This year has been a great one for South Park. The long-running Comedy Central cartoon found new energy when it began its 27th season this summer with a brutal parody of Donald Trump, someone about whom the show’s creators had previously said they’d run out of things to say. That premiere episode savaged the culture of fear surrounding the president, which he was shown maintaining via constant threats of legal action against his detractors. Trump seemed so invincible, so scary, that even Jesus Christ was shown as being afraid to speak out. The episode even caused the real White House to lash out, with a Trump spokesperson quick to bash South Park as an irrelevant “fourth-rate show.”
Six months later, though, much has changed. Trump suddenly seems politically vulnerable and deeply unpopular for the first time this year, thanks to a tough economy, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, and criticisms from onetime loyalists like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Indeed, it’s South Park that’s ending the year on a high, having picked up legions of new fans and huge ratings. On Wednesday night, in the show’s final episode for the year, titled “The Crap Out,” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker evidenced just how they pulled off their comedic coup: with a biting satire of Trump and the key figures around him, some classic South Park immaturity, and one final joke about the president’s penis, which we were blessed (cursed?) to learn is apparently infected with genital warts. “Boss, just so you know, I don’t care if my asshole is filled with genital warts,” Vice President J.D. Vance is shown telling his boss (and lover) in one last moment of crassness. “I still love you!”
If this cultural state of play seems surprising, consider that much of the season finale felt like we were living in the Upside Down. (The episode was technically the final installment of the 28th season, as South Park was split into two five-episode seasons this year.) Viewers found themselves rooting for Satan in his quest to deliver the so-called butt baby/Antichrist he had conceived with Trump, and against Jesus Christ, who was trying to help the president abort the fetus. Back in October, the Son of God abandoned his morals and decided to morph into a MAGA-esque “Twisted Christian,” whose supreme loyalty was to Trump, not the Almighty. He began working out, got himself a girlfriend with too much plastic surgery called Peggy Rockbottom, and began speaking fluent Manosphere. When Stan visits Jesus in his capacity as the school’s new guidance counselor in the opening scenes of the finale to beg for a Christmas miracle, a disinterested Jesus is shown strumming an electric guitar in front of a kettlebell and some creatine powder. “Sounds like some socialist bullshit to me, bro,” he scoffs.
Meanwhile at the White House, Satan is the one giddily hanging decorations for Christmas—a holiday, I might remind you, that is built around the birth of Jesus. He’s singing a song about celebrating his soon-to-be newborn’s first Christmas and arranging the nursery like a true nesting mother. There’s just one problem: The baby’s father is missing. Trump and Vance have absconded to South Park to jailbreak Peter Thiel, who, in reality, is reported to be obsessed with the coming of the Antichrist. Disguising themselves as Salvation Army volunteers dressed as Santa Claus and an elf, they talk their way into the police station in order to leave gifts of “food” (i.e., secret escape tools) for the prisoners. The imprisoned include Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who in the last episode failed in his mission to free Thiel because he was too preoccupied with filming content for social media. “It’s time to complete Operation Kill My Own Baby,” Trump says.
Across this season, I’ve been convinced Stone and Parker had been mostly making things up as they went along, reacting to whatever scandal had been in the news that week, whether it be the demolition of the East Wing or ICE raids. I was curious just how they were going to build a finale out of all this mess. But it was around this point in the episode that I realized how well the show was wrapping together plot elements we had been introduced to all season long. There, talking to an unsympathetic president, was Mr. Mackey, the ousted guidance counselor complaining about how his life had been ruined because of the Trump economy. There, on Satan’s Christmas tree, were Labubu decorations, the plush collectibles that we learned in a prior episode are actually totems for demonic rituals. And there, in a pile of laundry in a White House bathroom, was Towelie, the anthropomorphic towel who was captured by Trump for use as a rag for his ejaculate when he came to the Oval Office to lobby for his nonsensical business that combined A.I. with marijuana. (Reading back this collection of words really is something, huh?)
Rescued by Satan, Towelie reveals to him how Trump and Vance have been secretly conspiring to kill off the unborn Antichrist so that Vance’s position isn’t threatened. (It had to be a secret, Towelie explains, because it would be a bad look for a Republican to be seeking an abortion.) After Satan discovers a bedazzled thong featuring the initials “J.V.” among a pile of Trump’s skidmarked underpants, Towelie also tells him that Trump and Vance have become lovers. “So crazy, man. You can’t write this shit,” Towelie says, in a joke that feels like Stone and Parker are somewhat self-aware about how ridiculous this all is.
