Scooby-Doo, Where Are Youwas the first cartoon in theScooby-Doofranchise, which began in 1969. With more than fifty years on TV, there have been over ten different iterations besides movies and other specials.Velmais the newest idea, which is a reboot and a prequel ofthis Hanna-Barbera classic.
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It’s vastly different than anything else in theScooby-Doofranchise, which is a good thing as it is more adult. It’s more obsessed with jokes than it is with solving mysteries. Instead of monster of the week episodes, the show has a central plot that carries on through season one. The characters inVelmaare the biggest change of all, from obvious things like skin color to deeper personality twists.
Warning. This article contains mild spoilers forVelma.
6Velma Changes
The biggest change to this franchiseis that Velmawas made the lead. Instead of a white nerdy teen, she is instead an Indian teen with an attitude. She’s good at solving mysteries but is clueless about a lot of other things like how friends should act toward one another.
Velma is also haunted by the disappearance of her mother, Diya, which is one of the central mysteries. Her father, Amon, starts dating the owner of the diner, Sophie, who has a baby with Amon in episode four. So, Velma also gets to be a sister in this series which is kind of a big deal. She is voiced by Mindy Kaling, who is most probably known as Kelly fromThe Office.
5Daphne Changes
Like Velma,Daphne’s ethnicity also changed. She went from white to Asian and she lost her parents when she was a baby. She was adopted by her two moms, Linda and Donna, who are also the reoccurring cops that are perusing the “hot girl killer” throughout each episode. Daphne was always a danger-prone character in the franchise who fell into traps or tripped on rugs easily.
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She’s still danger prone in Velma except that she is now the danger and owns it. There is a great montage in episode four to showcase this rage from starting fires to threatening people with knives. She is voiced by Constance Wu, who most may know as Jessica fromFresh Off the Boat.
4Fred Changes
Fred was alwaysthe core of the group who brought everyone together and focused the team on the mystery at hand. He does not have a race change in the show but his attitude adjustment is very extreme as he is a narcissistic womanizing man-child that can’t do anything for himself.
Velma perfectly cast Glenn Howerton as the new voice of Fred who most may know asDennis fromIt’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This new version of Fred shares many similarities with Dennis, from his narcissism to his views toward women. Funnily enough, Fred’s father, William, is voiced by Frank Welker who has been the voice of Fred almost entirely since 1969.
3Shaggy Changes
Like several of the other main characters inVelma,Shaggy has a change in skin color, going from white to black. He’s also now referred to as Norville, which was actually his real name in the original series. No one ever called him that though, except in random jokes. He comes from a mixed family where his father, Lamont, is white, and his mother, Blythe, is black.
Many fans theorized that Shaggy was into drugs in the series because he fit that hippy/druggy stereotype from the 1960s/70s. To poke fun at this theory, Norville has an extreme distaste for drugs. He still loves food though, or at least he likes to stream about snacks. He’s also obsessed with Velma. Norville is voiced by Sam Richardson
who most may know from his few sketch appearances onI Think You Should Leave.
2One Central Mystery
There are several small mysteries built within the first few episodes of the show such as what happened to Velma’s mom and where Daphne came from. However, there is one central puzzle that is seemingly binding everything together.
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The show opens with Velma opening up her locker to find a dead girl with a missing brain. Who is going around killing these “hot girls” and removing their brains? That’s the core mystery, unlike most iterations of the series wherein the gang usuallytackled one villainat a time.
1The Team Is Not Together
The show overall is a retelling of how the gang got together. Will Velma, Norville, Daphne, and Fred team up to solve the core mystery together by the end? Will they at least get together in season two, which has been confirmed by HBO to be happening, to solve more traditional mysteries?
It’s hard to say as of right now. It’s alsostrange that Scooby-Doois absent from his own series as one of the most iconic dogs in any media form. Norville has always been his owner from the beginning, so there is still a chance he can adopt a dog by the end and call it Scooby-Doo. Can a meta-humor cartoon like this support a talking dog though?
