The future looks pretty bleak for our four favourite foul-mouthed fellas.
- Stan Marsh has basically turned into his father, except his Flanderization is implied to have happened much earlier in life. He can't stand his former friends, he despises his last surviving relative, and his addictive personality ended up spiraling out of control.
- It's revealed Randy's obsession with Tegridy Farms ended up destroying the Marsh family in the worst way possible; fed up with the farm and Randy in general, Sharon filed for a divorce. However, Randy refused to give her half of the farm in the settlement and their constant arguing about it caused Stan to snap, burning the farm to the ground. However, Stan didn't realize that Randy had locked Shelley inside the barn as punishment for not doing her chores, and she burned to death in the process; Sharon committed suicide shortly after out of despair. Thus, Stan and Randy were all that were left of the Marsh family and their mutual resentment drove Stan to dump Randy in a retirement home before moving as far away from South Park as possible.
- Scott Malkinson was completely forgotten about by all of his classmates. When Stan makes fun of his lisp, he's relieved that somebody finally remembers him.
- Kenny got his act together and became a scientist, helped stop COVID-19, and successfully traveled back in time... only to die from COVID-19, with his final words being about how much he hates his childhood friends.
- It's a minor moment, but when Stan is telling Alexa he doesn't want to take the phone call that just came in, only to look visibly shaken when she says it's Kyle. They were the closest of the four friends, and yet they're both shown to be isolated and lonely as adults. Stan becoming visibly emotional after Kyle contacted him for the first time in decades is ouch.
- While it initially seems that Jimmy is living his dream of being a famous comedian, he's forced to do milquetoast, politically correct standup routines, which he clearly isn't happy about. It's a stark difference from the kid who once fought with PC Principal over freedom of speech and the press, but somewhere along the way he probably had to sacrifice one in order to achieve the other — which is a hotly debated controversy in the real world comedy circuit.
- Butters being sent to the insane asylum, as it's heavily implied the abuse from both of his parents was what ultimately drove him to insanity. It was later revealed in South Park: Post Covid: The Return of Covid that his obsession with NFT's helped cause him to be in an insane asylum in the first place.
- There's a good chance Randy is going through some Sanity Slippage of his own — he still blames Stan for the loss of Sharon and Shelly while simultaneously experiencing hallucinations of their ghosts, who tell Randy what he wants to hear by reassuring him he isn't at fault for anything. It's a pretty dark turn for someone who just used to be a standard issue manchild that genuinely loved his family, even if he acted like a jackass most of the time.
- More generally, the fact that three out of the four friends never really got over their childhood "breakup". Stan, Kyle, and Kenny all more or less succeeded in terms of careers and finance (even Stan has a home, car, and assorted gadgets), but none of them have families or other friends of their own. Stan became an alcoholic misanthrope who only really talks to his Alexa A.I. (and Alexa herself seems to be fed up with Stan's attitude, though it's possible that Stan himself programmed her to be that way), Kyle appears more functional but still quite lonely, and Kenny literally died blaming his childhood friends for everything wrong in the world, meaning that at some point he found out about them breaking up their friendship despite all their efforts to keep him Locked Out of the Loop. Of course it's all part of the Bad Future that upcoming installments will (probably) fix, but it's depressing to see these three middle-aged men whose "glory days" were back in childhood.
