For decades now, Velma Dinkley, the crime-fighting heroine of hundreds of Scooby-Doo cartoon and movies, has been trying to come out of the closet. In the early 2000s, when Warner Bros made two live-action Scooby-Doo movies, the screenwriter, James Gunn, attempted to portray her as an out and proud lesbian, but the studio was having none of it.
“I tried!” Gunn told a fan in 2020. “Velma was explicitly gay in my initial script [for the 2002 movie Scooby-Doo]. But the studio kept watering it down, becoming ambiguous.” For the 2004 sequel, Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, she even acquired a boyfriend.
Now, with the forthcoming animated film Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!, Velma’s preference for girls has finally been confirmed … and she even gets a girlfriend in the form of glamorous new character Coco Diablo. For lesbians like me, all of our dreams have come true! One tweet excitedly celebrating Velma’s coming out – “OMG LESBIAN VELMA FINALLY CANON CANON IN THE MOVIES LETS GOOOOOO” – has been liked 228,000 times, including by me. Even in 2022, lesbians are rarely depicted in movies.
In 1972, when I was just 10, I became obsessed with the Scooby-Doo cartoon, which began in 1969 and was based on four mystery-solving teenagers and their talking great dane. It was huge fun watching the crazy adventures that Shaggy, Velma, Fred and Daphne got caught up in. I learned all the catchphrases and would walk around my schoolyard singing “Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you?” and asking for Scooby snacks. I still use that phrase today, to the bewilderment of my younger friends and anyone outside the UK or US.
I particularly loved the character of Velma. I never felt her relationship with Shaggy was any good for her, just as I could not understand why any of my schoolfriends wanted to date boys when we entered our teens.
And I definitely identified with Velma. Like her, I was always the odd one out. Of course, I didn’t wonder at that young age whether she was a lesbian, but I certainly knew that she was what we used to call a “tomboy”, just like me. Although I was never keen on her pleated skirt, I loved the fact that she wore baggy jumpers and defied femininity. She also shared my view of the world: getting exasperated with the boys, being cleverer than them, and showing how girls do not have to adhere to stereotypes of femininity and passiveness.
As I got older, I would see the odd rerun of Scooby-Doo and, having come out as a lesbian at 15, knew exactly what was going on with Velma. At that time, there were hardly any real-life lesbian role models for us; Velma was the closest we got. I remember seeing the 2002 movie, which was directed by Raja Gosnell, at the cinema with two 10-year-olds I had borrowed in order for my visit to seem socially acceptable, and being thrilled to realise that my heroine was now written as a lesbian – even if it wasn’t explicitly stated.
In 2020, Tony Cervone, a supervising producer on the Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated animated series, which ran from 2010 to 2013, confirmed that Velma had long been intended to be lesbian rather than bisexual, as some people read her. “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,” Cervone wrote on his Instagram page.
Her relationship with her friend and rival Marcie Fleach, he added, “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.”
I love that, in the age-old tradition of romcoms, Velma falls in love at first sight in the new film. And what does a lesbian bring to her first date? Obviously, her cat and her toothbrush. Velma blushing is such a sweet touch, and I hope that young lesbians everywhere get some inspiration from her flirting rituals.
In my opinion, the world of Scooby-Doo has survived for more than 50 years in no small part due to Velma’s superb character. I even love her orange socks and hope they soon become a not-so-secret sign of sapphic sisterhood.
