I HAVE A SOUTH PARK THEORY PLEASE INDULGE MY RAVINGS
Okay everyone listen up, I have a conspiracy theory on the ending of South Park season 22
~SPOILERS FOR THE NEW EPISODE BELOW~
Ever since Matt and Trey launched their #cancelsouthpark campaign, I knew something was up, I think we all did. Well I don’t think that the end game here was the #cancelthesimpsons joke, I think it’s much, much deeper.
Now, buckle up because I have a very very long spiel involving key events from way fuckin back in season 1, and this is gonna be a long ass read.
So, from the start of the season I’ve been cobbling together key points and lines that stood out to me like some kind of raving conspiracy theory lunatic, and I’ve finally got something from the end of this episode. We’ll start with the Catalyst, the Act 1 to this demon arc.
The first thing to happen was the school shooting, it kicked things off, and from then on they opened nearly every episode with one going on in the background. (For now we’ll ignore the commentary on real world society in each episode and just focus on how these points relate to the in-world universe, how it relates to South Park, not to us.)
Having a shooting in the background of every episode showed us that it was a constant, it was a problem the town was ignoring, and evidently, as witnessed this episode, something the sergeant was fucking sick of having to deal with all the time. I think some of his B plot points were important as well, but I’ll get to that.
SO, we have a major tragedy and terror taking place, and Sharon fails to convince the town to care. I felt this meant that it would come back, not the shootings themselves, but something AROUND them, the emotions it invoked and the way the town has been ignoring things until it’s beyond the salvaging point. We finally saw it come back full force to bite them in this episode, with no one believing or caring until the danger was right upon them (another metaphor I’m sure, but again, real world set aside for now). And this leads into crazy raving Al Gore, and Stan having to step up to the plate for the first time this season. The detectives being tired of all the murder and emergencies and the townsfolk being apathetic lead into no one believing Stan when he explained the problem, and it’s how the boys got arrested. As well of course as the mood around the presumed “school shooting” leading the police to go after Cartman and Kenny in the first place.
So that’s the setup, what about the punchline? Well, for that we have to go back to episode 4, when Stan’s family did something that was glossed over, but really shouldn’t have been (by us, we shouldn’t have glossed over it, it’s important that Matt and Trey did to conceal the twist). Stan LEFT South Park. I don’t know how many of you realize this, probably most of you, but the woods by Stark’s pond to the downtown area are pretty much the entirety of the town, there’s no weed farm in the town limits for SURE, and this is clear because Stan mentions he lives over an hour away. NOTHING inside the town limits take more than ten minutes to get to.
So, why is it so important that Stan’s family specifically is outside the town limit? Well, we all know the old theory of South Park being in a time bubble. Many of us assumed it was related to Kenny’s curse, we believed it was because of him that folks in the town seemed to remain in a stasis, even though they were going through every major world event in real time. They’ve been through every presidency, scandal, fad and advance, and yet they’ve only aged by a measly year or two in the past 20 years.
I think we were wrong though, I think it was NEVER Kenny at ALL. It was the Marsh family.
Now hear me out on this one, it takes a little connecting but it makes sense. At the end of the episode, we see that Stan’s grandpa knows exactly what the fuck is up, meaning he more than likely made the deal with that thing. A deal, remember, that is likely very old. Maybe a decade or two even. Back in season 1, before there COULD be any evidence of the town not aging, we had the episode “Death”, in which Stan’s grandpa kept trying to die. At the end he decided he would wait for his time and try to be more positive instead, well, what if he REALLY took that to heart? Stan’s grandpa made a deal, some kind of blood-pact with the demon back in Season 1 to slow or stop time for the town so he would never die. With time at almost a stand-still, it would take an extremely long time for the few generations to pass for the demon to claim its payment, right?
Well, then something happened. STAN MOVED. The farm isn’t just outside the town, it might be OUTSIDE the time bubble. Now citizens can come and go fine, but they never leave for GOOD if they’re from South Park originally, but Stan did. And with the demon’s deal directly relating to Stan’s grandpa, and 20 years (roughly a generation’s worth of time) having passed, and time unpausing for the family who’s blood is involved in a demon deal, it probably alerted the demon. Time might be moving normally for Stan again, and if it is, then the demon probably decided that meant it was time to collect. It would make sense why it’s first sighting was AT the farm, where the Marsh family was. Another important thing to note was Stan mentioning that the first dead kid looked like him. Why was that important? Why would it need to be brought up when he’d have plenty of reason to be scared after seeing it take Ned? Well, it mattered because he was RIGHT. The demon IS after him, likely it’s after Randy as well. Because of something Stan’s grandpa offered, it may be determined to kill the entire bloodline, but that’s purely speculation.
Where that leaves us is now. What will happen? Where will we go? Well, I think it could go a few ways, but with Maxi promising to protect the boys, I think he might come back. Because what could vanquish a demon better than a priest? That OR Kenny may fight it, we know he has the power to kill other great old ones, other immortals. Well demons are immortal, so it is possible he has the ability to stop it. Of course there are plenty of places to go from here, but I think this season is going to end like this:
The demon will be killed or sent back to hell, and with the deal either ended or broken, time will resume in South Park for the first time in 20 years. Which is why it was possible for us to hear an adult Kenny from some future, why he mentioned ‘the last time it was good’.
Matt and Trey are still contracted through season 23 of South Park, meaning there has to be at least one more season. Well, if they for some reason wanted to age the boys UP, they would have to explain why they hadn’t until now, which might be the reason for all this. It could also explain how Terrance and Phillip got so old so suddenly, they aren’t in the time bubble after all, they’re in Canada. Since even characters IN SHOW can age greatly, just not in South Park, it stands to reason that this is their way of un-pausing the kids so they can be free to mix things up even more next season.
THE TIME BUBBLE IS REAL AND THAT BITCH ABOUT TO GET POPPED
thank you for coming to my TED talk