South Park Post Covid 2 Fixes Cartman's Adult Ending

South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid ends by giving Cartman's adult life a fate much more befitting of his character than the previous special.

Warning: Contains spoilers for South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid.

The latest South Park special, Post Covid: The Return of Covid, fixes the ending to Cartman’s adult life. The previous special’s depiction of Cartman as an adult in South Park: Post Covid was a major source of discussion among fans of the long-running animated series, as it seemed almost at odds with the kind of person he was. That being said, the second special reworked things to give Cartman’s adult life an ending that’s more in line with his character.

South Park: Post Covid 's timeline saw the show skip ahead 40 years into the future, with all of the town's children being aged up accordingly. As an adult, Cartman was not only a nice and well-mannered person, but he had also converted to Judaism and had a loving, Jewish family. Everything about it was so at odds with how Cartman was known to act that many people assumed that it was all part of an elaborate scheme of his to mess with Kyle—something Kyle even brought up in the episode.

By the end of South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid, however, Cartman ends up with a fate in his adult years that would be much more in line with his character. As previously established in South Park: Post Covid, the boys planned to use time travel to go back in time and prevent the pandemic from ever happening. Things didn’t go exactly as planned after they realized that it was impossible to stop the pandemic, so they instead used time travel and Randy’s weed to make it so people wouldn’t react to the pandemic as badly as before. The future is changed into a much brighter one for everyone except Cartman, who is now an alcoholic, deranged, homeless man who’s completely alone in the world.

Cartman’s fate in the new timeline is one that much better reflects on the kind of person he was throughout the core series. South Park's Cartman has spent the entirety of the show doing one horrible thing after another and has never shown any remorse for being a self-centered, racist sociopath willing to ruin lives for the pettiest of reasons. As such, a future where he’s finally pushed his friends too far and doesn’t even have anyone to offend is more than appropriate. This revelation arguably comes across as a little bittersweet, as it's implied that Cartman’s life in the original timeline wasn’t completely an act.

Post Covid: The Return of Covid showed that Kyle wasn’t wrong to doubt Cartman’s change of heart, as he spends most of the special plotting to kill Kyle in the past, thus proving that he was still the same monster he was as a child deep down inside. That being said, despite the implications in South Park: Post Covid, Cartman’s newfound faith and love for his family appeared to be completely genuine, and he even helped Stan and Kyle change the timeline in the end, despite knowing that it could, and evidently did, separate him from his family. Cartman’s actions in the original timeline of South Park show that it wouldn’t be impossible for him to change for the better, but it doesn’t change the fact that every terrible thing he’s done made his new fate a well-deserved one.

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South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid is streaming now on Paramount Plus.