Charlie Brown’s Final Peanuts Quote Remains a Classic 26 Years Later

Charles Schulz surprised the world when he announced his retirement on Dec. 14, 1999. His health had declined, he could no longer see clearly, and he had been diagnosed with colon cancer. He needed to focus on his health, so he would end Peanuts. The strip stopped about nine weeks later, after newspapers had run the installments he had already completed.

Schulz died in his sleep on Feb. 12, 2000, the day before the last strip appeared in newspapers. By then, Peanuts had run for roughly 49 years and four months, with a total of 17,897 strips. Schulz had never taken a sabbatical or employed assistants.

The final weeks of Peanuts were largely business as usual. Fans had spent years wondering whether the strip’s failure-themed running gags might end differently. Would the Great Pumpkin appear? Would Charlie Brown kick the football, meet the often-mentioned but never-shown red-haired girl, or manage his baseball team to a win?

None of those things happened. Schulz had to retire sooner than he expected, and Peanuts stopped without an organized conclusion. Some strips in the final run can be read as having a subtext about the ending, especially Peppermint Patty’s last appearance. But Schulz did not have time to set up a finale. His farewell was all he could give.

In his last televised interview, Schulz told Al Roker about drawing the final strip and an uncharacteristic moment of regret. “All of a sudden, I thought, ‘You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even got to kick the football!'” Whether Schulz might have done something with that feeling if he had more time is impossible to know.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy technically make their last Peanuts appearances in the first two panels of the Feb. 13 strip, which serve as an optional introduction to Schulz’s farewell message. The first two panels of a Sunday comic in American newspapers are often designed as a disposable gag, allowing a paper’s layout team to rearrange the strip.

The last full Peanuts strip ran on Feb. 6, 2000. It marked Sally Brown’s final appearance and Charlie Brown’s last starring role. In the Valentine’s Day strip, Charlie Brown once again contends with his lack of romantic success.

Love’s labors lost

In the final installment of one of the strip’s sadder running gags, Charlie Brown waits by his mailbox for a love letter. Once again, none arrives.

He takes care to clean the mailbox first. “The inside of a mailbox should always be kept clean in case you get a love letter,” he tells Sally, before a sudden storm sends them both indoors.

Once they are dry, Charlie Brown continues explaining the rules of love letters to Sally, including why he will not go back out in the rain to check the mail. “When it’s raining, the only letters you get are those that say, ‘I never want to see you again!'”

“You seem to know a lot about love letters,” Sally says.

“If I ever got one,” Charlie Brown says, “I don’t know what I’d do.”

Earlier in the strip’s run, the episode might have been another self-effacing joke about Charlie Brown’s losing streak. It also draws on a Peanuts staple: children making up their own rules as they go. Charlie Brown sounds certain about love letters, even though he has never received one.

As his last starring appearance, the strip carries an extra layer of sadness. Charlie Brown leaves the world much as he entered it, doing his best to stay positive in a setting built around his misery.

Source: Polygon