but if I turned off so many fans that we have no audience moving forward, then I played a stupid bet and I lost that hand. But, that’s not what I’m feeling. I feel like, certainly, there is a percentage that are angry, but the reviews have generally been positive. I’ve talked to a lot of reporters, who are fans of the show, who said, “It hurt, but I got it. I understand why you’re doing it.” And I hope that turns out to be the more common reaction.

There was also a real sense, this season, that something was coming with Keith Mars, and that maybe he’d end up dead. Was that an intentional misdirect because you had decided to kill off Logan and wanted it to be even more of a surprise?

THOMAS: Yes. But more than just Keith’s medical issues, it’s there as a voice-over. Every other season, Veronica’s voice-over has been in present tense. You’ve never heard Veronica’s voice-over be ahead of the story. This season, it was. She’s always talking in the past tense, and from the very first line of the voice-over, we’re telling you that something awful is going to happen at the end of this. She says that, looking back, she wouldn’t have taken this case. That’s the first thing out of her mouth, so I wanted that underlying sense of something bad is going to happen.

I do think it helps, in those moments where the audience is asking themselves, “Uh-oh, is Keith going to die?” When he goes to diffuse that bomb, that voice-over has set up an expectation that something bad is going to happen, so you want that suspense. You want people watching with anticipation and dread. It was the same thing with Leo and Veronica’s flirtation. I wanted the audience going, “Please Veronica, don’t cheat on Logan!” And I think that voice-over helped that, as well. I wanted the audience, at the end, to be thinking, “Oh, no, Logan is going to chicken out on this marriage and leave Veronica at the alter.” That voice-over was there to help amp up all of those other possibilities. It’s sleight of hand. It’s trying to do magic and getting the audience to look one direction, so that you can drop the hammer, unexpectedly.

There are some familiar faces in this, from Wallace to Dick to Weevil to Parker, and you’ve said that you were clear with them that they weren’t going to get their own stories, in this season, and it sounds like that’s why Tina Majorino opted not to return as Mac. Did you have a back-up plan for if none of those actors had wanted to return?

THOMAS: No, but I didn’t start writing it until I knew that they were going to return. I emailed them when Kristen [Bell] and I started to take out the pitch, saying, “Hey, this is what we’re thinking. I don’t think I’ll be using any of you for all episodes. My hope is to get most of you in for four or five episodes, but you won’t have your own storyline.” From Percy [Daggs], Francis [Capra] and Ryan [Hansen], I got an immediate thumbs up and a, “Yeah, we’re in. We want to do it.” So, I could basically start writing with them as part of the show.

By the end of the season, Veronica will be expanding her horizons and living and working outside of Neptune, at least for a bit, if the series continues. Is there a version of this show, where you follow Veronica without Keith, or will the Veronica-Keith dynamic always be a part of the show, even if she’s out on the road somewhere?

THOMAS: I think there were two really pivotal relationships in the show – Veronica and Keith, and Veronica and Logan. I want to keep the Veronica-Keith relationship going. It’s a special one to me. Now, it is possible that we would do one eight-episode mystery without Keith. That’s possible, but unlikely. That’s not my plan.

Have you thought about what things will look like for Veronica next? Do you see this evolving into a straight detective series? Will we see effects of how the loss of Logan will affect everything she’s doing now?

THOMAS: Yeah, I have given it some thought. The thing it’s leaning into right now are a couple of different ideas that both play like updated versions of Agatha Christie/Manor House Mysteries. I want to lean very hard into the next one being a detective show. I know that. And we will not start your next episode, in the next version, as if Logan never happened. She’ll still be reeling from that.

Now, I will say that one of the reasons – and not the only reason, but one of the reasons – for putting the ending of Veronica Mars, a year after Logan died, was because I wanted to give Veronica a year to grieve. It’s not like we’re picking it up the next day, because our show relies on humor, and on being funny and fast-paced, and I can’t do the show with Veronica doing nothing but grieving. So, she’s had a year to grieve, as we pick this next one back up. She’s still going to be changed by Logan’s death, but I can’t have her wearing a black veil through whatever the next season is.

Did the approach to writing and making the show feel different, at all, this time around? Does it feel exactly the same, or does it feel like an extension of what it used to be?

THOMAS: We made a real effort to give Veronica adult issues in this one, so in that sense, it certainly felt different than writing her as a teenager. We wanted to see growth. The movie was full of nostalgia, and nostalgia is almost safe. With this one, I didn’t want to be nostalgic. I wanted to create this eight-episode storyline, as this bridge from what the show had been to what the show will be, moving forward. It felt like a show where we were stripping ourselves of its teen soap roots, and I think the next one will be like we are a full-fledged mystery show, with a kick-ass detective as the lead, and we are there to watch her solve crimes and be the kick-ass woman that she has always been. There’s going to be less stuff about boyfriends and high school grudges. It’s going to be a fully-formed detective show, the next time you see it.

Veronica Mars is available to stream at Hulu.