The Most Controversial Aspect of Tonight’s ‘South Park’ Might Be Towelie
Bad news for any fans/government officials who were hoping that Trey Parker and Matt Stone would take a break from eviscerating the Trump administration this week: Tonight’s South Park episode, “Sickofancy” will seemingly highlight the president’s recent authoritarian takeover of Washington, D.C.
The third installment of Season 27 reportedly finds Towelie journeying to the newly-militarized nation’s capital, but judging from the online response to the recently-released teaser, the most divisive aspect of the episode has nothing to do with politics, but rather, its walking, talking towel protagonist.
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Towelie, of course, is an anthropomorphic towel (genetically engineered by Tynacorp) that first appeared way back in Season Five. And the talking towel was just as interested in getting high as he was combating moisture.
More recently, Towelie has been bumming around with Randy Marsh at Tegridy Farms. The last time we saw the “Don’t forget to bring a towel” guy was in 2024’s South Park: The End of Obesity, in which he was still working at the weed supplier, and popped up in a few scenes to help Randy navigate the pressures of hanging out with Ozempic-addicted criminal MILFs.
Obviously Towelie has also been the focus of a number of episodes, from his Season 14 intervention, to the James Frey-Oprah scandal parody “A Million Little Fibers.”
But Towelie is a very polarizing figure within the South Park fandom. Some people love him, others claim he is “annoying” and believe the joke has “grown stale.” Following the news that the new South Park will involve Mr. Towelie going to Washington, a number of fans made their displeasure known online.
“I dont want a towelie episode fuck towelie what the fuck,” one Reddit user wrote.
“I do not care for the towel character,” another chimed in.
To be fair, Towelie does have a number of defenders, who are clearly thrilled to see him back in the spotlight. Also, Towelie is supposed to be a terrible character. As Parker and Stone once revealed, he was created during a vacation with some of the writers of their short-lived presidential sitcom That’s My Bush, after someone yelled out “Don’t forget to bring a towel” to a friend that was going wakeboarding.
Stone pointed out that the idea was to “create the lamest character” possible as a way to parody shows that introduce dumb characters that only exist to sell merchandise.
Incidentally, South Park still ended up creating a whole lot of real Towelie merchandise — from towels to Funko Pops to a line of Adidas sneakers seemingly made out of repurposed Towelie skin.
