When Velma was announced, no one imagined just how disliked it would be. While some have strong feelings on Mindy Kaling and her writing, the series took on a life of its own and frankly, it wasn't good in any sense of the word.
Mostly, the series felt like a slap in the face to Scooby-Doo fans who had loved Velma and wanted to see a more adult series. If anything, it felt like they took everything that made the franchise great and threw it out. Of course, we have to include Scooby-Doo in that as well since he wasn't actually featured in the series.
With all the criticism the series received online, you would think that would be the end of it but the series did run for 2 seasons and a Halloween special. Thankfully, the show was eventually canceled and hopefully, lost to the sands of time.
No doubt anyone imagined just how impassioned Scooby-Doo fans were and rightfully so, but it begs the deeper question. Why was a Velma series created in the first place?
Why was Max's Velma created in the first place?
In doing some searching, I stumbled upon a post from Wired that gave a look into how the Velma series came to be. "Velma began three or four years ago when Kaling was invited to peruse the Warner Bros. catalog and unearthed a latent affinity with Velma. “She had seen herself in that character growing up,” Grandy says." Basically, it sounds like Mindy Kaling liked the character and wanted to make Velma her own.
Thankfully, she was only able to do a little bit of damage but that's something fans are going to remember for decades. If anything, it feels like the exact opposite of what the franchise needed at the time. Given how chaotic things at Warner Bros. are right now, a Scooby-Doo spinoff tanking isn't good news.
If anything, the cancellation of Velma seemed to be the lynch pin the company was waiting for as we've only gotten one confirmed Scooby-Doo series since. We have yet to get a direct-to-video Scooby-Doo movie which is something fans always look forward to. While things are still up in the air with the upcoming Netflix series, it's nice to have some animated Scooby content to enjoy.
Hopefully, the tides will start changing when it comes to the Scooby-Doo franchise. Of course if HBO Max has anything to do with it, it's unlikely.