2022 Year in Review

It's been an unexpectedly light year for Scooby after we got tons of content last year. I joked with someone in the comments that the Year-in-Review post for this year would be blank; but thankfully it didn't end up being that light thanks to Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo. It will be very slim pickings for this year's list, given there was hardly anything released.

For those of you who are new to the blog this year, I always write up a post at the end of each year ranking my favorite things that happened in the franchise each year. I don't include any announcements of content happening in the future (i.e. the Velma teaser would not count, since the series itself won't be released until 2023), and I also don't typically include any non-official content or trivial stuff (i.e. Tracy Mark Lee sharing the designs for the Dolly Parton and Mel Brooks Guess Who episodes). Since it was a light year, I made one exception this year which I'll explain when I get to it.

We also had a bit of sad news this year, that being Scoob! Holiday Haunt was cancelled by Warner Brothers' new CEO David Zaslav it was supposed to be released around this time. I'm glad this doesn't seem to be affecting any other Scooby content, since we have confirmation that Mystery Pups and Velma are going ahead with production. I'm not really sure on Krypto, though, since there's been speculation that it was cancelled.

I don't really have a lot to say about the first few things up until we get to #4, but I'll quickly go through them just to include everything that's happened this year.

10. Wendy's Scooby-Doo Pop Up Mysteries
Although I won't be getting them myself, I think it was a cool idea for Wendy's to release pop-up mystery playsets based on classic Where Are You episodes!

9. MG Collectibles Figures
Don't have much to say about this, but it's neat we got figures for Captain Cutler, the Space Kook and the Tar Monster (even if they were nearly $400 lol)!

8. Scooby-Doo and Glamlite Makeup
If there was one thing I wasn't expecting in 2022, it was getting an announcement for a Scooby-Doo makeup line lol. I think it's neat they made this, though! I'm a little confused why they didn't have the names correspond with the package designs, though (for example, the "Creeps and Crawls" eyeshadow has a picture of the witch on it rather than the green ghosts).

7. Matthew Lillard Rents Out 2002 Live-Action Mystery Machine on Air BnB
The title says it all, but this was another thing I would have never expected to happen. I thought it was so nice of Matthew to do this!

6. Scooby-Doo, Where Are You and Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries Comics
I guess this is kind of a placeholder, since I haven't read any of them, but six more Where Are You comics were released this year. I'm really happy to hear that some of the comics finally included original art. One of the big reasons I lost interest is because they just used stock art for all of the comics, and the stories weren't all that well-written in my opinion. It's great that they are using original art again.

I enjoyed the few Batman and Scooby-Doo Mysteries comics I checked out. I haven't read them all yet, but it's neat they rebooted the series after the original run ended in March. Overall, six of these comics were released this year.

5. Multiversus
We've arrived at the last thing that I'm mostly indifferent to lol. While I didn't personally play it, I thought it was really cool they included Scooby in this universe and essentially granted the wishes of all those fans who were wanting to see Ultra Instinct Shaggy in the Mortal Kombat games. Even though it wasn't technically in the Mortal Kombat universe, the fact that it had a connection with the creator of those games was very cool and I'm happy it happened for the thousands of fans who wanted it.

4. Scooby-Doo and Guess Who? The Complete Season Two
I'm super happy that we got this season on DVD. Given Be Cool Scooby-Doo season 2 was never released, I was worried Guess Who would suffer the same fate. I would love to have all the Scooby episodes, specials and films on DVD someday, so I'm happy they didn't choose to skip season 2 here like they did with Be Cool.

3. Daphne & Velma Book 3
While I didn't like this quite as much as the other two, I was really happy they finally released the third book in the trilogy after waiting over two years. The book was a very fitting end to the trilogy. It was really cool that the author, Morgan Baden, drew upon previous Scooby-Doo episodes and movies to create her own continuity for this trilogy. She also did a great job building suspense and horror all throughout the book. The villain was excellent, and the culprit was very unexpected. The only things I didn't like were the Fred/Velma romantic stuff, as well as the fact the book ended on a cliffhanger for seemingly no reason. Overall though, I thought Morgan did a great job writing these books and making the plots/characterizations very compelling. This trilogy makes an awesome addition to the Scooby franchise, and I wish these books got more attention than they did because they're great.

