‘South Park' Hasn't Been This Relevant in 20 Years: Creators Speak Out at Comic-Con Panel

Yahoo

28-07-2025

'South Park' has always run, arms open toward controversy. Nothing and no one is off the table — it's never actually had a political bent or loyalties. It, like all satire, simply comments on the current reality. But its shocks haven't quite made the waves they did in its Bush-era heyday in a while. Sure, they have taken on COVID and Ozempic and OnlyFans, but nothing that has hit the mainstream the way its takes on the Iraq war or Scientology did.
Then came the Season 27 premiere.
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Now, Trey Parker and Matt Stone are so back. The episode went hard. President Donald Trump isn't even presented in the episode as an animated caricature. Instead, he's a photo cut-out and then — instantly infamously — a hyper-realistic A.I. representation with an unfortunately small manhood.
Parker and Stone's appearance at Comic-Con, just one day after this episode's airing on Comedy Central, suddenly became an event. Paramount's five-year renewal was certainly already newsworthy — considering what happened to a certain other politically-charged property last week (some guy named Stephen Colbert) — but 'South Park' hasn't been this relevant in 20 years, and it happened almost as a kind of sneak attack.
The White House even responded, supplying this statement to Variety:
'The Left's hypocrisy truly has no end – for years they have come after 'South Park' for what they labeled as 'offense' content, but suddenly they are praising the show,' said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. 'Just like the creators of 'South Park,' the Left has no authentic or original content, which is why their popularity continues to hit record lows.'
So what exactly did Parker and Stone have to say on this hot-ticket Comic-Con panel (it obviously was standing room only) about the renewed interest in their 28-year-old series, its renewed controversy, and its renewal by Paramount?
'We're terribly sorry,' Parker said. Short and sweet.
Ok, there was a little more.
They did expand — very slightly. Parker said (via THR) that just that morning that had been meeting with the staff trying to figure out what next week's show would be. I mean, earlier this week, they were trying to decide if they were going to go forward with this week's show. 'Just three days ago, we were going, 'I don't know if people are going to like this,'' Parker said, but after the pair read the most recent headlines, they said, 'Let's put that in there.'
As for Trump's, uh… member, they made a concession to get that on the air. 'They were like, 'We're gonna blur the penis,' and we're like, 'No, you're not gonna blur the penis,'' Parker related. They agreed to put eyes on the penis, however. 'Then it's a character,' Stone added.
Their fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants style means that, for Comedy Central and Paramount+, promoting the show presents a unique problem.
'Back in like February, right… they're like, 'Oh, we need to do a promo for the summer.' And we're like, 'What? I don't know what we're gonna do this summer.' And they're like, 'No, we need to make a promo… that shows you're gonna come back.' And we made a promo,' Parker explained. 'We did this thing… and it showed a whole bunch of clips. We made it all up just for the promo… and everyone was going, 'Oh, man, those guys… now they're just front-loading shows. They're not gonna be topical anymore.' You seriously think we went and made a bunch of shows ahead of time, and we're like banking them for later? Like, we've never done that. So we just made something up. And we're like, 'This is what we're doing.' And we're not doing any of that. None of that.'
'No politics,' Stone said with an appropriately stone face and sarcastic tone. 'None. None of that shit. We're not doing that shit.'
During the panel, Parker and Stone were also presented with the Comic-Con Inkpot Award for Excellence in Animation.
'This is very cool. Thank you,' Stone said. The men share their thoughts through their art, obviously.
'South Park' airs Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. ET and is uploaded the next day on Paramount+.
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