Mystery on 'Mars' is about to pick up

One of the show's stars had a tough time when another star left.
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Jason Dohring is pretty sure he knows who's behind the big mystery for his character on "Veronica Mars" this season.
"I think I figured out who the mastermind is behind the whole thing, the whole mystery. Actually I pulled it out of Kristen," he says, referring to his co-star, Kristen Bell.
Unfortunately, we couldn't pull it out of him. But when "Veronica Mars" returns to UPN tonight night after more than a month off, fans of the show will start to see both of the show's season-long puzzles -- who caused the school-bus crash and what happened to Dohring's Logan on the bridge -- start to gain momentum.
"We're getting into the storylines of the mastermind behind it all and who's coordinating everything, and that story gets very interesting," Dohring says. "I think people will really start relating to that as it comes about."
As that happens, Logan will also drill deeper into who's trying to frame him for the murder of biker Felix following his scuffle with the PCH bikers the night his dad, Aaron, was arrested for the murder of Lilly Kane. In the last original episode, Logan struck up a relationship with Hannah (Jessy Schram), a freshman at Neptune High and the daughter of the man who fingered Logan for the killing.
Playing different angles
The budding Hannah-Logan romance "leads to some interesting, and complex, storylines," Dohring says. "It's hard to understand sometimes which thing to play, because I have like 20 different things that are all elements of the same situation."
That suggests Logan's motives for getting close to Hannah might not be entirely pure, and could give Dohring another chance to straddle the good and bad sides of the character that have brought him a long way from the standard-issue, rich-guy jerk he was early in "Veronica's" life.
"I love the witty scenes he has with Veronica, or with anyone, and there's also the very human, almost naive aspect of him where everything's so open," he says. "Underneath everything, he understands everyone's emotions -- if someone's being left out or treated unfairly, he knows what that's all about and can see it in anybody."
Dohring says he went through some tough emotional times himself earlier in the season with the departure of co-star Teddy Dunn, who played Logan's best friend, Duncan Kane. Dunn was signed for only 12 episodes this season.
"When I first heard that news, I was ... crushed," Dohring says. "It really just hit me like nothing ever quite hit me before. We were all kind of just-starting-out actors and went on this whole experience together."
He says he and Dunn, who just logged an appearance on "Grey's Anatomy," remain friends and talk every couple of weeks. And Dunn has appeared in only 11 episodes of "Veronica Mars" this season, so it's likely he'll be back before the season ends.
And, once again, Dohring won't say how it ends. With regard to Logan's mystery, though, he does allow this: "I made a list of everyone it could possibly be, and this person wasn't even on that list. So it's way -- it's very believable, but it's unbelievable."