Did ‘South Park’s Season Premiere End With a Secret Message in Case the Show Gets Taken Off the Air?
In a move that took Randy Marsh-sized balls, Trey Parker and Matt Stone immediately followed up the announcement of their $1.5 billion Paramount deal with a South Park episode that spent 22 minutes dunking on the corporation’s political cowardice — and also repeatedly ridiculing the teeny tiny genitalia of the guy who controls the fate of the $8 billion Paramount-Skydance merger.
Clearly cancellation was a big theme of the show. The episode opens with Cartman discovering that the “president canceled NPR,” depriving him of the ability to hear “liberals bitch and whine about stuff.” We also see the newly-terrified 60 Minutes team desperately trying to avoid angering Trump/Saddam during news reports about his critics.
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And, in the episode’s climax, Jesus descends from the heavens to warn the town of South Park that they should stop complaining about Trump because they don’t want to “end up like Colbert.”
If the show does somehow get unceremoniously yanked off the air, at least the long-running series may have ended with a stealthily sweet message.
In the final moments of “Sermon on the ‘Mount,” Cartman and Butters are still trying to follow-through on their one-sided suicide pact via carbon-monoxide poisioning from Butters’ parents’ car — which they don’t realize is actually electric. “I think I might be going,” Butters gasps.
“Yup, sweet death is about to come,” Cartman responds as the credits roll.
Then, in a moment of wildly uncharacteristic sweetness and sincerity, Cartman adds, “I love you man.”
As a fan on social media speculated, this moment felt as if Parker, who plays Cartman, was genuinely expressing his feelings to longtime friend and partner Stone, who plays Butters.
Again, the show just inked a major deal with Paramount, so there’s virtually no way that South Park won’t continue. But this also tracks with the allegorical nature of the scene: Cartman and Butters feel as though the end is near, even though they’re totally safe in the electric vehicle.
In the lead-up to the episode, the South Park creators may have felt unsure about the future of the show, hence why the premiere was peppered with references to so many other seemingly established entertainment institutions that have been torpedoed by current administration. “The guy can do whatever he wants now that someone backed down,” Jesus tells the town, seemingly referring to CBS’ $16 settlement/”bribe.” And while Randy and the rest of South Park’s citizens do back down, the show clearly doesn’t, ending with a prolonged deepfake “synthetic media” ad featuring a nude Trump stumbling through a barren desert.
Forget about cancellation, maybe we should just hope that the U.S. government doesn't try to arrest Parker and Stone, Terrance and Phillip-style.
