Apple’s Next ‘Snoopy Presents’ Original Will Spotlight a Beloved Historic Character

This week, Apple announced its new slate of kids and family programming for early 2024 that’s set to include yet another fresh, heartwarming Peanuts special.

After a marathon run of nearly three dozen Charlie Brown specials that kicked off with the 1965 holiday classic, A Charlie Brown Christmas, the Peanuts franchise went got very quiet for over a decade, offering up only The Peanuts Movie in 2015 to break the silence.

However, that all changed after Apple debuted Apple TV+ in 2019. The tech giant quickly signed a STEM-focused deal to produce Snoopy in Space, and by late 2020, it had expanded that arrangement to make Apple TV+ the home for “all things Peanuts” — a stewardship that it’s been taking very seriously.

Since then, Apple has created a series of engaging Peanuts stories for a new generation that offer a deeper focus on our favorite characters. The first Charlie Brown holiday special produced in over twenty years, Auld Lang Syne, focused on Lucy’s struggles to put together a perfect New Year’s Eve party, but that wasn’t a one-off as Apple quickly established its new style with Earth Day’s It’s the Small Things, Charlie Brown that put Charlie Brown’s sister, Sally in focus, followed by To Mom (And Dad) With Love featuring Peppermint Patty, and, most recently, One of a Kind Marcie, showing the trials and tribulations of the gang’s most thoughtful and caring introvert.

Now, it’s time for Apple to spotlight another well-known character that hasn’t received enough attention over the years. Premiering Friday, February 16, Welcome Home, Franklin will provide an origin story of the history-making first African-American in the Peanuts comic strip.

It was in the middle of the civil rights movement in 1968 that Charles M. Schulz decided to add Franklin to his strip — and he pulled absolutely no punches in doing so. Stories that were controversial at the time, such as showing Franklin playing with Charlie Brown on the beach or sitting beside Peppermint Patty in school, didn’t sit well with some members of the public — and many newspaper editors — in an era when schools and even bathrooms were still segregated in many parts of the United States.

However, while other cartoonists shied away from including black characters out of fear of being dropped by their syndicators, Charles M. Schulz courageously stuck to his guns, telling one editor who wanted Franklin dropped, or at least shown segregated from the white kids: “Either you print it just the way I draw it or I quit.”

After all, while Franklin wasn’t one of the main characters of the Peanuts gang, he was never relegated to being a mere background character. His appearances were sporadic, but he was a fully accepted member of the group and a friend of Charlie Brown.

That tradition will be celebrated in Welcome Home, Franklin as the special shows how Franklin, who comes from a military background (in one of his first appearances in the comic strip, he mentions his father was a soldier fighting in Vietnam) and therefore has a family that’s regularly on the move.

When he enters the world of Charlie Brown and Snoopy and the gang, Franklin is left trying to figure out how to make new friends, following advice his grandfather gave him in a notebook. While he initially has trouble fitting in, he soon learns about the neighborhood Soap Box Derby and partners up with Charlie Brown to build a car and enter the race.

Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin airs on Apple TV+ on February 16 and joins two other new kids’ series returning for their second seasons in 2024: Sago Mini Friends on January 26 andFraggle Rock: Back to The Rock on March 29.