Good Luck Watching The Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin Trailer Without Crying
The trailer for the latest Apple TV+ Charlie Brown special is here, and no offense to Peppermint Patty, Lucy, and the rest of the crew, but this looks like it's set to be the best Peanuts character spotlight story yet. The new animated special is titled "Welcome Home, Franklin," and it's set to finally shine a light on Franklin, Charlie Brown's laid back friend who joined the comic strip in 1968. Notably, Franklin is the only Black character in the main Peanuts gang lineup that's featured prominently in several of the most popular specials, and his role in the friend group has led to plenty of memeing and criticism over the years.
In the social media age, Franklin is perhaps best known for his appearance in "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving," where he's seated awkwardly far across the table from all of his white friends. Screencaps from the 1973 special tend to go viral around the holiday season, to the point that the widow of comic creator Charles M. Schulz at one point responded to claims that the table setting is racist. "While it can't be known now which animator drew that particular scene, you can be sure there was no ulterior motive," Jean Schulz wrote on her blog in 2019.
A beloved character is finally off the sidelines
With that being said, Franklin's exclusion — accidental or not — is emblematic of all the ways the field of animation failed to center or even acknowledge characters of color for decades (though things are improving, thankfully). Franklin may not have been segregated outside of that one screencap, but his character was invented with matters like segregation on the mind: according to The Washington Post, a schoolteacher wrote to Schulz in the wake of Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr's assassination, asking him to add a Black character to the series. The cartoonist obliged, and put his foot down when the company behind the Peanuts' comic strip placement balked at the idea. "Either you run it the way I drew it, or I quit," Schulz reportedly said.
Franklin was born into a divided, racist world and his appearance as a background character in classic Peanuts specials fell short at times, but "Welcome Home, Franklin" is clearly made with healing in mind. The trailer for the special doesn't just flesh out Franklin's established backstory and center him as a temporary protagonist (just like the rest of the Apple TV+ era specials have for key characters), but it also strives to repair the Thanksgiving problem. After revisiting Franklin and Charlie's first meeting (which seems to match up perfectly with their comic strip introduction) and setting up a plot involving a partnered derby race, "Welcome Home, Franklin" ends by revisiting the Thanksgiving table scene — from a different perspective.
We saved you a seat
"Hey Franklin, we saved you a seat," Linus calls to his friend across the table in the new version. The Peanuts gang may not be at the exact same Thanksgiving dinner we saw in the 1973 special (they're eating pizza this time instead of popcorn and jelly beans), but this animated righting of a decades-old wrong is still astoundingly heartfelt. It's all but impossible not to cry watching Franklin happily take his seat among his friends, a big, brimming root beer float in hand, after so many years spent on the outside.
"You know you've found your home when you're surrounded by good friends," Franklin says in voiceover in the trailer's final moments. Peanuts may be way late to the party on giving Franklin his dues, but from the angle we're shown here, it's clear that the gap between the boy and his friends was never that big after all. All he really needed was someone willing to bridge it, and that's exactly what "Welcome Home, Franklin" looks like it's ready to do. "Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin" was written with "Jump Start" comic creator Robb Armstrong. Charles M. Schulz gave Franklin the surname "Armstrong" in his honor for the 1994 animated television special "You're in the Super Bowl, Charlie Brown." At last, the namesake becomes officially part of the story.
"Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin" will stream on Apple TV+ beginning February 16, 2024.