South Park announces Paramount Plus-exclusive "Post-COVID" special

South Park is coming back next month—but not to Comedy Central, its TV home for the last 24 years. Instead, the series announced today that it’ll be airing its upcoming “Post-COVID” special on Paramount Plus, the first of several exclusive specials set to debut on the Viacom-owned streaming service.

All of this is, of course, part of the extremely complicated (and lucrative) streaming deals that surround Trey Parker and Matt Stone’s faux-construction paper opus, which last aired a full new season back in December 2019, but which has supplemented its coverage over the last two years with two additional specials in September of 2020, and March of this year.

Those two extant specials are hanging out online now on HBO Max, along with the rest of the series’ run, which the rival company secured in a 9-figure deal earlier this year. (It is not a coincidence that Parker and Stone have “buy the novelty Mexican food joint of your childhood memories” money to toss around at the moment.)

These new specials, though, are part of a separate deal, one struck between Viacom and…well, Viacom, in order to keep some new South Park content flowing to the company’s own streaming service, instead of allowing its apparently inexhaustible fanbase to simply prop up a rival company. It’s not clear yet if “Post-COVID” counts as one of the ludicrous 14 movies Viacom ordered from South Park alongside its recent long-term renewal; the press release for the special refers to it only as an “exclusive event.”

“Post-COVID,” set to air this Thanksgiving, November 25, is one of two such “events” announced today; the other will air some time in December. Paramount+ also released a teaser for the special, if you can even consider a 10 second clip of the South Park boys being unconvincingly impressed by the Paramount+ logo a teaser.