After the likes of James Gunn and Tony Cervone spent years fighting to make the Scooby-Doo franchise's bespectacled brainiac explicitly gay, Velma Dinkley appears to be blushing and rendered speechless over a femme character named Coco Diablo in a clip from the new animated Halloween special Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!
Clips from the new film started circulating on social media earlier this week by excited fans who have long believed the character was part of the LGBTQIA2S+ community. And now it's canon!
Clips from the new film started circulating on social media earlier this week by excited fans who have long believed the character was part of the LGBTQIA2S+ community. And now it's canon!
The news of Velma's sexuality may not be surprising in the sense that it's been assumed a long-held open secret among fans and franchise creatives alike, the notion has previously received pushback. Gunn, who wrote the early live-action Scooby-Doo movies, claimed he tried to make the character a lesbian in the initial script for the 2001 feature.
"In 2001 Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script," he tweeted in 2020. "But the studio just kept watering it down & watering it down, becoming ambiguous (the version shot), then nothing (the released version) & finally having a boyfriend (the sequel)."
Likewise, during 2020's Pride Month, Mystery Incorporated supervising producer Cervone added on Instagram [via Variety]:
I've said this before, but Velma in Mystery Incorporated is not bi. She's gay. We always planned on Velma acting a little off and out of character when she was dating Shaggy because that relationship was wrong for her and she had unspoken difficulty with the why. There are hints about the why in that episode with the mermaid, and 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.
Cervone's post has since been edited, which you can see below, but the sentiment remains: Velma has been a lesbian in everyone's hearts all along.
Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! is now streaming on Prime Video.