Matt Stone Blames Procrastination, Not Censorship, for Latest ‘South Park’ Delay

We’re getting a new episode of South Park this week, but only because last week’s scheduled episode was delayed at the last minute, allegedly because Trey Parker and Matt Stone missed their deadline for just the second instance in the show’s long history. And this time they didn’t have a blackout to blame.

Despite Parker and Stone’s statement, a lot of fans still went full “Kevin Costner in the third act of JFK” on the announcement, floating a number of conspiracy theories, many of which involved corporate censorship. A lot of people speculated that the show had secretly been completed, but was ultimately killed by Paramount, possibly because the episode was going to comment on the Charlie Kirk assassination in some way.

Fears that the company that fired Stephen Colbert earlier this year had “silenced” Parker and Stone were seemingly only stoked by the news that ABC had “indefinitely” paused Jimmy Kimmel Live! after the Trump administration threatened to take action against the network. If they were mad about what Kimmel said, presumably the right isn’t thrilled with the cartoon that just revealed that Trump is having a “butt baby” with Satan himself.

But despite the escalating fan paranoia, according to Stone, this really was a case of South Park’s notoriously hectic schedule biting them in the ass.

In a brief comment to The Denver Post, Stone confirmed that the duo’s “six days to air” strategy was responsible for the delay. “No one pulled the episode, no one censored us, and you know we’d say so if true,” Stone stated. “We just didn’t get it done. When you always cut it close, sometimes you mess up. That’s the price of being a procrastinator.”

So there you have it, there was no secret plan to sanitize South Park’s politics, they missed the airdate for the same reason that you tanked that ninth grade chemistry test: procrastination. 

While the down-to-the-wire approach allows Parker and Stone to comment on extremely current events, they have previously stated that this is mostly due to “sheer procrastination” and “laziness,” and revealing that “procrastination is a part of the process.” 

So, even though the timing was especially eyebrow-raising, perhaps it’s not all that surprising that the show that routinely delays its production for as long as humanly possible finally missed a deadline for non-electrical emergency reasons.