It’s been a strange year to be a South Park fan. After a few spotty years of the occasional one-off streaming special, South Park finally returned for a full 10-episode season in 2025. A teaser trailer was released, consisting of entirely fabricated clips that would never actually make it to air, promising exciting storylines like Butters becoming an air traffic controller and Randy taking ketamine to “f*** with the government.”
Some behind-the-scenes tomfoolery with Paramount’s changing regime delayed the season’s debut from its original July 9 release date. Then, when those conflicts were resolved and South Park season 27 finally premiered on July 23, Trey Parker and Matt Stone came out of the gate with a no-holds-barred satirical attack on their own parent company.
That premiere episode also brought back the old running gag of Saddam Hussein dating Satan, swapping out Hussein for Donald Trump (but keeping the same voice and character model). That hilariously unsubtle roast became a cultural phenomenon, and for a brief stint in the news cycle, South Park was as relevant as it was when it burst onto the airwaves in the late ‘90s.
Then, as the season went on, Parker and Stone took two-week hiatuses between episodes, and the shows that took twice as long to make were often half as good as the episodes produced on a tighter deadline. This is the show that rewrote and reanimated a presidential election episode the day after the presidential election; they shouldn’t need two weeks to come up with an episode about Sora 2.
After five episodes, the show abruptly ended season 27 and went right into season 28 as a hilarious meta payoff to the 6-7 meme. South Park has delivered 10 episodes over the past six months. The first five made up season 27, but the back five make up season 28, and that five was just as hit-and-miss as the first.
5
Sora Not Sorry
Sora was a perfect subject for South Park to tackle, but the show’s Sora episode, “Sora Not Sorry,” left a lot to be desired. It’s not as biting as Parker and Stone’s usual satire. Generative A.I. is just there as a plot device, not a target for comedy. They usually push the envelope in both directions, but they don’t push it far enough here.
This technology is a grave threat to the entertainment industry, and to human creativity in general. But South Park’s take on it was disappointingly toothless. People are using A.I. to create their own South Park episodes; South Park itself could’ve gotten more meta with that. The ChatGPT episode was much better.
4
The Crap Out
South Park season 28 ended not with a bang, but a whimper. The finale, “The Crap Out,” had the burden of resolving all these ongoing storylines, and the title seems to suggest that Parker and Stone were just flushing out all these plot threads that were beating the same dead horse, just to be done with them.
When this latest batch of episodes premiered, its portrayal of President Trump as Satan’s boyfriend was a refreshingly brazen, we-go-lower satire of the current administration. But as the weeks went by, it became clear that this was a one-joke idea that got run into the ground the fifth or six time someone said, “Donald Trump is f***ing Satan.”
“The Crap Out” feels more like one of Marvel’s season finales on Disney+ than a South Park season finale. It just crams all the different plot threads into the same episode, mashes them all together, and hopes they can all tie up each other’s loose ends in an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink final showdown.
“The Crap Out” brings back the title characters from “Woodland Critter Christmas” — South Park’s most disturbing Christmas episode — but it doesn’t do anything exciting with them. The last time we saw those critters, they had an Event Horizon-style blood orgy to celebrate the birth of the Antichrist. Here, they’re just bothering Stan.
South Park didn’t really know how to end the Trump/Satan lovechild storyline, but it’s heartbreaking to see Satan taking down the nursery. That tragic human moment, contrasted with Trump dancing in his newly constructed ballroom, was a great final statement on the season’s political satire. It was a downbeat way to end the season, but that might’ve been the point; it reflects how a lot of people feel right now.
3
Twisted Christian
South Park’s season 28 premiere was a mixed bag. All the stuff with Peter Thiel and the 6-7 cult was really funny, playing into the show’s recent lampoon of modern-day Satanic Panic, and it was fun to see that storyline escalate into an Exorcist parody. But it was heartbreaking to see Jesus sell out his values and give in to PC Principal’s warped idea of Christianity.
2
The Woman In The Hat
South Park’s Halloween episodes are some of its best installments. In spooky seasons past, South Park has given us everything from “Korn’s Groovy Pirate Ghost Mystery” to “A Nightmare on FaceTime.” Season 28’s Halloween episode, “The Woman in the Hat,” won’t go down in the history books like those classics, but it was a solid modern-day South Park episode.
It makes great use of horror tropes to lampoon members of Trump’s cabinet. It portrays Stephen Miller as a sunken-eyed crypt-keeper with an Igor-like hunch; it portrays Pam Bondi’s brownnosing with a literal brown nose. Seeing the destruction of the White House in the backdrop of this episode, as the real White House was being torn apart, was as funny as it was disheartening.
The best gag in the episode is the one alluded to in the title, depicting Melania Trump as a Woman in Black/Woman in the Yard-type specter haunting the White House. Plus, “The Woman in the Hat” brought back Kyle’s cousin, Kyle Schwartz, for which I will be eternally grateful.
1
Turkey Trot
Throughout a lot of this season, South Park didn’t really feel like South Park. The series shifted its focus away from its own main characters to do caricatures of Trump’s cabinet. But “Turkey Trot” went back to the show’s roots with a story set in the town itself, focused on the four boys, with sharp current-affairs satire built on top of that.
It’s about an annual Thanksgiving walkathon that South Park can’t afford to organize because of all the tariffs. The town resorts to taking Saudi money, and everyone in town has to decide whether they feel comfortable taking the money (in a clear parallel to the recent Riyadh Comedy Festival controversy). It was a great way to contextualize a zeitgeisty political debate in the familiar framework of South Park.
In keeping with the season’s traditions, “Turkey Trot” does have a caricature of someone in Trump’s cabinet, but it’s the best one by far: Pete Hegseth, kitted out in military regalia, draped in unearned war medals, lecturing real servicemen and women on valor — this is South Park at its finest. The “Danger Zone” parody is the cherry on top.
