Trey Parker and Matt Stone Think the ‘South Park’ Series Finale Will Be A ‘Dud’
When South Park finally reaches the end of the road and half the fandom inevitably decides that the final episode sucked chocolate salty balls, Trey Parker and Matt Stone will simply say, “We told you so.”
Despite its humble origin as a pair of amateur short films that turned into a construction paper cartoon on Comedy Central, South Park has somehow managed to remain on the air after 26 seasons, one feature film and a smattering of specials that launched years of litigation between the biggest companies in media. South Park’s ascension to the top of the food chain in the crass cartoon comedy ecosystem is nothing short of miraculous, and its co-creators, Parker and Stone, consider themselves extremely lucky to still be going strong — a little too lucky, in fact.
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Though the South Park empire is worth over a billion dollars by some estimates, Parker and Stone understand that, no matter how big their contract with Paramount may be, no show is more than a single bad season away from cancellation, and they’ve been preparing for an unceremonious end for decades. During a 2015 interview with IGN’s Podcast Unlocked ahead of the launch of the video game South Park: The Fractured But Whole, Parker and Stone warned that, when it comes time for them to make the South Park finale, the series, like the world itself, will end with a whimper rather than a bang:
When the interviewer asked Parker and Stone if the pair had put any thought into what the last episode of South Park will eventually look like, Parker replied earnestly, “I think it’s going to end with a fizzle, for sure. I think it’s just going to end with some dud, and we’re gonna go, ‘Fuck this, man!’ and walk away.”
Stone concurred, suggesting that the South Park finale will just be “some sort of whimper” where the old friends will “either drop the mic, get sued or get thrown off television.”
As Parker explained, the pair have had a pessimistic outlook on the end of South Park since the show began, saying of their gloomy finale prediction, “We always thought it. We’ve thought that for 18 years. We’re like, ‘Alright, we’ll they’re gonna, like, they’re going to just fucking cancel us, for sure!’ We’ve been waiting to get cancelled for 18 fucking years!”
However, Stone promised the South Park fandom, the pair will put off the disappointing finale for as long as possible. “We won’t stop until we get cancelled,” Stone declared.
Considering that, 10 years after their doomsday prediction, Parker and Stone are currently combining for a whopping six episodes of South Park ever two years, perhaps the current South Park production schedule is, in fact, the disappointing finale they’ve been talking about since 1997.
