26 Years Later, Peppermint Patty's Final 'Peanuts' Strip Is Still Her Most Memorable Quote

Here's an interesting fact about Peanuts: Peppermint Patty has a full canonical name, which was only ever mentioned once. It’s Patricia Reichardt, as per the strip for Jan. 15, 1972. She was named after Peanuts creator Charles Schulz's secretary Susan Reichardt, although six real-time years passed between Patty's introduction and the single strip in which she gives her surname.

That's one of several ways in which Patty always felt like she was inhabiting a distinctly different strip than everyone else in Peanuts, and it’s not just because she and Marcie go to a different school than everyone else. In a comic where most of the characters regularly grapple with weighty issues related to theology, philosophy, and ethics, Patty gets poor grades, routinely sleeps through class, gets a D-minus on every test, and was convinced for a long time that Snoopy is just a funny-looking quiet kid instead of an actual dog.

Peanutsfor January 15, 1972

Source: Charles Schulz for United Feature Syndicate

On the other hand, Patty is a gifted athlete, and her baseball team routinely defeats Charlie Brown's. Everyone has their own talents.

Patty's academic underachievement does tend to mean that she's on the low end of the Peanuts quotability scale. When Patty's around in Peanuts, the jokes all tend to be at her own expense.

With that in mind, the most memorable line from Peppermint Patty might also be her last. Both Patty and her eternal sidekick Marcie made their final appearance in Peanuts on Jan. 2, 2000, around six weeks before the strip's conclusion.

Closing time

Peanutsfor Jan. 2, 2000

Source: Charles Schulz for United Feature Syndicate

The strip features Patty, initially by herself in a deserted football field in the rain. No one else is playing, but Patty seems under the impression that she's accompanied by Charlie Brown. No explanation is offered. Maybe they were playing themselves, or watching a local game that's gotten rained out. Either way, Patty isn't willing to admit it's over: "Hey Chuck, it's a great game, isn't it?"

Even Marcie, when she shows up with an umbrella, can't talk Patty out of it. All she can do is play along:

"We had fun, didn't we, Marcie?"

"Yes, sir. We had fun."

Patty isn’t shown leaving the field. Instead, she simply says aloud, “No one shook hands and said ‘Good game…’”

The Jan. 2 strip feels like it could be a deliberate sendoff for Patty, Marcie, and for that matter, Peanuts itself. The game's over, and it's getting dark. You can't pretend otherwise any longer. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here.

This is unusual, as most of the characters in Peanuts never got this kind of organized farewell. Schulz never commented on it one way or another, but this is the one strip in the last two months of Peanuts’ run that seems like it could be at all related to the comic’s imminent end, aside from the actual finale. It’s hard not to wonder if Jan. 2, 2000 was Schulz’s one and only dive into meta-commentary, like all his feelings on his upcoming retirement got compressed into a single, borderline surreal Sunday strip.

Peanuts shifted to only running new strips on Sundays for the last six weeks of its run, and most of those strips might best be defined as "business as usual." There's no sign in the work of Schulz's then-failing health or any awareness that the strip is coming to an end. It's good old Charlie Brown and friends, as ever, for a while, and then Peanuts is over.

The Jan. 2, 2000 strip has a certain fame among fans of Peanuts as Patty's most memorable moment, as well as one of the single saddest Peanuts strips. It's nowhere near Patty's funniest joke, and in fact, isn't much of a joke at all. In a comic strip that's often defined by its bittersweetness, this is much more bitter than Schulz usually lets it get. If you choose to interpret it that way, it's as close as Schulz came to letting any of the characters themselves say goodbye.