South Park Has Perfect Opportunity To Bring Back Most Notorious Characters

By Robert Scucci
| Published 29 seconds ago

South Park’s storyline across Seasons 27 and 28 leaves a healthy number of loose ends that need to be tied up, and there are only two more episodes left in the current run to give us a clean resolution. As I’ve been mulling over possible scenarios for how Trey Parker and Matt Stone could actually pull this off, something clicked that might be the perfect way to bring back the series’ most controversial antagonists. With all this talk about the Anti-Christ being born thanks to Satan and Donald Trump’s ongoing, tumultuous romance, it certainly feels like a perfect setup to reintroduce the Woodland Critters.

Introduced in the Season 8 finale, “Woodland Critter Christmas,” these cute little animals are pure, anthropomorphic evil, and always down for a good old fashioned blood orgy. Satan’s butt baby is in grave danger thanks to Trump and Vance’s plots to have it aborted before the Anti-Christ is born, but if the Woodland Critters had any say in the matter, they’d make sure Satan breezes through his third trimester without any complications. 

Hail Satan! 

“Woodland Critter Christmas” first introduced us to Squirrely the Squirrel, Beary the Bear, Rabbity the Rabbit, Beavery the Beaver, Porcupine the Porcupine, Skunky the Skunk, Foxy the Fox, Deery the Deer, Woodpeckery the Woodpecker, Mousey the Mouse, Racoony the Racoon, and Chickadee-y the Chickadee. Told through a rhyming, Dr. Seussian narration, we learn about their evil machinations, satanic rituals, and desire to summon the Anti-Christ as soon as they find a proper human host. In the Season 8 episode, Kyle is the unlucky target because he’s not Catholic. Right when things hit the point of no return, it’s revealed that the entire story is a figment of Cartman’s imagination, as he reads it aloud in Mr. Garrison’s class specifically to infuriate Kyle.

Normally, I wouldn’t propose bringing the Woodland Critters back in any series because imaginary antagonists usually don’t hold up in continuity, but this is South Park we’re talking about. Continuity is a static, flexible experience, and the Critters eventually return in Season 11’s Imaginationland Trilogy, where every imaginary character in existence comes to life and wreaks havoc on South Park.

When the Imagination Doorway opens, Kurt Russell and his soldiers (summoned because they were in that movie that’s “kinda like this”) are brutally assaulted by the Woodland Critters in a way so graphic that the attack happens entirely off-screen. What they do to Popeye in the third installment is equally appalling, but the point stands: thanks to the Imaginationland episodes, it’s completely plausible that the Woodland Critters are still alive and kicking in some form.

Narratively, It Makes Too Much Sense

While we’re on the subject of imaginary characters coming to life and causing real consequences in South Park canon, it’s worth noting that during the Imaginationland Trilogy, as well as Season 22’s two-part saga, “Nobody Got Cereal?” and “Time to Get Cereal,” ManBearPig is proven to be alive and well, and a menace to society of the highest order. During this storyline, Satan is actually killed by ManBearPig before ascending into heaven as an angel, which suggests there may be a functional pipeline between planes of existence via the Imagination Doorway or through divine intervention.

There’s a perfect opportunity here for Satan to stand up to Trump and Vance. It wouldn’t be out of pocket for Satan to summon the Woodland Critters to ensure his butt baby with Trump is born unscathed, while Trump and Vance seek out ManBearPig, Satan’s archnemesis, to sabotage the whole plan.

With all the subtle and not so subtle callbacks South Park has been making in recent episodes, this is exactly the kind of narrative treatment we need to close out Season 28’s arc. The setup feels almost too perfect to ignore. As somebody who believes in speaking things into existence, I hope the Woodland Critters return to close out the season in the most brutal way possible. The stars have aligned. The Satan and Trump plot is begging for this kind of escalation, and the finale, as of this writing, lands on December 10, which is close enough to the holidays to make the return of the Woodland Critters feel like destiny.

South Park is streaming on Paramount+.