‘South Park’s Season Premiere Title Hints That Jesus Will Take on Paramount

The second twenty-seventh coming of South Park is almost upon us. 

Now that we’re just one day away from the show’s (delayed) season premiere, Comedy Central has released the episode’s title as well as a brief synopsis. All the available info seems to indicate that the show will tackle the corporate merger that, according to Trey Parker and Matt Stone, has been “fucking up South Park.”

“Sermon on the ‘Mount” will, as the show’s marketing previously suggested, feature the return of Jesus Christ, who was last seen trying cocaine with Randy Marsh and Santa Claus.

“When the residents of South Park face their possible demise, Jesus returns to give them an important message,” the synopsis reads. 

While that doesn’t give us many details, it does seem as though the town is facing some kind of extinction-level event. Clearly this will end up being an allegory for the show’s recent predicament; the impending Paramount-Skydance Media merger seemingly imperiled the show’s streaming future — until recently, that is. And fans on Reddit were quick to point out that the word “Mount” contains an apostrophe in front of it, slyly implying that it’s actually short for “Paramount.” 

This isn’t a huge surprise considering that the show that frequently pulls from current headlines has been making its share of headlines in the past several months. And Parker and Stone have often used the show to metaphorically comment on their experiences with the entertainment industry, including the 2022 special South Park: The Streaming Wars. 

Then there was Season 12’s “Canada on Strike,” which unsubtly criticized the union’s demands during the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, which focused on revenue from online streaming. The show’s assertion that there’s no real money in making stuff for the internet hasn’t aged super-well. 

So it’s not exactly shocking that South Park, with the help of Jesus, will be addressing the Paramount controversy, but we will be curious to see how the episode’s narrative ends up being resolved now that the behind-the-scenes tension has reportedly been resolved. Presumably, work on this episode began well before Parker and Stone made a five-year, $1.5 billion deal with Paramount following a “breakthrough” in negotiations. 

Had they still been in the “hiring high-priced attorneys to send legal threats” phase of deal-making, we might assume that the show would be tough on the corporation that keeps fumbling its legacy brands. But now that they’ve just made a five-year deal for more than the cost of a private island, can we really expect Parker and Stone to go full Nathan Fielder on Paramount?