Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for Velma (2022).
While Scooby-Doo reboot’s much-hyped R rating is ironically hurting the show more than it helps. Throughout the history of the Scooby-Doo franchise, there have been both official and unofficial attempts to offer a more mature, adult-oriented spin on the familiar children’s comedy series. Scooby-Doo On Zombie Island featured an older version of the central gang in a darker story where the monsters were real, while 2012’s Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated took its characters more seriously and even introduced Lovecraftian elements to the show’s horror.
Meanwhile, screenwriter James Gunn’s first Scooby-Doo draft was R-rated and even the finished movies featured a lot of jokes aimed at adults, while author Edgar Cantero’s unofficial parody Meddling Kids imagined a traumatized, grounded version of the grown-up Mystery Machine gang. However, HBO Max’s Velma is the first official Scooby-Doo project to gain an R-rating, and, ironically, this might not be a good thing. While Velma is not as bad as some reviews claim, the cartoon comedy’s rating does nothing to help the show’s case and the Scooby-Doo reboot’s best qualities are all elements that could have been included in a more family-friendly version of the show.
Velma Wastes Its R Rating
Outside of two (offscreen) murders and a smug meta-opening scene filled with cartoon nudity, Velma doesn’t utilize its R rating and the creative freedom that the adult-only certification affords the series. Velma’s reinventions of the Scooby-Doo gang (which turn Fred into a privileged, self-obsessed narcissist, Velma into a bitter outcast, and Shaggy into a high-strung, neurotic nerd) could have all appeared in a PG-rated series, and these are the ideas that provide the first two episodes of Velma with their best jokes. The gory moments are limited to bizarre background gags like an unnamed character losing a foot or Fred getting shot in both legs (only to instantly recover, cartoon logic-style).
Meanwhile, the drug jokes seen in Velma season 1, episode 2, “The Candy (Wo)man,“ could easily have appeared in a TV-14 series, and the occasional swearing isn’t particularly impactful. For longtime fans of the franchise, the moments that work in Velma are the backstory for Velma’s glasses, the unlikely revelation that Shaggy was once a strait-laced nerd, and other subversions of the franchise’s status quo. For newcomers, the fast-paced, relentlessly irreverent comedy is the main draw, but Velma’s underutilized R-rating improves neither of these elements. If anything, Velma's character comedy could have been funnier if the series didn’t feel the need to cram in misplaced gore gags.
Velma Didn’t Need To Be R-Rated
Few of Velma’s most successful storylines or jokes rely on the adults-only rating and, with no real scares and only cartoony violence, it’s tough to see why an R rating was necessary for the HBO Max show. The problem with Velma’s R-rated Scooby-Doo retelling is that the show doesn’t do much to justify this more mature classification, particularly when the unrealistic cartoon tone means that even the goriest moments would likely have made it into a TV-14 version of the show. The few scares seen in Velma (such as Velma’s nightmarish hallucinations of a bony, disfigured witch) are played straight, but they are no scarier or more visceral than a PG rating allows.
Why Velma Is R-Rated
The real reason that Velma is R-rated is that the Scooby-Doo reboot needed to stand out in a sea of Scooby-Doo re-imaginings. 2020’s Scoob already did the Scooby-Doo gang’s origin story plot, while Be Cool, Scooby-Doo already offered a version of the show with rapid-fire humor, over-the-top characters, and meta, self-referential jokes. offered another origin story for Mystery Inc, while Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated was Scooby-Doo, reimagined as a self-serious CW teen drama a decade before Velma (and had a darker, more mature tone than Velma despite its target audience). Thus, Velma was left with no way to justify its existence.
Some of Velma’s harsher reviews have suggested that the series still hasn’t justified its existence, but this is not necessarily true. In its strongest scenes, Velma plays like a chaotic, irreverent spoof of the Scooby-Doo mythos, and its over-the-top, cartoony humor works from time to time. However, Velma’s case is not helped by the show’s R rating. Velma’s R rating implies that the Scooby-Doo reboot will be a darker, more mature, scarier, and gorier affair than the light-hearted, silly cartoony comedy that the HBO Max show actually is, and doesn’t help the series as a result.