5 Best 'South Park' Episodes of the Last 5 Years, Ranked
Dyah (pronounced Dee-yah) is a Senior Author at Collider, responsible for both writing and transcription duties. She joined the website in 2022 as a Resource Writer before stepping into her current role in April 2023. As a Senior Author, she writes Features and Lists covering TV, music, and movies, making her a true Jill of all trades. In addition to her writing, Dyah also serves as an interview transcriber, primarily for events such as San Diego Comic-Con, the Toronto International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival.
Dyah graduated from Satya Wacana Christian University in October 2019 with a Bachelor's degree in English Literature, concentrating on Creative Writing. On March 2026, Dyah graduated with Master's degree in English Literature Studies, with a thesis on intersectionality in postcolonial-feminist studies in Asian literary works.
Born and raised between Indonesia and Singapore, Dyah is no stranger to different cultures. She now resides in the small town of Kendal with her husband and four cats, where she spends her free time cooking or cycling.
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South Park might have premiered in 1997, but to this day, it remains one of the most iconic animated shows in American television history. Serving as an antithesis to The Simpsons and Family Guy, which are already oddly bizarre enough, South Park pushes the limits of what animation can do, and it does so best by putting a group of middle schoolers at the center of provocative storylines: Stan Marsh (Trey Parker), Kyle Broflovski (Matt Stone), Eric Cartman (Parker), and Kenny McCormick (Stone). South Park has perfected the art of toilet humor over the years, and more often than not, it has crossed lines it probably never should have with its controversial creative choices.
Still, the series remains a "so bad, it's so good" watch — a guilty pleasure that requires little commitment and only 22 minutes of your time. Twenty-nine seasons later, South Park has definitely dialed down its offensive material, but certain episodes have proved that the series still has the edge that keeps it a constant topic of conversation. From an episode featuring Donald Trump to cheeky commentary on AI, here are the best South Park episodes of the last five years, ranked.
5 "Help, My Teenager Hates Me!"
Season 25, Episode 5
If there's anybody who could make the South Park gang even more mad, it's a bunch of apathetic, pimple-faced teenagers. When Kyle begs his father to buy him an Airsoft gun, he expects to enjoy some friendly competition with Stan, Cartman, and Kenny. However, their game takes an unexpected turn when they're paired with teenagers who are less than thrilled about playing against fourth graders. Funnily enough, the boys are suddenly expected to care for their teenage partners, who are all apparently pains in the butt. Whether it's the hormones or their complete lack of social awareness, the gang can't stand their partners' attitudes.
"Help, My Teenager Hates Me!" takes a fun approach to putting the South Park gang in the position of responsible adults, even though they're practically still kids themselves. The moody teenagers are obviously exaggerated for comedic purposes, but their behavior is so insufferable that you can't help but want to parent the heck out of them. But the ending is the real cherry on top. The episode delivers one of the few genuinely touching moments between the gang and their fathers, even if it involves Airsoft guns. When the dads join the boys for a final match against the teens, the game turns into a full-blown battlefield straight out of The Hurt Locker.
4 "Japanese Toilet"
Season 26, Episode 3
"I never realized you made so much money off my a**." Feel free to interpret that quote however you want, but it's the perfect summary of "Japanese Toilet." When the Marsh family's toilet breaks (gone too soon, Ol' Blue), Randy (Trey Parker) splurges on a $10,000 Japanese toilet and quickly becomes obsessed with its high-tech features. Stan isn't thrilled about his family's newfound luxury, especially when his classmates start mocking him for it. But the jokes quickly become the least of his worries when Randy is shot at City Hall while campaigning for Japanese toilets.
The joke of the episode isn't the Japanese toilet itself, which, given South Park's history of turning cultural differences into punchlines, would have been an easy target. Instead, "Japanese Toilet" uses Randy's obsession to build a more specific satire of American consumer habits. Once Randy discovers that his toilet can wash and dry him, he starts questioning why Americans rely so heavily on toilet paper in the first place. The episode then escalates this ridiculous debate into a conspiracy involving toilet paper companies, a threatened proctologist, and Jimmy's suppressed newspaper story. By turning Randy's $10,000 purchase into a battle over an everyday household product, South Park mocks how corporate interests can shape what consumers consider normal.
