Lock up your Scooby Snacks and prepare your emotional baggage, because the Mystery Gang is officially entering their angst era.
Netflix has just dropped the first teaser for “Scooby-Doo: Origins,” a live-action prequel series that aims to do to Hanna-Barbera what Riverdale did to Archie Comics. Berlanti Productions promises to be the darkest, most secret-filled interpretation of Mystery Inc. to date.
The Plot: Camp Counselors and Supernatural Homicide
According to Netflix’s Tudum, the series completely rewrites the classic “Let’s split up, gang” dynamic.
The story opens with lifelong friends Daphne and Shaggy trying to survive their final year of summer camp. Their counselor duties are abruptly cut short when they stumble into a terrifying mystery involving a stray puppy. Which may or may not have been the sole eyewitness to a supernatural murder.
To solve the crime, they are forced to team up with Velma, reimagined here as a cynical “scientific townie,” and Fred, described as “the strange but ever-so-handsome new kid.” Naturally, as the four teens dig into the local horrors, they are pulled into a psychological nightmare that threatens to expose all of their deep, dark secrets.
The New Generation of Sleuths
The casting department did not come to play. They’ve loaded up the Mystery Machine with some of the busiest young actors in Hollywood.
Daphne Blake (Mckenna Grace): The genre juggernaut (The Haunting of Hill House, Ghostbusters, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, Scream 7) steps into the purple boots. Grace voiced young Daphne in the 2020 animated film Scoob!
Velma Dinkley (Abby Ryder Fortson): The Ant-Man and Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret breakout star trades her childhood whimsy for Velma’s signature turtleneck and magnifying glass.
Shaggy Rogers (Tanner Hagen): The newcomer takes on the monumental task of inheriting Matthew Lillard’s iconic slacker energy.
Fred Jones (Maxwell Jenkins): The Lost in Space alum rounds out the core four as the mysterious new kid in town.
The Great “Is That Even a Great Dane?” Discourse
The internet is already losing its collective mind over the show’s biggest creative swing. For the first time in franchise history, Scooby-Doo is being played by a real, live-action puppy.
The teaser features a clip of a brown, floppy-eared puppy running through the woods directly into Tanner Hagen’s arms. Instantly, people across social media swarmed the comment sections to point out that the puppy looks suspiciously like a chocolate Labrador rather than an oversized Great Dane.
“Y’all had one job,” wrote one disgruntled fan on Instagram. “SCOOBY IS A GREAT DANE!!!!!! How do you mess up something so simple????” read another, prompting a few level-headed pup connoisseurs to fire back with: “People have never seen a Great Dane puppy, and it shows.”
Whether he’s a purebred sleuth or a shelter mutt, the real-life puppy is undeniably cute. Check out the controversial teaser clip below and judge the canine credentials for yourself before Origins hits your streaming queue.
