Fans have speculated for years, but new footage from the upcoming film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! confirm it: the character Velma Dinkley is attracted to women.
“It honestly did not occur to [me] that we were doing something so groundbreaking until right now,” the movie’s director, Audie Harrison, said. “While writing and directing this, I just started to have fun with the comedy of an awkward teenage crush.”
He added, “I actually thought it was a bigger deal for Velma’s character that she is in love with the villain of the movie. The fact that she is a girl is just… well, a fact. That being said, it does feel great to be a part of normalizing representation, especially with such a well-known franchise like Scooby-Doo!”
The animated film, launched on digital platforms on Tuesday, introduces a new character, Coco Diablo, the boss of a costume criminal organization. Velma’s obsession, the Mystery Inc. member’s spectacles fog up, and her cheeks blush as she swoons in many situations.
Daphne jokes about condemned prisoners being Velma’s type in one moment. The bespectacled detective denies it, then screams, “Oh, who am I kidding? I’m crushing big-time, Daphne! What do I do? What do I say?”
A tweet reading “OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY CANON CANON IN THE MOVIES LETS GOOOOOO” accompanying a clip in which Velma first sees Coco has garnered more than 200,000 likes.
For at least 20 years, people behind the Scooby-Doo brand have been attempting to show Velma’s sexual orientation. In 2020, James Gunn, the writer of the live-action Scooby-Doo films released in 2002 and 2004, tweeted that Velma was “explicitly gay” in a 2001 draft. According to Gunn, Warner Bros. subsequently removed these facts from the original film and even gave Velma a boyfriend in the sequel.
Harrison reported a different situation to Warner Bros. this time. “They were quite supportive of this path for Velma’s character from the beginning, and it never felt like they were concerned about how it would be seen. That was rather refreshing, “he stated.
“I’ve said this before, but Velma in ‘Mystery Incorporated’ is not bi. She’s gay,” Tony Cervone, the 2010-2013 animated series’ supervising producer wrote on Instagram in 2020. “If you follow the entire Marcie arc it seems as clear as we could make it 10 years ago. I don’t think Marcie and Velma had time to act on their feelings during the main timeline, but post reset, they are a couple. You can not like it, but this was our intention.”