In the episode, Stan and Butters engage in the battle of their lives as they fight the army of evil imaginary forces.
Kyle finds that he has a telepathic link to Stan in Imaginationland, who alerts him to the events transpiring in that realm, where the good characters, outnumbered and largely untrained for combat, charge the evil army.
The good characters' victory is interrupted by the missile's explosion, destroying everything in Imaginationland and killing everyone in it (including the people from the real world), and leaving nothing but a vast white emptiness.
They inform Butters that it wasn't a dream, as they read about it in a newspaper, but they proceed to ground him anyway for not coming back from Imaginationland in time to clean out the basement.
Disappointed, Butters lies back in bed and ends the episode with a low, unhappy and uncensored mutter of "Aw, shit".
Al Gore when he shows a video of 'man-bear-pig' attacking the army base the dialog echoes directly the Operatives opening lines from Serenity.
IGN gave the episode a rating of 8.5/10 calling it "another ambitious effort, with lofty themes, goofy humor and plenty of sequences that just seem to pack jokes and references into every frame".
Club gave the trilogy a B grade, criticizing the slow pace of the main plot and calling it "more like an excuse for a nostalgia trip than a good arc."
However, he praised Cartman's endless pursuit of his bet with Kyle and the return of the Christmas critters, calling their appearance, "some of the funniest moments in South Park's recent history".