South Park Studios just revealed the first peek at its continuation of The Streaming Wars, and it definitely feels like something straight out of a modern South Park episode. Randy Marsh is seen sporting a stereotypical “Karen” hairstyle while loudly confronting numerous people for presumably minor issues. This all culminates in a dramatic utterance of “I want to speak to your… manager!” that contains all the force of a Skyrim dragon shout.
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This appears to be a continuation of a storyline started in part 1 of South Park The Streaming Wars, in which Stan and Tolkien are concerned that Stan’s dad and frequent star of the show Randy has become too much of a “Karen” in his snippy interactions with authority. Part 1 also focused on drought in Denver, resulting in Tolkien’s dad Steve attempting to sell his surplus water supply by moving it downstream to the Denver reservoir. Yes, that’s the “streaming” war referred to in the title, because this is still South Park, after all.
Based on the first part and this teaser, South Park’s penchant for absurd humor often played straight appears to be fully intact. The drought is caused by classic South Park cryptid ManBearPig while Randy’s powers of petty complaints turn out to be a full-fledged superpower. The teaser focuses entirely on that, which also feels particularly on-brand for the series. The show has certainly come a long way since the days of The Spirit of Christmas.
Some may be a bit disappointed that South Park is still playing into its more modern trend of huge overarching stories with potentially Earth-shattering consequences. It would certainly make sense, since watching an early episode back-to-back with something even from several years ago would likely result in some potent whiplash. Gone are the days of Cartman yelling at his cat and “oh my god, they killed Kenny!” But to be fair, those days have been far behind for quite some time now.
For better or worse, this is what South Park has become, and it clearly still maintains a giant, passionate audience for a reason. So anybody still apprehensive about the show’s current trends may want to give it a shot anyway. Who knows? They might find something worth binging again.
South Park The Streaming Wars Part 2 will premiere on Paramount Plus on July 13th in the US and Canada.
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Source: South Park Studios/YouTube