3 "Deep Learning"
Season 26, Episode 4
It wouldn't be South Park if the show never made an episode about AI. "Deep Learning" begins when Stan has difficulty sending heartfelt, long texts to his girlfriend, Wendy. Seeking advice from Clyde (Trey Parker), he recommends using ChatGPT, which can automatically write thoughtful messages for him with a simple prompt. Clyde lets Stan in on the secret with one condition: Don't tell anyone else about ChatGPT. Of course, apparently everyone at school is already using it, not just for romance but also for their schoolwork, prompting a school-wide AI hunt to eliminate ChatGPT once and for all.
There's no ballsy or more meta move than crediting "ChatGPT" for an episode about AI. At the time of the episode's release, ChatGPT was still in its infancy, making the idea of using a machine to write love messages seem ridiculous. Looking back, however, the episode feels remarkably prescient. AI-generated messages have become increasingly normalized, whether they're used for schoolwork, professional writing, or even personal communication. That makes "Deep Learning" especially relevant today. For all of South Park's ridiculousness, the show has a knack for taking an emerging technology and exaggerating its impact just enough to expose how quickly people can change their behavior once something becomes convenient, accessible, and as culturally significant as ChatGPT.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Star Wars Crew Should You Join? Falcon · Ghost · Skeleton Crew · Razor Crest
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what your friends come to you for, how you handle a night that falls apart, what you want out of work, what keeps you going. Answer them and we will tell you which ship has your seat. Four crews are hiring: the smugglers, the rebels, the kids who got hopelessly lost, and the one man who works alone until he does not.
🚀Falcon(Original Trilogy)
👾Ghost(Star Wars Rebels)
🗺️Skeleton Crew(Skeleton Crew)
🪖Razor Crest(The Mandalorian)
01
What role do you play in your friend group? Everybody has one, whether they admit it or not.
02
How do you pack for a trip? This says more about people than it should.
03
Your plans collapse an hour before. What do you do? Everybody reacts to this differently.
04
What would you actually want out of a job? Be honest rather than impressive.
05
What do people come to you for? You already know which one it is.
06
How do you handle a disagreement with a friend? This is where people differ most.
07
What does a really good Saturday night look like? No wrong answers, but there are revealing ones.
08
What actually keeps you going? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your crew.
Docking Clamps Released Your Crew Is…
Four ships, four completely different reasons to be up there at all. Here is the one that has your seat, what flying with them would cost you, and what it would give back.
Millennium Falcon
You belong on the fastest piece of junk in the galaxy, with a crew that took the job for the payday and then quietly stopped caring about the payday. Nothing on the Falcon has ever gone according to plan, and everybody aboard prefers it that way.
- You improvise better than you prepare, which is why you keep ending up in situations that a careful person would have avoided.
- The Falcon is the only ship on this list that is genuinely funny, and half of that comes from it breaking at the worst possible moment.
- You would pretend the whole thing is transactional right up until somebody you like is in trouble, and then the pretending stops instantly.
- This crew is the reason the rebellion had a chance at all, and not one of them would ever admit to that out loud.
The Ghost
You belong with the crew that turned a tiny cell of misfits into an actual rebellion. The Ghost is a home before it is a ship, and everybody who boards it arrived with something broken that the rest of them decided to look after.
- Found family is the whole engine here, and Rebels earns it by making you watch these people choose each other over and over again.
- You are in it for the cause, but what actually keeps you going is the four people who would notice immediately if you stopped showing up.
- Hera is one of the best captains in the franchise, and the show is smart enough to make her competence the quiet centre of everything.
- This crew pays for its wins, which is exactly what makes the wins land the way they do.
The Skeleton Crew
You belong with the four kids who found a buried ship, launched it by accident and are now extremely lost in a galaxy that eats people like them. Nobody here knows what they are doing, and that turns out to be the fun of it.
- Your instinct is to open the door that says do not open, and you would do it again tomorrow.
- Skeleton Crew is the closest Star Wars has come to an eighties adventure movie, where the stakes are real but the wonder never gets sanded off.
- You make friends out of whoever is standing next to you when things go wrong, which is a genuinely useful survival skill.
- The pirates in this one are properly frightening, and that is precisely why the kids being out of their depth works so well.
