[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for South Park, Season 28 Episode 2, “The Woman In The Hat.”]
In a special Halloween episode of South Park, creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone took a moment to acknowledge the haters, as the boys complain that South Park (the town, of course) sucks now, Stan going so far as to say it’s “because of all this political shit.” They even point out that Kenny’s been largely absent from the latest season: “I haven’t even heard you say anything in like four months,” one of them says, which Kenny acknowledges in his usual muffled way.
To reclaim their town, they launch a South Park Sucks Now campaign to create a community for those who want change. (Southparksucksnow.com, at time of writing, just redirects to the official South Park website. There is also now an unofficial /r/southparksucksnow on Reddit.) However, SPSN actually ends up being a meme coin scheme launched with the help of Kyle’s Cousin Kyle. Stan in particular is desperate to make some money, as his family’s now had to move into his grandfather’s nursing home following the loss of Tegrity Farms.
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Meanwhile, the soap opera at the White House continues as Satan calls Trump out for knocking down the East Wing for his ballroom — not because Satan thinks it’s a bad thing that Trump demolished the historic structure, but because Satan thought that Trump was doing it to build a nursery for their pending baby.
The demolition causes an additional problem for Trump, though: Demolishing the East Wing unleashed a “wrath,” and he’s now being haunted by a Melania-shaped specter, which ends up bringing much of the White House squad together for a very Halloween-y seance. This includes senior advisor Stephen Miller (more Renfield-y than ever), FCC chairman Brendan Carr (mummified by casts to heal his recent injuries, he’s “lost his freedom of speech”), the always ghoulish Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi, who leads the seance. Bondi’s got her own supernatural woes: Her nose keeps getting covered in smears of what paranormal investigators might call “rectoplasm” — but because it’s South Park, it’s crap. Trump’s crap, very specifically.
The seance nearly exposes JD Vance and Peter Thiel’s ongoing scheme to kill Trump and Satan’s baby (not a sentence I ever expected to type, I confess) and does get horrific enough to cause Kristi Noem’s face to melt off. Cousin Kyle, who’s come to the White House looking to strike a crypto deal with Don Jr., is appropriately terrified — before getting hauled off to jail for the crypto scheme.
At the end of the episode, the boys resolve to make the most of their current circumstances, while other plotlines like Satan’s pregnancy and Cartman’s 6-7 possession/abduction by Peter Thiel remain unresolved for future weeks. And while there have been scarier Halloween episodes… The image of Kristi Noem’s face crawling around on its own will linger for some time.
Following its premiere on Comedy Central, Season 22, Episode 2 of South Park — “The Woman in the Hat” — will be available to stream on Paramount+ beginning Saturday, November 1st.
