A viral clip from the newest Scooby-Doo movie, Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo, has finally settled decades of debate over Velma Dinkley’s sexual orientation. Yes, she is a lesbian!
In the clip, Velma wears her iconic rectangular glass, brunette bob and orange turtleneck. She chatters while walking into her fellow sleuths, Daphne and Fred, with a box of Scooby snacks in hand. Her voice trails off when she notices costume-designing crime boss Coco Diablo.
Little captions pop up around Coco when Velma looks at her, highlighting her qualities: “Obviously brilliant!” “Incredible glasses!” “Amazing turtleneck!” “Loves animals!”
Velma swoons. She blushes. Her glasses fog. “Jinkiiiies,” she sighs.
Fans had some questions. Namely, why was she made to date Shaggy if she’s a lesbian?
One man wrote: “so the thing with shaggy was what?”
Here’s the thing: Velma was always meant to be a lesbian. Her fling with Shaggy didn’t work out because, despite not recognizing it at the time, Velma isn’t into men.
In a Pride-themed Instagram post in 2020, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated supervising producer Tony Cervone clarified in the comments that Velma is a lesbian.
“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 while she was dating Shaggy, because that relationship was wrong for her and she had unspoken difficulty with the why,” he started.
“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,” he continued.
Is it fair to say implicit lesbianism is enough representation? In this case, it is. The team behind Scooby-Doo have been explicit about their intentions. It was the studio that kept “watering down” Velma’s woman-lovin’.
Screenwriter James Gunn confirmed on Twitter that Velma was “explicitly gay” in the original script for the 2001 Scooby-Doo movie.
When asked “Please make our live-action lesbian Velma dreams come true,” he responded:
“I tried! In 2001 Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script. 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).”
It was the Scooby-Doo team, including screenwriter James Gunn and supervisor producer Tony Cervone, who went head-to-head with a studio that not only made Velma’s sexual orientation ambiguous but then eventually made her have a boyfriend.
Sure, it might have been a ratings-panic from homophobic audiences more than a personal vendetta against lesbians, but it begs the question: how many lesbians have been written out of scripts by studios? How many film and TV characters who we know and love were originally lesbian before studios followed heteronormative dollar signs?
