‘South Park’s Stan Marsh Is Now the Same Age as His Motivation Corp. Future Self

Though South Park’s post-COVID specials may have painted future Stan Marsh as both a higher-up in the U.S. Space Force and an online whiskey consultant with an analog Alexa, as of 2024, Colorado’s own could finally take on another job: Lending his acting chops to Motivation Corp.

In Season Six’s “My Future Self ‘n’ Me,” Stan comes face-to-face with a man claiming to be his 32-year-old self, a smoker and drinker who spent time in juvie. After a miniature existential crisis and a montage of Odd Couple proportions, Stan discovers his new roommate isn’t his future self but rather an actor his parents hired from “Motivation Corp.,” which commissions performers to play older versions of kids to scare them away from drugs and alcohol. 

This iteration of future Stan is all but a distant memory, Motivation Corp. fading into South Park obscurity after its one and only appearance in the long-running series, yet Redditor Oviseo recently made a timely realization: The future is (theoretically) here for Stan. 

“I just realized that Stan Marsh from the ‘future’ in S6E16 (2002) would be Stan Marsh from 2024,” they wrote alongside a screengrab from the episode. 

He’s not entirely wrong. South Park may famously exist on a floating timeline, but if “My Future Self ‘n’ Me” hit TV screens in 2002, a 10-year-old Stan would have been born in 1992, making him 32 in 2024, the same age as his actor counterpart. 

While it’s unclear why this possible future was ignored in the COVID specials or whether Stan will ultimately follow down his past future self’s footsteps, scaring kids straight with his newfound age and wisdom, we kind of hope he doesn’t. After all, to paraphrase user Eoghey, “In this timeline, he doesn’t have an online whiskey consultant firm where ‘he’s suuuuuper happy.’”