‘South Park’ Season 27 Is Suddenly Over, and Fans Are Confused

South Park’s 27th season has proven to be one of the show’s most zeitgeist-defining, mostly thanks to its semi-weekly takedowns of the Trump administration/the Trump micropenis. But after just five episodes, the season is… over? 

Don’t worry though, because Season 28 is beginning this week. 

The South Park schedule, which has been been confusing fans all year, continues to be completely confounding. The show returns tonight with an all-new episode, three weeks after “Conflict of Interest” aired. According to Comedy Central’s schedule, it’s titled “Twisted Christian” and will find Cartman becoming possessed and taking on the Antichrist.

But a number of fans were seemingly shocked to discover that the episode is listed, not as the sixth episode of Season 27, but as the first episode of Season 28. 

Some assumed that it was a “glitch” of some kind. Multiple media outlets have previously reported that South Park’s 27th season would consist of 10 episodes. And IMDb similarly suggests that the season will be 10 episodes long, with Episode Six airing tonight.

There are a few possible explanations for this anomaly. For starters, while recent seasons have only lasted for six episodes, Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s new $1.5 billion deal with Paramount specified that they will “produce 10 episodes a year.” Since Season 27 was already in the works, it’s possible that they decided to make two truncated seasons that would fulfill the 10-episode requirement while maintaining earlier plans for a shorter 27th season. But that still seems a little unnecessary. 

As one fan on Reddit pointed out, the show could be “recalibrating” in order to fix the already wonky season numbering. South Park’s 24th season was just two Paramount+ “specials” — not “episodes” — which were produced in 2020 during the “streaming wars” with Warner Bros. But the two “Post COVID” specials released in 2021 aren’t considered to be part of a season, so the next “season” didn’t premiere until 2022.

Similarly, in 2024, we got three specials — “South Park: Joining the Panderverse,” “South Park (Not Suitable for Children)” and “South Park: The End of Obesity” — instead of a “season.”

Grouping 2025’s batch of episodes into two seasons would mean that next year’s allotment of 10 episodes would presumably be Season 29, paving the way for Season 30 to arrive in 2027, which would actually align with the 30th anniversary of the series. 

So, sure, it’s a bit of a mess, but it was already a mess, and this week’s “season premiere” adjustment may make the most sense in the long run.