Tonight’s New ‘South Park’ Will Apparently Satirize Polymarket
In the most anxiously awaited new episode of South Park Season 27, Trey Parker and Matt Stone will take on the growing popularity of prediction market betting — but what are the odds that they bring up that episode?
One week ago today, with the fifth episode of Season 27 scheduled to air that night, Parker and Stone made the unprecedented move to postpone the new episode, telling fans of the show that they failed to complete it in time for airing and blaming their own procrastination habits for the delay. Given how, one week before that, a gunman at Utah Valley University murdered South Park parody target and right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk, sparking massive conservative backlash against the series, South Park fans were slow to accept the official story on just the second-ever episode postponement in South Park history. Now, with no trailer and minimal details released regarding the week-late new episode, South Park just revealed that the topic Stone and Parker needed three long weeks to tackle is the rise of cryptocurrency-based prediction betting markets, such as the popular service Polymarket.
Don't Miss
In tonight’s episode, which TV Guide lists under the title “Conflict of Interest,” one of the most popular gambling apps in the world will get the South Park treatment, and Satan and Donald “Saddam Hussein” Trump will prepare for the birth of their child — all while viewers at home wonder what the show will or will not do to Cartman and Clyde.
While the description for “Conflict of Interest” certainly seems to suggest that South Park isn’t going to reprise its send-up of the right-wing masterdebation content from “Got a Nut” that drew criticism from the far right following Kirk’s death, many South Park fans are relieved that the show is returning to its roots of pitting Cartman and Kyle against each other.
In the South Park subreddit, one fan wrote of the planned storyline for tonight’s episode, “Finally, an episode focused on the boys.”
“I remained convinced that the delay was because they had another political episode queued up and they scrapped it after the Kimmel dust up,” another user wrote, “They’ll probably revisit it, but they’re trying to wait out the heat.”
Considering how the show still hasn’t released a trailer for the new episode, there is still a possibility that Parker and Stone are hiding some kind of allusion to the biggest controversy of South Park Season 27 inside the seemingly innocuous storyline. However, even if South Park doesn’t bring up Kirk’s murder, given the build-up to tonight’s episode, this will probably end up being the most scrutinized South Park episode in years.
I’d put good money on “Conflict of Interest” provoking an entirely new community of complainers to demand that Paramount cancel the show.
