Velma (2023) – Initial Thoughts

As a long-time Scooby Doo fan, I was excited when Velma was announced. The prospect of a more adult version of an IP I loved as a kid sounded like the best way to start the year. So I did what any sane fan would do: I marked my calendar and avoided all spoilers just to experience a level of disappointment I never thought possible.

Velma is the origin story of a quirky girl who is sucked into solving a mystery she never wanted to be involved with. There has been a murder, and it is up to Velma to clear her name. Can she find out who is killing the popular girls at her high school before it is too late? 

So far there are only two episodes out for this series, and they are not great. Instead of hooking its audience into caring about a new Mystery Gang, these episodes serve as proof that this series is going to be a waste of time. It was a huge mistake to have the series released weekly. Nothing happens in the first two episodes, and they expect me to come back next week? I will because I have to, but you normal folk out there have better things to do.

This series is a desperate attempt at creating an adult cartoon. It is littered with terrible crude humor and meta jokes as it attempts to be something like Brickleberry or Big Mouth. There is nothing worse than sitting through a comedy that isn’t funny, but here I am, doing it for you. 

One of the issues I have with the humor in this series is that it relies heavily on current events and pop culture that have already aged out or are aging out of the mainstream vernacular. In a couple of months, this series will become even more obsolete because no one will understand the references. Unless you spend all of your time following current events and remember them, you aren’t going to get a lot of the humor. Not that there is any humor to be had in this series. If this series spent more time telling its story and developing its characters instead of on its lazy and uninspired jokes, it would have still sucked, but it would have been better. 

My biggest issue with this series however is the main character, Velma. Velma is a terribly written asshole. She is constantly being mean and lashing out for no reason. While Velma’s attitude towards the world might seem justified in theory, the series does a terrible job at setting it up. A lot of the time, it feels like Velma is the mean one, and everyone else is just defending themselves. Every action she makes is an unprompted and unjustified social fight. I get that she was meant to be a strong gay person of color, but there are better ways of doing so without making her a completely unlikable bully.

I also hate that they forced the gay identity on Velma. I have nothing against an attempt to refresh the IP and loved the idea of a gay Velma, but here it feels like a cheap attempt at tricking people into watching this series. I remember learning about this series through an article where the creator confirmed that Velma would be a gay person of color, but I expected something better. This whole series is full of similar gimmicks that act as cheap setups to lazy jokes that never land.

I can keep going, but I don’t want to take up any more of your time. Don’t watch this terrible series. I will keep doing so to give it a fair chance, but I doubt it gets any better. Based on the garbage I sat through, there is not a doubt in my mind that this series will be a bomb that gets canceled before they even start developing their story. If you want to watch a more adult and dark-themed Scooby Doo, watch the first season of Riverdale and stop there. If you want to watch an animated series about a strong female character who got a proper rebranding, watch Harley Quinn on the same platform. But if you don’t believe me and have an hour to waste, you can stream this garbage on HBO Max.

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Image By The logo is from the following website: https://www.animationmagazine.net/2022/10/312437/, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71948284