South Park’s Surprising Civil Duty

South Park has always heightened vulgarity for effect to cross lines in every direction, offending every group of people imaginable. Following an era that critics and fans of the show deemed one of their weaker stretches — due mainly to a season-long narrative rather than episodic chaos and featuring several characters in town rather than the four boys starring in every episode — South Park was able to blend the two better than before, utilizing their classically ruthless single storylines with an incredible premise of Donald Trump racing to kill his baby with Satan. South Park has long capitalized on current political events for inspiration, but season 27 is one of the most politically focused for a reason. “It’s not that we got all political, it’s that politics became pop culture,” says co-show runner Trey Parker. 

Season 27 exploded in virality, in large part to theatrics occurring before the season premiered. In the summer, Paramount battled South Park’s previous owner HBO over a breach in contract in which Paramount+ streamed the show’s specials even though HBO had sole rights. This delayed the season premiere, until Paramount acquired the full rights to South Park’s archive. In the opening episode, “Sermon on the Mount,” South Park wasted no time eviscerating the current sitting president and their new streaming home. The first episode established Donald Trump as a reincarnation of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, who was portrayed in its earlier seasons with the same voice and flappy-head character design.

“Sermon on the Mount” also established the new America we live in today where “woke” seems dead and white-trash faux-Christianity is fuel for a base supporting Trump’s theatrics that has terrible impending effects on Americans. After the town of South Park is upset with Trump allowing Jesus Christ to be forced on their kids in schools, as the son of Christ is literally hired to replace Mr. Mackey as counselor, Jesus gives his sermon to the town with the simple message: Knock it off. Jesus never wanted to be in the school to begin with but had to because it was part of a lawsuit and an agreement with Paramount. Jesus says, “You saw what happened to CBS. You really wanna end up like Colbert?” Paramount, the network that owns CBS, and South Park’s direct criticism of the network that canceled Stephen Colbert’s show after a tirade against Trump set up one of the best endings to an episode they’ve ever had. To avoid a lawsuit of their own, the town of South Park starts running “Pro-Trump Messaging,” cutting to an AI-looking advertisement where Trump wanders a desert while stripping. As Trump collapses and peeks over his soft, white belly, his penis peeks over and says, “I’m Donald J. Trump, and I endorse this message.” The narrator ends the episode saying, “Trump: His penis is teeny tiny, but his love for us is large.” South Park’s fourth highest-rated episode on IMDb served as the highlight for the season, but there were plenty of noteworthy moments from the following nine episodes. 

This puts the pieces in place for the narrative across the whole season, in which Trump accidentally impregnates Satan and does anything he can to make sure that baby isn’t born. The key players in this plot to kill the baby include Vice President JD Vance, who convinces Trump to abort the baby because he thinks its birth would interfere with his own presidency bid, and Peter Thiel, the co-founder of Palantir who is promised to receive every American’s data if the baby is killed. There’s also Pam Bondi, the brown-nosing Attorney General, Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War who mistakes South Park’s Thanksgiving Turkey Trot with an insurrection from “liberal terrorists,” and Jesus, who — like a lot of pro-Trump Christians — hypocritically uses a religion which preaches “love thy neighbor” as an excuse to be bigoted.

As the season came to its climax outside Satan’s hospital room, Trump with Thiel and his other lackeys opposed Stan Marsh and his posse of Woodland Critters who, in previous seasons, were committing evil acts that rivaled any other in the show’s history. The punchline set up by the previous nine episodes concluded with the doctor interrupting Trump by showing them a video of the baby in the womb. He ignorantly glosses over how part of the tape was cut out and breaks the sad news that the baby hung itself. The babygram showed the baby with a noose around its neck and a little chair kicked over to stage a suicide. One of the biggest strengths of the season is ending on a Jeffrey Epstein joke that somehow makes the audience sympathize with Satan losing the Antichrist baby. 

Woven into this season-long story is the type of absurd social commentary that is incredibly fresh and savagely ruthless that South Park is synonymous with. Some topical highlights covered in this season includes rug pulling on meme coins, the owner of a Chinese restaurant explaining tariffs better than the media or government, and PC Principal marking the culture shift from “Politically Correct” to “Power Christian.” Some of the more outrageous references include ICE ruthlessly raiding a Dora the Explorer live show, AI company Sora being used to create videos of Butters having sex with Totoro from Studio Ghibli, Kyle Broflovski’s mom chewing out Benjamin Netanyahu for making the lives of American Jews impossible, and Eric Cartman even parodied Charlie Kirk a month before his assassination, which led to the episode being pulled from Comedy Central and caused further controversy about freedom of speech in media. The topical aspect of South Park shined as usual, using crass metaphors and ruthless comparisons to make their point on why our country is the way it is right now.

South Park’s fearlessness to call out anyone at any time they please has cemented them into a crucial role in the American media space. They have become what journalism is supposed to aspire to — being the guard-dog monitoring political corruption and providing that information in digestible pieces to the masses. It’s South Park’s truly middle stance and their track record of making fun of literally every group of people known to mankind that gives it a genuineness missing from mainstream news networks, all of which clearly have an agenda no matter which side of the political spectrum they fall under. This wasn’t the best season of South Park in a strictly comedic sense, but it has already become one of their most significant in a truly unprecedented time in American history. 

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