2. Mystery Incorporated
I don't typically include fan content, but I have to admit, I was super impressed by this and didn't want to exclude it. In a year that was extremely light for Scooby-Doo content, this was really nice to get what was basically a piece of Scooby-Doo fanfiction with cinematic quality. I thought the acting was excellent and the plot was super engaging. The comment complaint people seem to have about fanfiction is that it doesn't stay true to the characters, but I felt the writing for each of the characters was very compelling here. Like with Daphne & Velma, it was neat how they took bits of pieces of canon from previous Scooby content here and creatively interpreted it to create elements of the gang's characterization. I thought all of the actors and actresses did a great job. The one minor issue I had is that Fred's actor looked like he was much older than high-school age (I'd guess at least 25, possibly 30), as well as that one guy at the party I mentioned in my review that looked like he was 40 lol (I'll add him to the list of characters I stan for, along with Sassy Fred and the Arm-Crossing Gators from Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! haha). That's a pretty common thing in media to have cast people who are much older than the characters they play though, so I don't fault this series for it. The monsters in the series were great and seemed like something straight out of a horror film. I also loved how this series struck a bit of a darker tone. In addition, I thought they did a great job using references. I've complained in posts on here before that I don't like how they sometimes just reference the same things over and over for no reason, so it was very refreshing to see references worked well into the plot. It seems like they've run into a bit of a delay with episode 2 because they didn't quite meet their goal, but I'm really hopeful that episode 2 gets funded, because I can't wait to see what happens next!

1. Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo!
I was beginning to get worried that it was going to be the first year with no new Scooby DTVs since 1997, so I was really excited when we got the trailer for Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! I know this film created a lot of drama within the fandom because of Velma's sexuality, but I absolutely loved the film.

Although Scooby-Doo has not done well with retcons in recent years (looking at you, Curse of the 13th Ghost and Return to Zombie Island), I thought they did it well here. The fact that Coco creating all the costumes the gang has ever encountered seemed to be in a separate universe worked quite well. I know that some people thought Velma being romantically interested in a woman was cringey, but I thought it was very well done. It wasn't in-your-face; it felt natural and didn't completely overtake the movie. Honestly, the whole media reaction was the only thing that bothered me. There was one article in particular from a news source that I just thought was awful, in which they say "a Scooby-Doo writer confirmed Velma is a lesbian, so you can't even deny it!" In general, a lot of media sources used "the Scooby-Doo writers" as their source, which I thought didn't make sense, because there is no one entity of "the Scooby-Doo writers." Different people write each series and movies, so one writer is not an authority over the entire franchise. However, my main issue with the media coverage of this is that Velma being interested in one woman does not mean she's uninterested in people of other genders (Velma could be bisexual, for example). I think the movie did a great job representing Velma being interested in women, but I didn't like how the media slapped the "lesbian" label on Velma, since it's not specified what sexuality she is. That's more of a problem with society in general though and is nothing specific to this movie, so I digress.

The mystery was also quite good, and I really enjoyed the villains. I also liked how the animation allowed for characters' expressions to be more emphasized. I thought that was a really interesting touch.

I loved how zany this film was. The fact that the film divulged into random chaos in the last twenty minutes was amazing, because I love that kind of humor lol. I would love if they used this humor style again in the franchise.

My only real complaint about the film is that Daphne's character element felt rushed. It could have been a good character arc, but they only mentioned it once at the beginning and then it was never brought up again until a brief moment before the end of the movie. Overall, it was an amazing movie though and I really enjoyed it.

I hope everyone enjoyed reading this list! In terms of things I'd like to see next year, I'm not going to make a whole post, but all the stuff with WB cutting back on streaming projects made me think big-picture about what I want for next year. I think it would be great if we could get Scooby-Doo and Krypto Too!, but given that was never officially announced, I don't think we'll get an official announcement if it's cancelled either. It would be great if we could go back to getting the two DTVs per year we're accustomed to. However, to be entirely honest, I wouldn't mind switching to getting DTVs once a year if they were all great quality, rather than just pumping out crossover after crossover like they were for quite a few years. It was a breath of fresh air to have a movie that wasn't a crossover this year. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the crossovers, but it gets to be a bit much when we have both a series (Guess Who) and all the movies being crossovers at the same time. I'm hopeful that the WB-Discovery merge doesn't affect anything beyond Scoob! Holiday Haunt, but I also wouldn't mind if they dropped down to one DTV per year if the quality was even better than what they were doing with two DTVs.

The other thing I'm a bit worried about going forward is the backlash involving Velma. Even now before the show is released, I know there is going to be a ton more backlash over the show, probably even more than we saw with Trick or Treat, which is unfortunate. My hope is that the backlash isn't too bad, and that people remember that this is just one Scooby show separate from the rest of the franchise. No matter how bad it is, isn't going to "ruin" Scooby-Doo. All of the previous shows are still available for everyone's viewing, and it's safe to say it's not going to affect anything else in the franchise and suddenly turn the franchise into Family Guy or anything like that.

This next year is going to be very interesting for the Scooby franchise, both because of Velma and the fact that since it happened pretty late in the year, this will be the first full year that we'll be seeing the affects of WB and Discovery's merge. It will be fascinating to see what happens, but I'm keeping my hopes up for a great year!