Next Exclusive 'South Park' Special 'Joining the Panderverse' Announced

Everyone knows it's Butters!...???

It's been more than six months since South Park ended its regular season at the end of March. It's now October, and there hadn't been a peep about the two annual Paramount+-exclusive specials. That changed Wednesday. The show and the streamer announced this year's first special, or "exclusive event" as it's called: "Joining the Panderverse" will premiere on October 27. 

That's right, they announced it just 16 days in advance of the premiere. Or at least, that's the date for the United States and Canada. It premieres the next day, October 28, in the United Kingdom and Australia, with further international rollout happening after. The official logline reads: "Cartman’s deeply disturbing dreams portend the end of the life he knows and loves. The adults in South Park are also wrestling with their own life decisions as the advent of AI is turning their world upside down."

The teaser features everyone's favorite characters, but it's Cartman and Butters as black women, Stan as a Hispanic woman, and Kenny as an Asian woman. Kyle can't make any sense of it to PC Principal.

And yes it is very late in the year. Sure, "Post Covid" and "Post Covid: The Return of Covid" premiered on November 25 and December 16, 2021, but the whole deal that these specials existed, which also included the show's renewal through season 30 in 2027, was only announced in August of that year. Both parts of "The Streaming Wars" were comfortably spread within last summer with June and July releases. Sure there's no established pattern, but having one part a little closer to the episodes in the year it aired with might be nice. Both post-COVID seasons have run February to March.

South Park is of course created by and starring Trey Parker and Matt Stone, who have written and directed just about every episode. It's largely been Trey lately but last season's "Cupid Ye" is credited to Matt, so expect Trey to be the writer for this event. Obviously, the second special hasn't been revealed yet, so it's unknown whether there will be any connectivity like the precedent set.

Source: Variety