Critical response Velma received negative reviews from critics. The
review aggregator website
Rotten Tomatoes reported a 39% approval rating based on 38 critics' reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "Jinkies! This radical reworking of the beloved Mystery Team has plenty of attitude and style, but it doesn't have the first clue for how to turn its clever subversion into engaging fun."
Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 54 out of 100 based on 17 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Saloni Gajjar of
The A.V. Club gave the show a positive review, praising most of the humor, characterization, storytelling, voice cast, and creative liberties, but stating that sometimes the show falls victim to the tropes it mocks. She concluded the review by saying, "This isn't the
Velma we're used to, but it's the
Velma we deserve to enjoy today." Darren Franich of
Entertainment Weekly was far more negative and gave the show a C, describing it as a "self-aware slog" and "so extra it's minus". He criticized the strong emphasis on pop-culture references and
meta humor, and how they tend to bury the few bright spots.
Richard Roeper of the
Chicago Sun-Times gave it two out of four stars and stated that, "at times the humor is smart and spot-on, but it quickly becomes exhausting. It's as if a team of very clever scribes gathered in a writers' room and recorded everything they said – and then shoehorned all of it into the series." Liz Shannon Miller of
Consequence criticized the show's unbalanced tone, lack of focus, absence of Scooby-Doo, and overstuffed narrative. She also stated the series "feels a bit PG in comparison to other adult animation currently in the works". Conversely, Miller praised the voice acting as well as some of the gags, ending the review by hoping for a second season to iron out its flaws, having noted the show takes a "the first season is really the pilot episode" approach. In a mixed critique, Angie Han of
The Hollywood Reporter praised the "thoughtful, emotionally honest" portrayal of Velma herself, but made note of how the show loves to poke fun at televised tropes, yet "seems somewhat less sure of what it has to offer in their stead". She stated how the series' "insistence that it's not like other shows grows thin" and criticized how the cast feels more like "joke machines" than individual characters. Writing for
IGN, Brittany Vincent criticized the series' portrayal of its title character, comparing her to "a biting, hateful version of
Daria without the character growth", stating this aspect of the show holds it back from being what it strives to be. She did, however, praise the "side-splitting" comedy and the portrayals of Daphne and Fred, concluding that, "ironically, the series would be exponentially better without its namesake – or at least [with] a version of her with a bit more character growth." ''
Paste Magazine's Rendy Jones gave the series a 5.8 out of 10, praising the art direction and voice performances, but describing the writing as "constantly at war with itself". They also compared it unfavorably to Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, which they deemed similar in intentions but superior in execution. Joshua Alston of Variety'' wrote the show is "irreverent to a fault", extolling most of the humor but stating it could belong to any other comedy series. He felt the Mystery Inc. gang was "really unpleasant".
Audience response Audience reception to
Velma has been overwhelmingly negative. It became one of the lowest-rated television shows on
IMDb, receiving similar low scores from audiences on
Rotten Tomatoes and
Google. Asyia Iftikhar of
PinkNews wrote that the show had been "accused of perpetuating
stereotypes against South Asian women, criticised for poor attempts at self-aware comedy and slammed for losing the essence of what people love about the Scooby Doo gang". Brahmjot Kaur of
NBC News wrote that the accusations of stereotypes had been rebutted by some who noted characters in other television shows invented by Kaling shared similar personality traits to the titular protagonist, while citing Kaling's past influences. However, when discussing the issue of racial stereotyping in Velma, Lakshmi Srinivas, a professor of Asian American studies at the
University of Massachusetts, felt that Kaling was "being held to unfair standards as one of the only representations of South Asian women in the industry". == Legacy ==