Wallace Fennel

Wallace is the new-ish guy at Neptune High, a basketball player and clerk at the Sac-N-Pac who becomes Veronica's first real friend after she helps him out of a jam involving a biker gang. Easygoing and decent in a school full of angles, he's genuinely curious about her sleuthing and happy to tag along.

He's the show's warmth valve — the friendship that isn't tangled up in Veronica's old wounds or Neptune's class war, which lets Percy Daggs III play him as simply, refreshingly normal. His banter with Kristen Bell has an easy rhythm, and his loyalty gives Veronica's isolation somewhere soft to land.