South Park Season 28 finale brought back characters that no one expected, details explored

To many people, the conclusion of South Park Season 28 really did have some unexpected characters. In the season finale, 'The Crap Out' (Season 28, Episode 5, which aired on December 10, 2025), the Woodland Critters, a bunch of satanic animals, returned, and the audience was thrilled.

The Critters were first seen in Season 8's 'Woodland Critter Christmas' and were initially quite the surprise when they came back. The characters were not given away before their appearance, and the whole thing was done in a scene that seemed to be building up a more usual Christmas-related joke.

The return of the Woodland Critters was not presented as the emotional or narrative focus of the episode but rather as a sudden change of tone and the visual punch line. The finale, in general, was in harmony with South Park Season 28’s wildest and most experimental style, so it took the unexpected callback to point out the episode's focus on chaos, subversion, and anti-holiday storytelling traditions that had been set up by the previous ones.

A Christmas conclusion that is not sentimental in the South Park Season 28 finale

South Park Season 28 finale was loosely framed as a Christmas episode. However, 'The Crap Out' like most of the season, stayed away from sentimental themes or moral resolution. Critics and episode summaries have given the last episode the same characteristics: Dark, sharp, and deliberately uncomfortable instead of festive.

The last point was that the season finale came very close to South Park Season 28's wire-to-serialization, an approach that has been keeping the political and cultural satire introduced late in Season 27. Although the show has had many Christmas episodes, this finale did not attempt to return the emotional beats or the traditions of earlier holiday installments associated with them.

In contrast to previous seasons, South Park Season 28 embraced the inter-episode continuity to a greater extent. The political humor, exaggerated real-world events, and hell character, even like Satan, for instance, stayed on from one episode to another instead of resetting each week. Despite this, the season was mostly gag-based.

Critics pointed out that certain topics carried through, but the show kept on with its speed, witty jokes, absurd images, and unstable by design narratives instead of tightly plotted arcs.

Why was Mr. Hankey the expected return?

Together with the Christmas timing, episode 5 led numerous viewers to think about Mr. Hankey's return, the Christmas Poo. Mr. Hankey has always been linked with the show's festive episodes, and he last appeared in Season 22.

Moreover, when Stan the Man talks to a toilet during the show, it is yet another reason to support the earlier expectation. The situation is a close copy of the toilet scenes from the earlier Mr. Hankey's appearances, and thus, the moment looks like it is purposely created just to make viewers think that.

The Woodland Critters’ appearance

To the surprise of the viewers, instead of Mr. Hankey, the Woodland Critters come out of the toilet. The critters, first seen in Season 8, are innocent-looking creatures that actually perform satanic rituals and engage in extreme violence and have a very distorted moral code. Their last significant appearance before South Park Season 28 was during the Imaginationland trilogy in Season 11.

In 'The Crap Out,' the return of the Critters is abrupt and intentionally left unexplained. When Stan demands a reason for their appearance, the Critters simply deny the existence of logic by stating that crap outs have no rules. This comment strongly correlates with the episode's rejection of internal consistency.

How are Critters used in the episode?

The Woodland Critters have no main part in the story's direction. Their role is, however, one of a gradual buildup, a transition of the entire episode from political satire to outright absurdity. They are the reason for all the mess in the episode, and not a medium for resolving or moving a narrative forward.

Critics have referred to their coming as a shock gag rather than a nostalgic callback and have thus pointed out the defining characteristics of their role. There is a loose connection through their devilish origins with the season's recurring supernatural imagery, but that does not mean they created a new narrative or were meant to moor the audience's attention thematically.

Tone and resolution of the finale

The finale of 'The Crap Out' does not rejuvenate the ongoing conflicts, but, instead, it highlights the stagnation and unease during the whole season, which has been the main tone of Season 28 of South Park.

In all this, the Woodland Critters perform the in-your-face and dark tone excellently and, so, lead the episode even more towards the absurdity; however, they don’t really change the course of the season. They are powerful and present during the specific moment only, but not throughout the season.

Why does the return still stand out?

The return of the Woodland Critters, despite having little to do with the overall plot, is still notable purely for their absence before they were back in the spotlight over a decade, episodes that marked the show’s most daring side and more.

In South Park Season 28, this incident not only punctuated the show’s typical reasoning but also the audience’s assumptions as the show’s main point of interest, rather than nostalgia.

South Park Season 28 finale surprised many people by bringing back some characters that weren't expected to return, one of them being the Woodland Critters, who returned in 'The Crap Out' without any prior announcement. Even though their time on screen was short and mostly relied on humor, it still fit into the episode's larger theme of rejecting logic, comfort, and the usual holiday structure.

The Woodland Critters, instead of being the central narrative point, were the shock element in a season that was mainly about unpredictability and satire. Their returning character further cemented the wild grade of South Park Season 28 without altering its global direction.