Like Harley Quinn and Rick and Morty, HBO Max’s upcoming Velma cartoon turns the Scooby-Doo characters upside down for adult comedy purposes. Watch the first New York Comic Con trailer before the 2023 premiere.
Scream “jinkies!” and put on the square glasses: From Warner Bros. Animation, Velma is an animated comedy series unraveling the origin story of Velma Dinkley, the iconic orange-turtlenecked brains of the Scooby-Doo Mystery Inc. gang. In a departure from the family-friendly approachable Scooby-Doo franchise, Velma is an adult-oriented show (see poster with the blood-splattered glasses), with Rick and Morty and Harley Quinn cited as major inspirations.
Executive producer Mindy Kaling, who also voices Velma; showrunner Charlie Grandy; Constance Wu (Daphne); Sam Richardson (Norville, who will be known as “Shaggy”); and Glenn Howerton (Fred) joined fans at New York Comic Con 2022 to explain the new direction for the long-running horror comedy series. Fans in attendance also got a sneak peek at the show with a screening of the entire pilot episode.
The show introduces Velma in her high school years as a bespectacled loser. If two cockroaches copulating in the opening scene doesn’t establish Velma’s tone, the next scene should do the trick: nude teenage girls partaking in physical violence in the gym showers (all while debating the ethical appropriateness and exploitation of blatant nudity in media). Later, the corpse of a teenager is found in Velma’s locker, making her the prime suspect in the eyes of two cops (Wanda Sykes and Jane Lynch). Of course, she has to solve the mystery to clear her name. One problem: Velma hasn’t really solved a mystery in a while, not since her mystery novelist mother vanished from her life. And whenever Velma tries to solve a mystery, she gets harassed by ghastly zombielike spirits.
This preview also reimagines the Mystery Inc. crew as high schoolers. Popular girl Daphne is the antithesis of Velma; she’s a cartoon mean girl, and is also the most pop culture-savvy of the bunch, said Grandy. Kaling added, “Daphne has her own mysteries about her own life.”
Velma and Daphne begin the series with a burning grudge for the other, as they were former childhood friends. When developing the series, Kaling (who also co-created Netflix’s teen-centric Never Have I Ever) brought her love for high school shows that explored “people from different social strata find[ing] something in common.
