Scopper-Doo creators reveal Velma Velma, who has never been seen before

After years of speculation about the beloved character's sexuality, the creators of a new Scooby-Doo movie have finally depicted Velma as a lesbian on screen, but there are no definitive portrayals of her as queer in the popular cartoon franchise.

Velma crushes another female character, a costume designer named Coco Diablo, in a Halloween special called Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo, which was released online Tuesday and will debut on the Cartoon Network on October 14. She was voiced by the actor and comedian Kate Micucci.

In one scene, Velma s glasses fog up and her cheeks redden as she fawns over Coco. Velma says her classic tag line is Jinkies. She flirts with Coco throughout the movie, clearly smitten.

Velma's queer sensibilities have made her a favorite of LGBTQ fans of Scooby-Doo. While some producers of certain iterations of the show have previously confirmed that her character isn't straight, she hasn't outwardly flirted with or expressed such strong attraction to other female characters in the decadeslong history of the franchise.

In 2020, producer Tony Cervone confirmed that Velma was a lesbian in his depiction of her in Mystery Incorporated, a cartoon series that ran from 2010 to 2013 in a cartoon series.

He wrote in an Instagram post that he made his intentions as clear as possible ten years ago. Most of the fans got it. To those who didn't, I suggest you look closer. James Gunn, the director of Suicide Squad and the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, who wrote the live-action Scooby-Doo films of the early 2000s, said in 2020 that Velma was originally written as a queer character in those films. He said the studio, Warner Bros. Pictures, refused to keep her queerness in the script.

The studio kept watering it down and watering it down, ambiguous the version shot then nothing the released version and finally having a boyfriend the sequel Gunn wrote at the time.

Representatives for Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is a company that owns both Warner Bros. Pictures and Warner Bros. Animation, which produced the new Halloween special, did not respond immediately to a request for comment.

Despite this summer s controversy over the release of Pixar's Toy Story spinoff Lightyear, which was banned from theaters in Muslim-majority nations for showing a same-sex kiss, Velma's more overt expression of her sexuality is the latest example of queer representation in animated films or television shows. A few weeks ago, the writers of the British children's show Peppa Pig included a lesbian couple in an episode after years of calls for more LGBTQ characters.