The Mystery, Inc. gang got a new coat of paint in 2002, and it mostly worked. What’s New, Scooby-Doo? premiered on The WB on September 14, 2002, and ran three seasons and 42 episodes before its last episode aired on July 21, 2005. It was the ninth incarnation of the franchise that began with Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, and the first new Scooby series in a decade.
Trailer, via retro VHS trailers.
A decade-long wait ends on The WB
That gap matters. The last series, A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, ended in 1991. What’s New, Scooby-Doo? was the first Scooby-Doo series produced by Warner Bros. Animation, and the first to arrive after both the foreclosure of Hanna-Barbera and the death of William Hanna in 2001. The show was created by Sander Schwartz.
The premise stayed close to the original. Scooby-Doo and his companions Fred, Daphne, Velma, and Shaggy travel to varying locations solving mysteries, the same format Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! used. What changed was the century. The characters use technology that did not exist when the 1969 series first aired, which is the whole point of the update.
Fred and Velma come back to the van
The bigger shift was in the cast. The series marked the return of Velma and Fred as main characters in the regular franchise for the first time since 1984’s The New Scooby-Doo Mysteries. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo featured both, but it was a prequel to the original 1969 show, so it does not count the same way.
The voice cast is where this series earns its place in the franchise’s history:
- Frank Welker as Fred Jones and Scooby-Doo
- Casey Kasem as Shaggy Rogers
- Mindy Cohn as Velma Dinkley
- Grey DeLisle as Daphne Blake
Welker had voiced Fred before, but this was the first television series in the franchise where he also played Scooby-Doo. DeLisle and Cohn were new to Daphne and Velma. Kasem returned to Shaggy after five years away from the role.
Casey Kasem’s last run as Shaggy
That Kasem run is the detail worth holding onto. What’s New, Scooby-Doo? was the final Scooby-Doo series where he voiced Shaggy before his death. A performer who had returned to the character after five years away got one more full series, and the show gave him a version of Shaggy that fit the modernized setting without turning him into someone else.
The tech update is the part that could have gone wrong, and it mostly holds. Giving the gang tools that did not exist in 1969 is a reasonable way to keep the mystery format from feeling like a museum piece. It does not change what the show is. The format that worked in 1969 still works here.
Where the series is thinner is in ambition. Three seasons and 42 episodes is a solid run, but the show is a restoration job more than a reinvention. It brings Fred and Velma back, it puts Welker behind Scooby, and it hands Kasem a proper sendoff. Those are real accomplishments, and they are also the whole of what it sets out to do.
Where it sits in the franchise
The ninth incarnation of Scooby-Doo had to justify itself after ten years off the air, and it did that by treating the original format as worth keeping rather than fixing. The modernized technology is the surface change. The cast is the actual story.
A 7.8 out of 10 from the TMDB audience score, with 699 votes, is the right score for a series that knows exactly what it is and executes it without much risk. It is not the best Scooby-Doo has ever been. It is the most careful, and for a franchise coming off a decade of silence and the loss of its co-founder, careful was the correct call.
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