South Park returned with a sharp-edged season 28 premiere that takes aim at tech billionaire Peter Thiel, a cryptic ‘67’ slang trend and apocalyptic anxieties, while thrusting Eric Cartman into a grandiose saviour role. The episode, titled “Twisted Christian”, sets a brisk satirical tone and signals the show’s continued appetite for quick-turn commentary. According to reports from The Independent and The Hollywood Reporter, the outing “roasts” Thiel and frames Cartman as “the only hope against the Antichrist”, while also featuring an appearance by Donald Trump. The premiere blends internet culture with high-stakes religious themes, a mix that has long defined South Park’s style. The result feels like a confident reset for a series that thrives on puncturing hype, testing taboos and dissecting the online zeitgeist.
Context and timing
The season 28 opener aired on Wednesday night in the United States, with coverage published early on Thursday GMT by UK and US outlets. The Independent reported that “Twisted Christian” starts the new run, and The Hollywood Reporter noted the return of Donald Trump, Cartman and the core cast as the plot thickened. The episode’s immediate coverage underlines the show’s enduring ability to spark conversation as soon as it lands.
A punchy return with “Twisted Christian”
The new episode’s title, “Twisted Christian”, hints at the show’s target: the volatile intersection of faith, politics and internet culture. South Park has made a reputation for tackling sensitive themes at speed, capturing headlines and memes while they still feel fresh. Season 28 keeps that rhythm, marrying a headline-grabbing hook with the show’s familiar small-town setting and unruly characters. The premise draws tension from apocalyptic language, then flips it into comedy built on hypocrisy and panic.
Both The Independent and The Hollywood Reporter highlight how the premiere layers trends and personalities to punch up at power. That structure echoes the creators’ long-standing approach: start with a simple idea, escalate it fast and test how characters behave under absurd pressure. The choice to weave in a viral slang trend alongside high-profile political and tech figures shows South Park leaning into its role as a cultural mirror.
Peter Thiel in the crosshairs
The Hollywood Reporter says the episode “roasts Peter Thiel”, the billionaire investor known for co-founding PayPal, backing Palantir and becoming an early Facebook investor. Thiel’s political influence has made him a recurring topic in media coverage, and his public profile gives satirists an obvious focal point. The Independent adds that the episode riffs on an “alleged Antichrist obsession”, framing it as satire rather than a factual claim about Thiel. By attributing the theme to the episode’s plot, the show shields itself with the same exaggerated lens it often applies to real-world figures.
South Park has targeted tech titans before, using caricature to probe the power and eccentricities of Silicon Valley. Lampooning Thiel fits that pattern. The show’s method typically isolates a trait or rumour, amplifies it and lets it collide with characters’ fears and ambitions. In “Twisted Christian”, that lens appears to blend end-times rhetoric with billionaire mystique, pushing both to a comic extreme that invites debate without pretending to adjudicate truth.
Cartman cast as “the only hope”
The Hollywood Reporter notes the premiere sets up Eric Cartman as “the only hope against the Antichrist”. That framing plays to a core South Park dynamic: Cartman’s ego often balloons until he becomes the centre of the crisis he claims to solve. Casting him as a reluctant (or self-appointed) saviour lets the writers satirise hero narratives as much as religious panic. It also gives room for the character’s manipulative streak, one of the show’s most reliable comic engines.
Cartman-driven plots often serve as a gauge for the show’s appetite for excess. When he takes the spotlight, the story tends to sprint into uncomfortable territory, daring audiences to laugh while squirming. If the season opener positions him as a bulwark against cosmic doom, the payoff lies in how quickly that “only hope” collapses into vanity, suspicion or opportunism—classic South Park terrain.
The mystery of the ‘67’ slang trend
The Independent reports that the episode mocks the ‘67’ slang trend, a recent online meme that spread across social platforms. South Park’s writers have built a cottage industry out of decoding—and ridiculing—the churn of internet in-jokes. By pulling ‘67’ into the script, they treat the meme not as trivia but as a symbol of how fast digital culture creates and destroys meaning.
Memes thrive on in-group language and rapid repetition. South Park tends to make the implicit explicit, showing how jargon can become a mask for confusion, insecurity or status games. In that light, ‘67’ functions less as a punchline and more as a tool: a way to expose the gap between what people claim to understand online and what they actually know. It is a familiar, effective satire of the attention economy’s latest shiny object.
A Trump cameo and the show’s political edge
The Hollywood Reporter says Donald Trump appears in the episode, reasserting South Park’s appetite for direct political caricature. Over the years, the show has toggled between depicting Trump outright and using stand-ins to lampoon his style and impact. Bringing him into the season opener tightens the link between the episode’s religious stakes and its political targets—an echo of how apocalyptic language often spills into campaign rhetoric.
South Park made its name by puncturing pieties from all sides. A Trump cameo signals that the show will not shy away from reshaping current political figures into comedic antagonists. By juxtaposing Trump with Thiel and a viral slang craze, the episode ties elite influence to the noisy churn of online culture, then asks viewers to laugh at the weird coherence that emerges.
A legacy of fast-turn satire
Since its 1997 debut, South Park has kept a punishing creative pace, often writing and animating episodes within days. That speed lets the series hit topics while they feel urgent. The season 28 opener fits that model, suggesting the writers still see value in reacting quickly to memes and headlines rather than waiting for them to cool. The show’s long run—now in its 28th season—backs up the strategy: the audience expects topicality, and the production machinery delivers it.
That fast-turn method also shapes the tone. When the writers commit to a premise at speed, they strip ideas to their simplest form and push the contradiction hard. A billionaire as an apocalyptic lightning rod, a meme as a social panic, Cartman as a saviour—these set-ups favour big swings and clear stakes. The result can feel chaotic, but it often lands with clarity because the satire stays focused on behaviour and consequence.
Wrap-up
“Twisted Christian” plants a flag for season 28: South Park will again mine the collision of tech power, political spectacle and online slang for comedy with bite. By targeting Peter Thiel, riffing on an ‘67’ meme and staging a Trump appearance, the premiere threads together themes that dominate today’s feeds and dinner-table debates. The decision to cast Cartman as “the only hope against the Antichrist” doubles as a promise of escalating chaos and a reminder of how the show builds jokes out of grand claims. Early coverage from The Independent and The Hollywood Reporter confirms the episode’s intent and its reach. If this opener is a guide, viewers can expect a season that moves fast, aims high and keeps turning the week’s loudest talking points into sharp, uncomfortable laughs.
