Scooby-Doo, Where Are You was the first cartoon in the Scooby-Doo franchise, which began in 1969. With more than fifty years on TV, there have been over ten different iterations besides movies and other specials. Velma is the newest idea, which is a reboot and a prequel of this Hanna-Barbera classic.

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It’s vastly different than anything else in the Scooby-Doo franchise, which is a good thing as it is more adult. It’s more obsessed with jokes than it is with solving mysteries. Instead of monster of the week episodes, the show has a central plot that carries on through season one. The characters in Velma are the biggest change of all, from obvious things like skin color to deeper personality twists.

Warning. This article contains mild spoilers for Velma.

6 Velma Changes

Velma in gym class in Velma

The biggest change to this franchise is that Velma was made the lead. Instead of a white nerdy teen, she is instead an Indian teen with an attitude. She’s good at solving mysteries but is clueless about a lot of other things like how friends should act toward one another.

Velma is also haunted by the disappearance of her mother, Diya, which is one of the central mysteries. Her father, Amon, starts dating the owner of the diner, Sophie, who has a baby with Amon in episode four. So, Velma also gets to be a sister in this series which is kind of a big deal. She is voiced by Mindy Kaling, who is most probably known as Kelly from The Office.

5 Daphne Changes

Daphne in disguise in Velma

Like Velma, Daphne’s ethnicity also changed. She went from white to Asian and she lost her parents when she was a baby. She was adopted by her two moms, Linda and Donna, who are also the reoccurring cops that are perusing the “hot girl killer” throughout each episode. Daphne was always a danger-prone character in the franchise who fell into traps or tripped on rugs easily.

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She’s still danger prone in Velma except that she is now the danger and owns it. There is a great montage in episode four to showcase this rage from starting fires to threatening people with knives. She is voiced by Constance Wu, who most may know as Jessica from Fresh Off the Boat.

4 Fred Changes

Fred in Velma

Fred was always the core of the group who brought everyone together and focused the team on the mystery at hand. He does not have a race change in the show but his attitude adjustment is very extreme as he is a narcissistic womanizing man-child that can’t do anything for himself.

Velma perfectly cast Glenn Howerton as the new voice of Fred who most may know as Dennis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. This new version of Fred shares many similarities with Dennis, from his narcissism to his views toward women. Funnily enough, Fred’s father, William, is voiced by Frank Welker who has been the voice of Fred almost entirely since 1969.

3 Shaggy Changes

Norville streaming in Velma

Like several of the other main characters in Velma, Shaggy has a change in skin color, going from white to black. He’s also now referred to as Norville, which was actually his real name in the original series. No one ever called him that though, except in random jokes. He comes from a mixed family where his father, Lamont, is white, and his mother, Blythe, is black.

Many fans theorized that Shaggy was into drugs in the series because he fit that hippy/druggy stereotype from the 1960s/70s. To poke fun at this theory, Norville has an extreme distaste for drugs. He still loves food though, or at least he likes to stream about snacks. He’s also obsessed with Velma. Norville is voiced by Sam Richardson

who most may know from his few sketch appearances on I Think You Should Leave.

2 One Central Mystery

Chief Cogburn in Velma

There are several small mysteries built within the first few episodes of the show such as what happened to Velma’s mom and where Daphne came from. However, there is one central puzzle that is seemingly binding everything together.

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The show opens with Velma opening up her locker to find a dead girl with a missing brain. Who is going around killing these “hot girls” and removing their brains? That’s the core mystery, unlike most iterations of the series wherein the gang usually tackled one villain at a time.

1 The Team Is Not Together

A scene featuring characters in the school in Velma

The show overall is a retelling of how the gang got together. Will Velma, Norville, Daphne, and Fred team up to solve the core mystery together by the end? Will they at least get together in season two, which has been confirmed by HBO to be happening, to solve more traditional mysteries?

It’s hard to say as of right now. It’s also strange that Scooby-Doo is absent from his own series as one of the most iconic dogs in any media form. Norville has always been his owner from the beginning, so there is still a chance he can adopt a dog by the end and call it Scooby-Doo. Can a meta-humor cartoon like this support a talking dog though?

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