South Park season 26 ended with episode 6, and this continues a disappointing trend set up by season 25 of the long-running cartoon comedy series.

South Park season 26's ending will come as a letdown for viewers who hoped that the outing would avoid the same problem as season 25's finale. In August 2021, South Park co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker inked a historic deal with Paramount. The two South Park co-creators will make six more seasons of the long-running show along with 14 feature-length specials in exchange for a staggering $900 million. However, viewers who assumed that this meant many more South Park episodes were in for a surprise.

Since its early seasons, South Park has gradually shortened the length of its seasons with each passing year.While South Park seasons 8-16 featured 14 episodes each, seasons 17-23 dropped this number to only 10 episodes each. South Park season 25 took this to an even smaller 6 episodes. This move made season 25 extremely short, with less than half of season 16’s episode count and only a third of South Park season 2's length.

South Park Season 26 Is Shorter Than Most (Like Season 25)

Like season 25, South Park season 26 featured only six episodes, ending with its sixth outing "Spring Break." For the second year in a row, therefore, South Park has released a season with only six episodes, much less than the usual 10 or its earlier 14. WhileSouth Park season 26 has mocked the show’s reliance on formula, this is still a disappointment for those who hoped to see more from the series in 2023, or believed that Paramount's new deal would mean South Park seasons at the previous length.

If South Park follows the same format that the series utilized in 2022, there will likely be a new feature-length movie released straight to streaming in the summer months. Last year’s offering, The Streaming Wars, was a two-part effort released between June and July. The Streaming Wars actually addressed the controversy surrounding South Park’s Paramount deal with a plot that centered around the show’s heroes getting into hot water when they created too many products for a "streaming service." This satire of South Park’s recent deal-making makes the brevity of seasons 25 and 26 even more surprising.

Why South Park’s New Seasons Are So Short

The reason that South Park seasons 25 and 26 are so short is likely that the creators of the series need time to produce feature-length specials like The Streaming Wars. The 2021 deal specified that Stone and Parker would produce 14 specials, four of which have aired so far, and the longer runtimes of these specials means that South Park can delve deeper into the subjects each covers. That said, the longer production process means that their topical relevance cannot compare to the show’s standard weekly episodes. Nevertheless, the brevity of South Park season 26 remains a letdown.