Stan Marsh got his Christmas miracle. While this past Wednesday's Christmas-themed season finale of South Park hinted heavily at the return of Mr. Hankey -- complete with Stan pleading into a toilet -- he instead got help from the show's other classic Christmas characters, the antichrist-worshipping forest animals from Season 8's "Woodland Critter Christmas."
Not only was their inclusion a more appropriate choice given the show's recent Satan-heavy story arc, it was yet another example of series co-creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone reviving classic characters for this latest run, which is something that has been overshadowed by their relentless attacks on the Trump administration, as well as the right-wing reaction to it. In fact, Seasons 27 and 28 (which ran back-to-back and consisted of just 10 episodes combined) was South Park's most nostalgic period ever, particularly for fans of the early seasons. Unless, of course, they've gone full MAGA and couldn't stand for jokes against the Trump administration.
The recent nostalgia parade began with Jesus coming to South Park Elementary in the Season 27 premiere "Sermon on the Mount." While Jesus has appeared sporadically on South Park over the past two decades, he was a fixture of the early seasons as the host of the in-universe cable access show Jesus and Pals. In Seasons 27 and 28, he becomes the school counselor of South Park Elementary, which was the show's way of critiquing how the Trump administration has pushed for more Christian teaching in public schools.
Over the course of Seasons 27 and 28, Jesus went from the caring son of God to becoming a bullying, gay-bashing, guitar-strumming, weight-lifting Christian in the tradition of so many right-wing influencers. While South Park has never shied away from skewering religion, it had generally presented Jesus as a positive, caring character, but this season saw him surrender to the new world order of right-wing Christianity, only for him to have a change of heart and revert back to the caring Jesus we know in Season 28's finale.
There was also the presence of Satan in Seasons 27 and 28, who had a major role in 1999's South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. While still being the Lord of the Underworld, South Park's take on Satan has always been a sensitive guy, often in a toxic relationship with a vulgar, horny, egomaniacal man. In the movie, that man was the then-still-living Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but for Seasons 27 and 28, it was our current president, Donald Trump, who wasn't just having sex with Satan, he impregnated him.
Even South Park's new take on Donald Trump was a throwback to vintage South Park. During the first Trump administration, Mr. Garrison essentially became Trump in a joke that started out as funny and became quickly tiresome and also an inadequate way for the current events-heavy show to critique what Trump was up to. Even Trey Parker and Matt Stone have publicly admitted that they had written themselves into a corner with this choice. They even purposefully sat out the 2024 election because they were tired of parodying Trump.
But Trump won the election and forced their hand. So for Seasons 27 and 28, Garrison remained as a South Park school teacher -- as he should be -- while a whole new take on Trump inhabited the Oval Office in the South Park-verse. Essentially, Parker and Stone repurposed their take on Saddam Hussein -- completely with the high-pitched voice, diabolical persona, and the real photo flapping head -- and gave it to Donald Trump. Not only was it a funny throwback, it was their way of saying that Donald Trump has been acting like a Middle Eastern tin-pot dictator.
The choice of changing Saddam into Trump seemed to infuse the show with a new sense of energy. The jokes came fast and furious, and as loud and unapologetic as they were when South Park began. From references to Trump's love for gifts and flattery to him having a small penis and frequently being depicted naked, it all seemed specifically designed to get under Trump's skin, which we know it did.
Right after the season premiere, "Sermon on the Mount" aired, an official White House spokesperson responded by calling the show "fourth-rate." But while Trump's attacks on Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel come during the general decline of late night talk shows, the White House attacks on South Park didn't stick as the show has been excelling in one of the few things Trump values: ratings. This season of South Park had its biggest debut in years and, week after week, its attacks on the Trump administration made headlines, from its take on Attorney General Pam Bondi as a brown-noser with Trump's literal shit on her face to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem as a heavily botoxed dog killer. While the skewering of Trump's cabinet members was new and fresh, it harkened back to an era when South Park went hard after celebrities like Barbara Streisand and Paris Hilton. Even some of the weirder choices, like turning J.D. Vance into Tattoo from the 1970s show Fantasy Island, felt like the kind of random silliness of the early days, like when Scuzzlebutt had sitcom star Patrick Duffy for a leg.
These callbacks, however, were outshone by their attacks on Trump and MAGA's's inability to handle it. Aside from the "Fourth-rate" comment from the White House, The Washington Examiner's right-wing film critic Harry Khachatrian accused the show of succumbing to "Trump Derangement Syndrome," while Noem claimed their depiction of her was sexist. Meanwhile on social media, right-wing fans have accused South Park of going woke and asked why they didn't attack Biden with the same fervor.
Parker and Stone have responded to the backlash. In an interview with The New York Times, Parker explained the show's hard pivot into political commentary.
"It's not that we got all political. It's that politics became pop culture," he said. "It's like the government is just in your face everywhere you look, whether it's the actual government or whether it is all the podcasters and the TikToks and the YouTubes and all of that, and it's just all political and political because it's more than political. It's pop culture."
Stone backed that up by explaining that the backlash to it, plus the White House's attacks on media that criticizes Trump only made them double down, with Stone explaining: "Trey and I are attracted to that like flies to honey. Oh, that's where the taboo is? Over there? Ok, then we're over there."
Parker added: "We're just very down-the-middle guys. Any extremists of any kind we make fun of. We did it for years with the woke thing. That was hilarious to us. And this is hilarious to us."
South Park's record as equal opportunity offenders is what has made its fanbase so vast and lasting. Over the years, they've skewered the left-wing and the right-wing alike, the only difference now is that the right-wing is run by a highly sensitive egomaniac who cannot stand to be laughed at. That sentiment has trickled down to many of his supporters, preventing them from enjoying what is not only a great, funny, relevant season of South Park, but one that is a trip down memory lane for longtime fans.
South Park seasons 27 and 28 are streaming on Paramount Plus.