Rhonda Wellington Lloyd

My life is over!

— Rhonda, when she feels upset

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

Biography

As one of the students of P.S. 118, she is the self-proclaimed fashion queen of the school, despite the fact that she, like all the other main characters, wears the same ensemble each day with few exceptions. Her parents, Brooke and Buckley, come from a historically wealthy Welsh-American family ("The Lloyds"). Throughout the series, Rhonda hosts a number of 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 as 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.

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 appear to get into arguments quite easily, notably because Nadine is an aspiring entomologist whereas 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).

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 tries 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.

It's been hinted that she may have feelings for Arnold as she is really nice to him and seem to care about him cares in such episodes 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. Rhonda and Arnold 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".

Rhonda is the object of Curly's obsessive affection, much to her chagrin. In the episode "Curly's Girl", he is essentially blackmailing her into pretending to be his girlfriend at school for a week. She is also harassed or pranked by him constantly throughout the series. Some examples of Curly's inappropriate advances can be seen in "The Flood" and "Deconstructing Arnold", which he exclaims "give Daddy some sugar!" He has also kissed Rhonda more than once by surprise, horrifying their surrounding classmates each time. Despite all this, and her blatantly animated disgust toward him, Rhonda still says she thinks "he's an okay guy." Curly is also Rhonda's tango partner at the April Fools Dance in "April Fools Day".

Appearance

Rhonda always wears her red sweater with white collar and long black pants. Though Rhonda always wears shoes that are red, the style of shoe changes from episode to episode (some times scene to scene). Most often Rhonda wears healed slip-ons, but she also wears pointed flat boots that cover her ankles. Other times she can be seen in simple red shoes with white soles or simple red shoes with black soles. She has short black hair with bangs that cover the top of her eyes. In the storyboard cover art of Helga vs. Big Patty, Rhonda is seen wearing a bikini.

Trivia

Rhonda, along with lead character Arnold, is left handed.
In the Polish translation of the series, this character is named "Olga Wellington," and therefore shares the same first name as Helga's sister.
In the Hungarian dub some episodes had Rhonda's name changed to Rozie because "Ronda" means ugly in Hungarian.
Rhonda knows how to sew, as seen 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 implied in Rhonda's Glasses.
During the first season she was mainly a minor character with a neutral personality and just an average girl. But by the second season, she is portrayed as a popular, spoiled, fashion-obsessed rich girl and became much more prominent.
The shape of her head became rounder over the course of the series.
She and Nadine have been best friends since they were in preschool.
John Bintz (a comic illustrator and the creator of 187 Football heads) has said that Rhonda is his favorite character.
Rhonda was one of the 4 original child characters to be created, the others being Arnold, Helga and Harold.

Rhonda Wellington Lloyd

Contents

Biography

Love Interest

Appearance

Trivia

Appears in

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