Velma: This Halloween Needs to be More Special! (2024) – Review

With the amount of backlash from both critics and fans alike, there was very little chance that Velma was going to get a third season – the fact that it had a second season had more to do with the economics of creating an animated show rather than the quality of season one – but those that hoped this “special” would wrap up season two’s cliffhanger without doing any more damage to these beloved characters, were disappointed on both counts.

Oh, Velma, what have they done to you now? This Halloween Needs to be More Special! takes the already polarizing 2023 Velma reboot and dials it up to a level that’s… well, not special. If you thought the series was divisive, this Halloween special may leave you longing for simpler times when Velma solved mysteries with her gang instead of making you wonder why you spent 37 minutes of your life watching this train wreck. The special leans heavily into the same brand of “edgy” humour that defined the series, but it misses the mark time and time again. This special is so hollow and lacklustre that the Great Pumpkin himself would likely skip town rather than endure it. And one must ask “Does this terrible entry put the entire future of the franchise in question?”

“Do you think we’ll survive on TikTok or something?”

For those who don’t remember, or have been trying to forget, season two of Velma ended with Scrappy-Doo fatally wounding Velma (Mindy Kaling) but then ended up dying after Velma’s ghost possessed his body, and while Dr. Purdue was unable to restore Velma’s body, Amber revealed that they can revive her with magic, albeit only on Halloween night after finding a spell that works. This Halloween special begins with a failed attempt at putting Velma’s soul back in her body, none of Amber’s (Sara Rameriz) spells are strong enough, but Thorn (Jennifer Hale) reveals that she handed a more powerful magic book to the Historical Society, so with only nineteen hours left before Halloween ends our gang of “heroes” must act and act quickly.

“Guys, if we solve this fast enough maybe we’ll get a third season?”

Unfortunately, there is a wrinkle in their plan in the form of a corpse at the Historical Society. A staffer has recently fallen down the stairs to her death and it is suggested that this is due to the ghost of the Black Knight. Evelyn (Kari Wahlgren), an employee of the Historical Society, informs them that many years a scorned, dorky student dressed up as a Black Knight was run out of the first Sexy Halloween and pushed off a cliff, he returns to haunt it every year and claims a life, and by that, I mean a party goer is found dead via falling. When the ghostly whispering of the Black Knight sends Velma fleeing it becomes apparent that we have a real mystery on our hands.

How can Velma and her friends defeat this fearsome foe?

Of course, that’s not the only issue facing our group and despite this special’s short running time, we have a lot of plot threads. Daphne (Constance Wu) seems more focused on attending the Sexy Halloween party than resurrecting her girlfriend, Norville (Sam Richardson) is happy about being dragged to the Sexy Halloween party by his girlfriend due to the whole “murderous ghost” problem, and the parents of Crystal Cove continue to try and convince their kids to attend the Non-Sexy Halloween party at the school gym, and Fred finds out that his family is now broke.

“Sorry son, I invested our entire family fortune into this series.”

Sadly, the whole mystery concerning the Black Knight is put on the back burner for a while – who’d want a good mystery in a Scooby-Doo show that lacks Scooby-Doo – instead, it focuses on the gang trying to get Velma back in her body. With the fear that the “Witch Guide to Dark Magic” could corrupt anyone who reads it, Fred (Glenn Howerton) acquires an audiobook version, and from it, they learn that the only way to bring Velma back from the dead is to confront what they fear most. This results in an insufferable amount of time spent following the gang running around trying to find out which particular fear they need to confront and it’s about as interesting as it sounds.

My greatest fear is this show getting a third season.

But who is behind the many murders surrounding the Sexy Halloween party? Is it the ghost of Geoff (Nicholas Braun) the dorky kid in the Black Knight costume who was pushed off a cliff all those many years ago? Or is it one of the Crystal Cove parents who have their own agenda in preventing sexy parties at Halloween? Or is a bunch of lazy screenwriters coming up with a contrived twist that makes the original Scooby-Doo mysteries look like Agatha Christie by comparison? Well, it turns out that dear old Evelyn of the Historical Society created the myth of the Black Knight to keep everyone afraid, fear being required for her dark magic to work, and she’s been murdering people ever since in hopes of creating an atmosphere of dread and fear. With the book of Dark Magic in her hands she unleashes a zombie horde, and I just wish this was as exciting as it sounds.

“Klaatu barada nikto!”

Stray Observations:

• Rapper Saweetie shows up to perform at the Sexy Halloween party turning this portion of the Halloween special into an episode of Scooby-Doo and Guess Who?
• The character of The Black Knight is a nod to the very first episode of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! called “What a Night for a Knight?”
• The local costume store stocks several costumes that reference other classic Scooby-Doo cartoons, such as the Space Kook, the Big Bad Werewolf and the Ghost Clown.

If you can’t be good at least reference something good, right?

The title promises something special, but what we get instead is a half-baked mystery mixed in with more moronic shenanigans by this gang of idiots. This special continues to depict Velma as a whiny, insecure wreck who spends more time worrying about her social media presence than catching ghosts, or in this case, having herself un-ghosted. The jokes aimed at poking fun at Halloween tropes often fall flat, either because they’re too on-the-nose or because they’re buried under layers of self-referential humour that don’t quite land. The special’s attempts at being “too cool” for Halloween, while simultaneously celebrating it, create a confusing dichotomy.

“Keep looking, we’re bound to find a plot here somewhere.”

Animation-wise, it’s a mixed bag. As with the previous two seasons, it’s a colourful and occasionally vibrant setting, but it feels like the visuals are trying to compensate for how utterly lifeless the story is. The attempts at humour fall flatter than a Scooby snack that’s been left out for a week. Instead of clever gags, we’re bombarded with tired meta-commentary about how outdated Velma’s character is—newsflash: we know, you don’t need to remind us every five minutes! Worse is the fact that this doesn’t even wrap up the series, instead, we get another cliffhanger indicating that the Book of Evil has corrupted Fred and thus a new threat hangs over Crystal Cove.

Thankfully, the threat of a third season is very small.

In the end, Velma: This Halloween Needs to be More Special! is a trick, not a treat. If you’re looking for a Halloween special to get you into the spooky spirit, this isn’t it. Watch literally anything else—It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, A Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, or even that knock-off haunted house show your neighbour made. Trust me, it’ll be a better time and you’ll have more fun. If this special was meant to breathe new life into the Velma franchise, it failed miserably, and it even dropped the ball on wrapping up the pesky cliffhanger from season two which is pretty unforgivable. Overall, this Halloween special left me wishing I was watching the real Scooby-Doo gang hunt for actual monsters instead of enduring another soulless Halloween-themed pity party.

You can find all my reviews of the various Scooby-Doo shows and movies collected here: The Wonderful World of Scooby-