South Park fans tuning in tonight will be met with silence.
“Apparently when you do everything at the last minute sometimes you don’t get it done,” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker said Wednesday morning, less than 12 hours before airtime. “This one’s on us. We didn’t get it done in time. Thanks to Comedy Central and South Park fans for being so understanding. Tune in next week!”
Season 27 has already been running on an every-other-week schedule, dropping topical episodes that feel ripped straight from headlines in real time. Tonight’s installment—slated as the fifth of the season—was supposed to arrive after the controversial episode mocking Charlie Kirk was pulled from Comedy Central following the Turning Point USA founder’s fatal shooting on Sept. 10.
Comedy Central says the next new episode will now air Sept. 24 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, streaming on Paramount+ the following day. After that, the season continues Oct. 15, Oct. 29, Nov. 12, Nov. 26 and Dec. 10.
An insider told Deadline the delay was about “finding the right tone and approach to addressing current events”—never an easy task for a show that has made a career out of targeting every side of every issue. Whether that means tackling Kirk’s death or the response in its wake is unclear.
This is not the first time Parker and Stone have hit pause. The Season 27 opener was pushed back from July 9 to July 23 while the duo negotiated a $1.5 billion deal with Paramount. But when the “Sermon on the Mount” episode aired, its mix of Jesus, Trump and lawsuits felt timed to the minute.
For now, South Park fans will have to wait one more week for the next cultural grenade.
