Warning: Spoilers ahead for Velma.
While Velma has attracted plenty of criticism, the Scooby-Doo re-imagining's biggest problem is quite unexpected. While the Velma pilot may not be perfect, the first episode of the Scooby-Doo spinoff does live up to its basic premise. With filthy jokes, dark humor, and two gruesome murders, Velma season 1, episode 1, “Velma,” manages to work as a murder mystery comedy with horror elements thanks to Velma’s nightmarish hallucinations and gross-out deaths, thereby ensuring that the story has genuine stakes.
As the controversial Velma series continues, however, the show’s tone has become noticeably more muddled. Although much has been said about Velma's divisive changes to the Scooby-Doo format and its R-rated content, how the HBO Max series veers between its two tonal identities unexpectedly gives rise to a far bigger problem. Fortunately, there is a way Velma season 1 can save itself.
Velma Forgot Its Horror Mystery Roots
Velma’s misplaced rom-com parodies leave the Scooby-Doo spinoff feeling less like a murder mystery and more like a broad, cartoony comedy. Meanwhile, Velma's plot lines, which never seem to center around the killings that take place in Crystal Cove, are filled with light-hearted antics that clash with the occasional brutal violence. Velma’s comedic elements jar with the show's increasingly rare moments of horror and mystery, making the tone tough to pin down. Increasingly, this is becoming a major issue for Velma season 1.
Although the R-rated Scooby-Doo reboot was promoted as a horror-tinged murder mystery, Velma’s first four episodes have seen the show abandon this premise entirely. By the end of episode 4, the horror and mystery elements have become an afterthought, while sitcom antics dominate most of the screen time. In Velma season 1, episode 3, “Velma Kai,” for instance, Shaggy becoming a counselor not only leads to no significant breakthrough in the search for answers regarding Velma’s missing mother, but the storyline’s cartoony violence also makes the occasional murders less impactful.
At the end of “Velma Kai,” a prisoner throws another inmate through a brick wall, defying the comparatively grounded violence of the pilot. This event seems to explain how Fred escapes prison and joins the other main Scooby-Doo characters. Instead, Fred is recaptured, only to then be released in the next episode’s opening scene. After Velma season 1, episode 4, “The List,” Velma is no closer to solving her mother’s disappearance, Daphne's search for her birth parents has not been meaningfully connected to the main mystery, and the question of who is killing their classmates has effectively been forgotten by the Mystery Machine gang.
Velma Season 1, Episode 4 Showcases Its Main Problem
While Velma’s controversial R-rating made the Scooby-Doo prequel a divisive prospect, this has not proven to be the biggest issue with the series itself. Instead, the lack of a central mystery and the failure to commit to Velma’s horror elements sink the spinoff. In “The List,” the police announce that a third character has been murdered by Crystal Cove’s serial killer, and the rest of the plot is dedicated to Mindy Kaling as Velma making a list of the school’s hottest girls, trying to teach them not to care about their appearances so much, and eventually learning something about herself in the process.
The killer, their victim, and any plans to unmask them go unmentioned, and there is no tension surrounding the fact that the killer remains on the loose and could strike again. While Velma’s LGBTQ+ identity is at least woven into the main plot via her relationship with Daphne, her mystery-solving - ostensibly the character’s defining characteristic - is almost entirely dropped by the second episode. Velma fails to utilize the Scooby-Doo heroine’s skills, since each episode of the spinoff focuses on a lighter storyline like Velma and Daphne competing in a self-defense contest, or Velma writing her all-important list instead of searching for the killer or her mother.
Velma Season 1 Needs To Focus On Its Murder Mystery
Velma’s pilot episode established a murder mystery plot with clear stakes. Someone was killing Crystal Cove’s teenage girls and, not only was Velma’s crush, Daphne, a likely target, Velma was also the character with the most mystery-solving acumen, making her Crystal Cove's best hope of catching the killer. Since then, Velma’s R-rated reinvention of Scooby-Doo has offered viewers no new clues about this mystery and the stakes have fallen drastically as it became clear that none of the characters were affected by the killer’s actions.
These issues are proving far more damaging to Velma's narrative than the crude humor or drastic changes to Scooby-Doo's premise. The only way for Velma season 1 to get its Scooby-Doo prequel back on track is to focus on its central mystery instead of pointless side quests. Currently, Velma is scrambling around on the floor blindly feeling around for a consistent tone.