The Razor Crest
You belong in the quietest ship in the galaxy, with one small passenger and a code you have never explained to anybody. You told yourself this was a job, and then it stopped being a job somewhere around the second week.
- You work alone by preference and by habit, which lasts exactly as long as it takes for somebody small to need looking after.
- The Mandalorian works because almost nothing gets said out loud, and the armour does the acting that a face usually would.
- Your loyalty is narrow and absolute, so there are very few people on your list and nothing will move you off it.
- The Mandalorian and Grogu took all of that to the big screen over Memorial Day 2026, the first Star Wars film in seven years.
2 "The Worldwide Privacy Tour"
Season 26, Episode 2
The royals have arrived in South Park. "The Worldwide Privacy Tour" is inspired by the real-life drama surrounding the British monarchy, but the episode puts its own fictional spin on the story by making its royal couple Canadian. After Ike becomes obsessed with watching the Queen of Canada's funeral, Kyle struggles to play video games with his friends and turns to brand management for help. With Butters' (Matt Stone) advice, Kyle visits CumHammer Brand Management and is encouraged to build a "victim" persona. Meanwhile, the Prince of Canada and his wife move into the house across from the Broflovskis while constantly demanding privacy, despite creating plenty of attention themselves.
There are layers to this episode. For those who don't keep up with the royals, the episode parodies Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, as the couple left the royal family to protect their privacy, only to participate in multiple interviews and documentaries. This contradiction puts them back in the spotlight, and South Park mines that irony while turning it into its own story about the pressure to build a public brand. But the episode's moral lesson goes deeper: There's an impulse to fit into the mold society creates for us, but we also have the freedom to break out of it and define our identities on our own terms.
1 "Sermon on the 'Mount''
Season 27, Episode 1
Season 27 kicks off on a strong and daring note with arguably one of South Park's riskiest and boldest episodes in the past five years. "Sermon on the 'Mount" takes place in the aftermath of President Donald Trump canceling NPR. This is bad news for Eric Cartman, who fears the imminent death of woke culture. Meanwhile, PC Principal (Trey Parker) rebrands himself as Power Christian Principal and urges students to embrace Christianity. As the school welcomes Jesus for an assembly, South Park's residents grow increasingly frustrated with Trump's political influence and threats of legal action. Their protest, however, takes an unexpected turn when Jesus reveals that his appearance is part of a legal settlement with Paramount.
One might argue that South Park has gone soft on the provocative political satire that made the show famous in its early seasons. But "Sermon on the 'Mount" proves that creators Parker and Stone still have it, and they're as relentless as ever. After struggling to satirize Trump during his first term, with Trey Parker admitting that "satire has become reality," the show now has a new reason to take aim at the president. Trump's involvement in Paramount's business, alongside the cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, gives the episode a direct target. Of course, few images are more bizarre than an actual photo of Trump depicted in bed with Satan, followed by Satan becoming pregnant with Trump's child.
South Park
- Release Date
- August 13, 1997
- Network
- Comedy Central
- Showrunner
- Trey Parker
- Directors
- Adrien Beard
-
Eric Cartman / Stan Marsh (voice)
-
Kyle Broflovski / Kenny McCormick (voice)
Follows the misadventures of four irreverent grade-schoolers in the quiet, dysfunctional town of South Park, Colorado.
- Writers
- David A. Goodman, Nancy M. Pimental, Kenny Hotz, Philip Stark, Dave Weasel, Dan Sterling, Susan Hurwitz Arneson, Trisha Nixon, David R. Goodman, Tim Talbott, Pam Brady, Robert Lopez, Dani Michaeli, Kyle McCulloch, Karey Dornetto, Jonathan Kimmel, Jane Bussmann
- Franchise(s)
- South Park
- Main Genre
- Comedy
- Seasons
- 29
- Producers
- Jennifer Howell, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Anne Garefino, Brian Graden, Bill Hader, Bruce Howell, Eric Stough, Frank C. Agnone II, Vernon Chatman, Erica Rivinoja, Deborah Liebling, Kyle McCulloch, Pam Brady, Wonnie Ro
- Creator(s)
- Matt Stone, Trey Parker
- Story By
- Trey Parker
- Streaming Service(s)
- Netflix
- Executive Producer(s)
- Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Anne Garefino, Brian Graden, Deborah Liebling
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.