Image: © dannyburn/Stock.adobe.com
Fans have suspected for years that Velma is gay, but the latest Halloween-themed film in the franchise has confirmed it for the first time.
It’s official – Velma from the popular Scooby-Doo franchise is a lesbian. And Google is celebrating the occasion with a surprise.
Twitter is abuzz with clips from the Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! film released this week. It shows Velma – long suspected by fans to be gay – enamoured with the villainous costume designer Coco Diablo.
OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY CANON CANON IN THE MOVIES LETS GOOOOOO pic.twitter.com/0ilx2uid1q
— Trin 🎃 (@MythicalLlamaXO) October 3, 2022
And to celebrate the occasion – a ‘coming out’ of sorts that many Scooby-Doo fans have been waiting for – Google has a new Easter egg (or should I say Halloween pumpkin) for anyone who googles ‘Velma’.
‘You can not like it, but this was our intention’
Two years ago James Gunn, who wrote the 2002 live-action Scooby-Doo film, tweeted that he tried to make it explicit that Velma was a lesbian. But the studio kept “watering it down” to the point where it became “ambiguous”, he added. She was even shown as being in a relationship with fellow character Shaggy in the 2004 sequel.
Tony Cervone, a veteran animator who was behind the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated TV series, also confirmed on Instagram during Pride Month 2020 that Velma was, in fact, a lesbian and not bisexual.
“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,” he wrote.
“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 … You can not like it, but this was our intention.”
Velma, known for being the smartest within the group of five, has been an integral character in the Scooby-Doo franchise since its inception with the Hanna-Barbera cartoons that began in 1969.
HBO Max announced last year that Velma was to have her own TV show for an adult audience, where she is to be portrayed as being of Indian descent (voiced by Mindy Kaling). A panel for the new series is taking place at New York Comic Con today.
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