Back in 2021, it was announced that HBO Max had ordered an adult animated series inspired by the “Scooby-Doo” character Velma Dinkley. This week, HBO Max announced the series would premiere on January 12, 2023.
The new series, executive produced by Mindy Kaling, who also voices the Velma character for the show, tells the origin story of Velma Dinkley, set before she officially teams up with the Mystery Inc. gang. While Scooby-Doo is absent in this origin story, Fred, Daphne, and Norville AKA Shaggy are all part of the new series. Velma, Daphne, and Shaggy have been reimagined for the series as Indian, East Asian, and Black, respectively, like their voice actors, because “no one on [Scooby-Doo] is defined by their whiteness,” said Kaling during a New York Comic Con panel earlier this year — “except Fred is extremely white.” Constance Wu voices Daphne, and Sam Richardson voices Norville.
While the series takes place during the characters’ high school years, making them younger than in most iterations of “Scooby-Doo,” the new series will actually be racier and gorier than anything that’s been done with the Scooby-Doo characters outside of maybe the “Scooby Apocalypse” comic book series.
The first season of “Velma” will consist of 10 episodes. You can catch a teaser for the series, which pokes fun at some of the backlash the series received for changing the ethnicity of the Mystery Inc. gang below:
