Gas up the Mystery Machine because Velma’s coming back to streaming. Executive-produced by and starring Mindy Kaling, Velma follows the exploits of everybody’s favorite teen forensic scientist as she sets about losing her glasses and unmasking the elderly owners of haunted amusement parks. Following a divisive first season, the show returns for season two this month.
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This still isn’t your granddaddy’s Velma Dinkley, though. Kaling’s take on the character is more modern and meta, an approach that rankled some fans when the first season premiered in January 2023. There was an attempt to create a Scooby-Doo show that would appeal to older viewers. However, aspects like the characters’ races, the show’s self-aware humor, and the lack of Scooby-Doo shocked audiences the way only a Scooby-Doo spin-off could. For the record, The A.V. Club’s own Saloni Gajjar praised the show’s “nuanced characterizations” where the characters’ ethnicities aren’t “a defining attribute” but rather a feature that “adds unexplored layers to a known world.”
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Velma, the character, isn’t letting all that bother her, though. In Crystal Cove, she’s more popular than ever and on the hunt for a new killer that’s targeting her male classmates. Meanwhile, the various romantic entanglements within Mystery, Inc. continue to complicate the group’s dynamic. If only they could get the Harlem Globetrotters back to town to help clear some of this up.
Velma returns to Max on April 25.