Stan, meanwhile, has been left feeling despondent in South Park. Jesus was no help, and so he’s stuck at the old-age home where his family has been forced to live with his grandpa and where Christ’s girlfriend has been singing ridiculously offensive songs to the elderly residents: “A Christian woman knows her place, so go ahead and punch me in the face,” Rockbottom warbles. “I was wrong, that’s why I wrote this holiday song!” Seeking hope, Stan turns to the only place he can think to find a miracle during the festive season in the South Park universe: a toilet bowl. But just as longtime viewers expect Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo to emerge and save the day, we get an even deeper cut. Out come the demonic Woodland Christmas Critters who appeared in a 2004 episode that was the last time the show prepared for the arrival of an Antichrist figure. The collection of cute-but-secretly-evil animals are there to help Satan and enjoy a big “crap-out” celebration once his baby is born. “If I’m going to get on board with something I need to make sure it makes a little bit of sense,” Stan protests in a scene that feels like the show saying a big F-you to any new viewers.
Indeed, anyone who picked up the show this year without having ever watched South Park probably struggled to understand characters like Towelie or the critters, or the idea that Trump was really the reincarnation of Saddam Hussein, the dictator who was also depicted as being in a same-sex relationship with Satan during the show’s early years. But even new viewers could appreciate how this season’s plots were threaded together in the finale with elements from seasons past. “What’s going on is the most exquisitely woven tapestry of ideas that you’ve ever seen,” Towelie tells Stan.
When Satan and the critters confront Trump and Vance, Jesus appears to protect them. “Keep your hands off my president, bro,” Christ tells Satan. “This happens to be a great man who’s protecting our country from fags!” Trump, meanwhile, is just happy to have another “Christian dipshit” to help him get what he wants, which this time includes freeing Thiel from prison with some Christ-like magic. “What happened to Jesus?” a confused Towelie asks. “He’s all ‘Christian’ now,” Stan replies.
Those seeking a voice of reason in this topsy-turvy world must instead turn to Satan, who all season long has been the lone virtuous figure, simply seeking to welcome a baby. In this final episode, though, it becomes clear that Satan is now also operating as a stand-in for the tens of millions of Americans who got into bed with Trump for a second time despite knowing how things turned out previously. “I can’t believe he turned out to be this big of a piece of shit. I seriously fall for the worst guys,” Satan says woefully. The Prince of Darkness admits he knew how Trump treated other people but that he was willing to look the other way in order to get a miracle. “I mean I knew he sucked. I knew it. But I didn’t think he would go this far,” Satan bemoans. “I am so stupid.”
Then, just as Trump and his goons are preparing to face off against the critters at the hospital where Satan is about to give birth, Stan criticizes Jesus for hitting rock bottom—something Christ takes to mean assaulting his girlfriend. Finally seeing the light, Christ abandons Trump, who threatens to sue him. “Go ahead and sue me. I’m not afraid anymore,” Jesus says in a fitting resolution to the year’s first episode, when Christ was shown whispering about the need to stay quiet about Trump or risk getting taken down.
But suddenly, the doctor emerges to deliver some terrible news: An ultrasound has divulged that the unborn baby has taken its own life. In a moment that mirrors the death of Epstein, sonogram footage shows the baby in the womb, before mysteriously cutting out for a few minutes, and then returning to reveal that the fetus has hung itself with a rope and chair. “It’s just what babies do sometimes,” the doctor says matter-of-factly. Bereft, Satan takes down his White House nursery decorations and leaves for good. Trump, meanwhile, throws a party to celebrate, handing out cigars to guests we’ve met this season (including Apple CEO Tim Cook and a literally brown-nosing Attorney General Pam Bondi) that read, “It’s a Dead.” As he circulates among his guests, the gleeful president boasts that he’s somehow won yet again—although one has to wonder what the next season of South Park might have in store for both him and the real commander in chief.
This season, though, ends with Christ giving Stan his Christmas miracle. His old home is returned to him just as it was, meaning he and his family can return there for good. From the stars above, Jesus appears to tell a thankful Stan that he’ll continue to watch over him and that he shouldn’t give up on things that he’s committed himself to—which, for Jesus, includes Peggy Rockbottom. She, too, appears as a constellation, singing her offensive Christmas ditty about domestic violence as the closing credits roll. The end.
So after 10 episodes of some of the most crude, objectionable, childish, and disgusting satire seen on American television in years, what are we to make of South Park’s impact on our politics and culture in 2025? Certainly, despite its juvenile humor (or perhaps because of it), the show provided me and countless others with an affirmation of sorts—a sense that we weren’t crazy to be incensed by just how crazy things had become. But more than that, the show did something it has long done and which many others were decidedly too afraid to do this year: It proved it had balls. Weaponizing crassness to take on someone who can himself be the epitome of vulgarity, South Park proved the best way to stand up to a bully is just to stand up at all. It also doesn’t hurt to be armed with a bunch of jokes about him supposedly having a micropenis.
And yet, I can’t help but think South Park got one final dig in at an unexpected target: myself and all the other viewers who were searching for meaning or hope amid the show’s stupidity. As Stan confronts the Christmas critters about just why and how they have emerged to enjoy the “crap-out,” one animal shoots back a biting response that made me feel my own flash of self-awareness: “Are you really going to overanalyze a crap-out?” Touché.