Comedy Central
There won’t be a new season of South Park on the air this fall, as co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker say they’re skipping the 2024 season as to avoid the Presidential Election.
Having previously tackled Donald Trump-fueled elections in 2016 and 2020, the longtime Comedy Central series will be sitting this year out, with Parker reasoning that they’ve run out of “things we could possibly say” about the Republican presidential nominee and 34-time convicted felon.
“We’ve tried to do South Park through four or five presidential elections, and it is such a hard thing to—it’s such a mind scramble, and it seems like it takes outsized importance,” Matt Sone told Vanity Fair in a recent interview.
“Obviously, it’s f—— important, but it kind of takes over everything and we just have less fun. I don’t know what more we could possibly say about Trump,” added co-creator Trey Parker.
While the pair add they’re also “waiting for [Comedy Central parent company] Paramount to get their s— together,” they say avoiding the 2024 presidential election is “on purpose.”
South Park, which most recently aired a six-episode season in 2023, will return for its 27th season in 2025. In recent years, the franchise has been used as a draw to Paramount+ with exclusive specials such as South Park: Joining the Panderverse, South Park (Not Suitable for Children), and South Park: The End of Obesity, the latter of which premiered back in May.
One of the longest-running series on television, South Park first premiered in 1997 and has since had 328 episodes across 26 seasons. The series, although comedically crass, has also been revered for its commentary on philosophical, theological, social, and political concepts.
It’s certainly a shame that South Park is taking the year off as there has been a bevy of headlines in recent weeks and months that the series would be able to feast on, most recently the report that a handful of right-wing internet trolls have been either knowingly (therefore treasonously) or unknowingly (therefore stupidly) funded by Russia via a Tennessee-based media company. No, not *that* Tennessee-based media company, despite how steadfastly they’ve been auditioning.
All 26 seasons of South Park are currently streaming on the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned MAX and not Paramount+, a perfect example of the s— that needs togethering.