‘South Park’ quietly ended Season 27, jumping into Season 28 with new episode

“South Park” is bidding adieu to its short-lived but buzzy Season 27.

The sixth episode of the year, which airs Wednesday on Comedy Central marks the first episode of Season 28, a spokesperson from the network confirmed to The Times. (The episode will stream on Paramount+ Thursday.)

The reason behind the decision to end Season 27, which was originally expected to have 10 episodes, is unclear. But fans of the long-running satire will still get four additional episodes this year, if “South Park” co-creator Matt Stone and Trey Parker stick to the schedule they outlined. Fans had been speculating about the start of a new season after seeing television listings that coded Wednesday’s episode as the first of Season 28.

The new episode, titled “Twisted Christian,” follows a possessed Cartman, who “may be the key to stopping the Antichrist,” according its brief description. A short teaser also shows the students of South Park Elementary engaging with the viral “67” slang, an essentially meaningless phrase that has taken over Generation Alpha.

Read more: Essay: ‘South Park’ has always delighted in poking the bear, whether it’s President Trump or Paramount

The recent episodes have been drawing strong viewership and have, as always, poked fun at topical issues and political figures including President Trump, immigration raids, tariffs and the FCC. Even Paramount, which bought the global streaming rights to “South Park” this summer in a $1.5-billion deal, has been the butt of several jokes.

Season 27 had an unusual cadence of episodes, with the first two arriving on a weekly schedule, then biweekly before the arrival of the most recent episode (and the apparent finale of the season), which aired three weeks later on Sept. 25.

Read more: ‘South Park’: A guide to every Trump-era parody in Season 27 (so far)

The second episode drew criticism for its parody of Charlie Kirk, the slain political influencer, despite the episode airing weeks before his death. Comedy Central, which is owned by Paramount, announced it will not air reruns of the second episode of the latest season after Kirk was fatally shot Sept. 10 in Utah. The episode can still be found on Paramount+.

The final episode of Season 27 was the first to air after Kirk’s death, but Parker and Stone told the Denver Post the delay was unrelated to its content: “No one pulled the episode, no one censored us, and you know we’d say so if true.” The pair issued a statement on Sept. 17 saying the episode wasn’t finished in time.

Future episodes of “South Park” will air every two weeks through Dec. 10.

Times TV editor Maira Garcia contributed to this report.

Sign up for Screen Gab, a free newsletter about the TV and movies everyone’s talking about from the L.A. Times.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.