Despite a good deal of negative critical attention (including a 54 from Metacritic, and a 0.5 from Metacritic users), the Max animated series, Velma, has been renewed for a second season on the popular Warner Bros. Discovery streaming service.
Suzanna Makkos, Executive Vice President of Original Comedy and Adult Animation for Max and Adult Swim made the announcement in passing at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival when she listed the second season of the series as one of a number of other projects that will be moving forward at Max.
What is Velma about?
Developed and created for television by Charlie Grandy, a longtime collaborator of Mindy Kaling, the series was also executive produced by Kaling, who stars on the series as the title character, Velma Dinkley. The series is a revamp of the Scooby Doo cartoon, depicting the lives of the human members of the Mystery Machine gang before they met Scooby Doo. While originally, all four members of the team were White in the cartoons; in Velma, Velma is South Asian-American, Shaggy (referred to here as his real name, Norville), is African-America, and Daphne is East Asian-American.
The show does a good deal of metafictional humor, and, of course, is intended for an adult audience, so while Velma and her friends are still trying to solve mysteries, they are pretty grisly murders of teenagers at their high school this time around.
Did Max say anything about the renewal?
While Makkos did not mention anything about Velma in particular, she did state, “The series that we create at Max are art and voice driven, with character and comedy coming before anything else. We’re always looking for hard comedy with heart and edge, diverse and inclusive shows with underlying thematic resonance, and character design that showcases the hand of the artist. I am so excited to share these incredible series with the world, and continue to show why Max is a great home for adult animation.”
The first season of the series did end on a cliffhanger, which suggested that Grandy and Kaling had at least some suspicion that the show would see a second season.
The show’s main voice cast, outside Kaling as Velma, are Glenn Howerton as Fred Jones, Sam Richardson as Norville Rogers and Constance Wu as Daphne Blake.