- Max has confirmed that Velma will not be returning for a third season
- Reaction on social media to the news has been largely positive
- Show had been controversial with fans for how it changed established characters
Max has confirmed that it has pulled the plug on its controversial Scooby-Doo spinoff Velma after two seasons.
Not moving forward
Velma, which focused on the character of Velma Dinkley, was aimed at adult audiences but had received significant criticism from reviewers and online for its move away from the traditional depictions of the character and the rest of the Mystery Inc gang.
Mindy Kaling and Charlie Grandy were showrunners – Kaling also voiced Velma – on the show. It followed Velma balancing her detective work with managing her popularity in school. Oddly perhaps for a Scooby-Doo spinoff, it didn’t feature the titular hound, but did contain the other human characters – although they all had markedly different characters to those fans had grown accustomed to over the decades.
The second 10-episode season was released in April of this year. In all, 21 episodes were made.
A statement from Max, as reported by Forbes, thanked Kaling and Grandy for creating “an incredibly fun and fresh world within the iconic whodunit franchise.” Before adding: “We won’t be moving forward with another season of the series.”
The reaction from social media has been largely celebratory. Many users on X (formerly Twitter) posted celebratory memes and jpegs.
But some users did take issue with this, saying that it was sad that the animators who worked on the show would be losing their jobs.
Live-action reimagining
Scooby-Doo is an incredibly long-running cartoon franchise, having debuted in 1969. Since then, there have been all manner of spinoffs and reboots of the show. Another reimagining of Scooby and co could be in the offing at Netflix – but this time live action. Earlier in the year there were stories that a pilot was in development that could make it to being a fully-fledged series if it is well received.
