Rhonda Wellington Lloyd

Rhonda Wellington Lloyd is a fictional character in the Hey Arnold! TV Series.

Biography

Rhonda 8 — Rhonda auditions to become the next It-Girl.

As one of the students of PS 118, she is a self-proclaimed fashion queen of the school, despite the fact that she, like all other main characters, wears the same ensemble each day with few exceptions. Her parents, Brooke and Buckley, are part of a historically wealthy Welsh-American family ("The Lloyds"), and she frequently hosts parties at her house ("Helga's Makeover", "Hey Harold!", "Cool Party", "Helga's Masquerade").

Rhonda is seen in more than half of the Hey Arnold! episodes and is focused on several times in the series. Besides Arnold, Gerald, Helga, and Grandpa Phil, Rhonda has perhaps more speaking roles than any other character, at about the same level of prominence as Harold and Phoebe.

Rhonda's role in Hey Arnold! was initially an undefined, neutral side-character who appears in the background and rarely speaks, but in the midst of the 2nd Season, when she had her first starring episode in "Rhonda's Glasses", she was revealed to be very narcissistic and self-absorbed. Specifically, she brands her more socially-awkward peers as "geeks" and bars them from sitting near the front of the bus (as a parody of the historic 1955 Rosa Parks incident). Despite her coming to terms with her social outcasting by the end of the episode, she returns to it again in Cool Party, making it an almost formal practice by composing a mutually-exclusive list of "Geeks" and "Cool Kids" to decide who can and cannot attend her house party.

Rhonda 2 — Despite her typically high-maintenance and girly personality, Rhonda can be seen participating in nearly all sports-playing scenes, like in this football line-up in "Mudbowl".

Among other humbling life experiences Rhonda is pitted against, there is a point where her family loses their entire fortune in the stock market, forcing her to adapt to a lower-middle class standard of living in Arnold's boarding house ("Rhonda Goes Broke"). Her materialistic mentality translates it to a miserable, doomed experience that she spends days moping over, which disgusts Arnold and prompts him to tell her to change her attitude. As in "Rhonda's Glasses", she makes the best out of the situation and pulls through it.

Nadine is Rhonda's best friend. Although the two have many differences and argue rather easily, noting Nadine is an aspiring entomologist and Rhonda's interest lies in fashion, they are seen in multiple episodes associating with one another.

Rhonda's greatest interest is fashion design and trends. She criticizes her classmates and friends regularly for not matching colors or rotating their daily choice of clothing, as parodied by Helga in "Helga's Show". She is also quick to show off any new fashion accessories or shoes she gets to her peers. As shown in Rhonda's Glasses, she requires glasses to see, but in later episodes she has switched to contact lenses (Rhonda Goes Broke).

Rhonda 78 — Curly is eager to become Rhonda's boyfriend in "Curly's Girl".

Despite her wealthy upbringing and snobby, self-righteous attitude, she has been known to play contact football and a variety of other sports along with the other children — even to the point of destroying her beloved outfits in the process, as seen in Mudbowl and New Bully on the Block. She is a formidable football player as well, scoring 3 touchdowns and accounting for 18 of the 48 points scored against the 5th Graders in Mudbowl. She also participates in various neighborhood baseball games and in other sporting events such as the city bowling tournament (Coach Wittenberg) and Bikeathon (Gerald's Secret).

Love Interest

There are implications in the series that Rhonda may be romantically interested in Harold. In the "Operation Ruthless" episode, we can see Rhonda pulling Harold to the Love Tunnel's boat while saying "I know you like me, Harold", as Harold tried to resist. Then in the episode "Love And Cheese", for a brief second when Arnold and Lila walk to the Tunnel of Love, you can see Harold and Rhonda sitting together in the duck. A few seasons later in "Egg Story", Rhonda and Harold are assigned to work as a couple to take care of an egg. When Harold reminds her about their moment in "Operation Ruthless", Rhonda smothers his mouth with her hand to prevent him from telling the class about it, which could mean she wants to keep it discreet. There are also hints that there may be chemistry between her and Sid, in the episodes "Wheezin' Ed", "World Records", "Fighting Families", "Rhonda Goes Broke", "Arnold's Room", and "Stuck in a Tree"; although these are even more subtle and ambiguous. She may also have a little crush on Arnold because she is really nice to him and cares about him in episodes such as "Best Friends", "Cool Party" and "Dino Checks Out" and "Beaned" and she also didn't mind having to kiss Arnold when she was cast as Juliet in "School Play" before Helga forced her to drop out. Arnold and Rhonda are seen dancing together in "School Dance", plus she gives Arnold a tip for helping her to accept the life of not being rich in "Rhonda Goes Broke".

Appearance

Rhonda always wears her red apple sweater with it's fluffy white turtle-neck, black tights and her red slippers. Rhonda will also wear her tan purse or satchel.

Curly

Rhonda is an object of Curly's obsessive love interest, much to her chagrin. In the episode "Curly's Girl", he essentially blackmails her into pretending to be his girlfriend at school for a week. She is also harassed by him consistently throughout the series, including "The Flood" and "Deconstructing Arnold", in both of which episodes he says, "Give Daddy some sugar!" He has also kissed her against her will more than once, horrifying their surrounding classmates each time. Despite all this, and her blatantly animated disgust toward him, Rhonda still says that she "thinks he's an okay guy".

Trivia

In the Polish translation of the series this character is named "Olga Wellington", thus she shares first name with Helga's sister.
Oddly enough, Rhonda does know how to sew. This was shown in the episode "Rhonda Goes Broke"
Rhonda does have some deformity as her ears are slightly crooked. Meaning that she has an off-track skeletal axis. This was inferred in "Rhonda's Glasses".
In Season One she was mainly a background character with no much linesaa nd no personality, by Season Two itss revealed that she is a spoiled rich girl.
The shape of her head became more rounder by the course of the series.
She and Nadine have been best friends since the pre-school.

Appears in

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