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Lila Sawyer is a fictional character in Hey Arnold! and is a fictional character in the Hey Arnold! TV series.

Personality

Lila is, as Helga puts it, "Little Miss Perfect". She has a tendency to add the words "ever so" or "oh so" to just about every sentence she speaks, and she's very polite, sweet and kind. This leads her to bond quite easily with Olga, as the two have similar interests. But in reality, Lila has a darker side to her. As she sings about it for her audition for the school musical, Eugene, Eugene! "Eugene, Eugene!", she's actually very sad on the inside and purposefully puts up her happy persona to hide it. This essentially makes her the opposite of Helga, who puts up a mean persona to hide her kind self.

Appearance

In the original series, Lila wore a teal greenish dress, that matched her shoes. She wore a turquoise collared shirt with a gold button under her dress. Her hair has two braided pigtails with green hairbows at each end. In her first few appearances, her hair color s a brownish-red color, but in later episodes, it turns dark brown.

In Hey Arnold!: The Jungle Movie, her hair turns bright again and additionally her shoes are replaced with light brown cowgirl boots. Her dress is dark green with turquoise sleeves and now has a laced collar. She also wears a brown belt with her dress.

Biography

Lila marks her debut in "Ms. Perfect". She's a new student at P.S. 118. She's new to "the neighborhood," having moved with her unnamed father from Pleasantville, California, a farming community. She's very smart as Phoebe, very stylish as Rhonda , and the most popular girl like Helga among the boys. At first, the other girls are jealous, but when they learn about her humble, disadvantaged home life, they begin to feel very sorry for her.

Helga's dislike for Lila later resurfaces in the episode "Arnold & Lila", even though it is the result of Helga's own actions. Lila decides that she "like-likes" Arnold after finding "Arnold Loves Lila" written on an alley wall while walking home from school. Arnold initially rejects Lila's advances, but eventually develops a crush on her. But by that point, Lila has already gotten over her romantic feelings for Arnold and says that while she's flattered that he has a crush on her, she only likes him as a friend.

In "School Play", she's assigned the penultimate understudy, making her the last person Helga has to get through in order to play Juliet opposite Arnold as Romeo. However, all of Helga's attempts to get Lila to quit fail. Lila suddenly begins to hint she knows why Helga wants to play Juliet, and says she would be willing to quit if Helga admitted she liked Arnold. Helga stubbornly admits to Lila that she does have a crush on Arnold, and Lila willingly gives the role to Helga. Some have speculated that Helga's crush on Arnold could be a reason why later on, Lila continuously turns down Arnold's advances and states she only likes him as a friend.

In "Timberly Loves Arnold", Timberly asks Arnold, "Did anyone ever really hurt your feelings?," and Arnold sadly looks at Lila. After Arnold gets turned down again by Lila at the end of the episode, this time Arnold finally decides to let go of his crush on her for good.

Appears in

Trivia

  • In the episode "Love and Cheese", we learn that Lila can't swim and that she's allergic to stuffed animals.
  • In the episode "Weird Cousin", we learn she doesn't like scary movies.
  • In the episode "Eugene, Eugene!", she's shown to be a good singer.
  • It’s also revealed that “Eugene, Eugene” (the fictional play featured in the episode) is her favorite musical.
  • In the episodes "Love and Cheese" and "Timberly Loves Arnold", she gets very queasy on big rides.
  • Her personality is inspired by that of Becky Thatcher from "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" by Mark Twain. Lila’s last name is a nod to the titular character.
  • Despite her kindness in just about every episode, in the episode "Phoebe's Little Problem", Lila makes a rude and bored face with the other kids while Phoebe is giving a speech. This is explained by Craig Bartlett in an online chat. He says, "The truth is, the writers didn't think about them, just the main story...and the artists may draw them looking bored, for example, and the fans are all 'hey, they don't even care about Phoebe!'"
  • In "Arnold & Lila", Lila kissed Arnold on the cheek on their date.
  • In "Principal Simmons", Wolfgang bullies Lila along with Helga, Harold and Maria.
  • In an interview, Craig Bartlett claims that Lila has a repressed dark side and in another interview, he says that she seemed innocent at first and that the writers didn't hate her until she started seeming evil, although he says that he himself likes her and is apologetic about dragging out Arnold's pining for her too long.
  • In an interview on The Arun Mehta Show, Craig Bartlett said that she would not make an appearance in Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie. This later turned out to be false, as she appears in the scene on the Sunset Arms roof. It's possible that Bartlett simply meant that Lila would not be among the kids who go to San Lorenzo for the main plot of the movie.
  • In another interview, Craig Bartlett confirms that Lila was going on vacation with her father while the others were in San Lorenzo and that’s why she didn’t appear after the movie at Arnold’s Boarding House roof.
  • Her appearances in the Stephen Squirrelsky and Friends' Movie Spoof Travels are Jimmynocchio and The Wizard of Oz (Uranimated18's Style) and will even be in more movie spoof travels.
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