'South Park' Is Back Dealing With Diddy, Wars With Canada Again In Gafish Season 27 Trailer

South Park becomes ketaminated in its first regular season episode since March 2023

It’s actually turned out to be a great week for the mainstays of adult animation. First, Rick and Morty is the crux of Adult Swim’s April Fools’ prank, which they top off with announcing its eighth season premiere date, having not aired in 2024. Then on Wednesday, Fox announces unprecedented four-season pickups for The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob’s Burgers, and their newest takeback, American Dad! and now, nearly a year since their singular episode of all of last year, South Park is officially back for season 27. A teaser was released Wednesday revealing a July 9 premiere date for the first Comedy Central episodes since 2023.

The long-running series’s teaser opens on an empty, desolate live action swing set and an airplane wing. “The acclaimed drama returns,” it reads, before snapping into Randy asking Shelley if she’s been taking ketamine, “because I think it could really help you.” He later says he’s going to do some and fuck around with the government, Homes burn, the Statue of Liberty is yanked down, airplanes crash to Butters’s panic in fear of getting fired and Diddy joins the boys on some space mission best left secret? Garrison finds fully shitted toilets, Cartman is taking selfies at women’s gynecology appointments, and Kyle’s a turkey!

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After premiering its seventh Paramount+ special, “The End of Obesity” in May, South Park essentially skipped the rest of 2024, without even the landing of a second special, as was the expectation. While creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone publicly stated the reason was to circumvent the recent presidential election and admitted they were out of motivation to write about who is now Felon President, there’s also the whole lawsuit between Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount regarding the insufficient output in its Max streaming era that’s still ongoing. Purportedly the series library is still set to come to Paramount+ at the start of July, but 2024’s second Paramount+ special never came. It certainly seemed like it was timidity as to whether they could even release the eighth without poking the bear harder. It’s therefore unclear where this season is going. A new regular episode hasn’t aired since March 29, 2023’s premiere of “Spring Break”. Considering how close to air or release recent promotional habits have been, three months out is quite refreshing. Maybe it’ll bode well for the rest of Comedy Central’s animation slate.

In other Trey and Matt news, their untitled live action comedy film whose plot is also still unknown is moving. Originally set for July 4 (which they were clearly never going to meet), it’s moving to March 20, 2026. Leaving a potentially crushing position between Jurassic World: Rebirth on July 2 and Superman on July 11 and finding itself in proximity with Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary directed by Phil Lord & Chris Miller, produced by Amy Pascal and starring Ryan Gosling, and Lionsgate’s Christian sequel I Can Only Imagine 2. The theaters need more highly-concentrated weekends and CinemaCon did not instill such confidence.

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Sources: Variety, Deadline