It is only May, and 2025 has already delivered more extraordinary television than most full years can manage. Here are the shows defining this remarkable moment in streaming.
1. Severance Season 2 (Apple TV+) — TDW Score: 9.5
Dan Erickson and the show’s directors have turned the Lumon Industries universe into one of the most formally ambitious things television has ever attempted. The season’s standalone Wellness Center episode is a masterwork of psychological horror.
2. Andor Season 2 (Disney+) — TDW Score: 9.6
Tony Gilroy’s farewell to Cassian Andor is the most intelligent, politically rigorous piece of science fiction television ever made. The phrase “Andor is the best Star Wars” has moved from contrarian take to consensus reality.
3. The White Lotus Season 3 (HBO) — TDW Score: 9.4
Mike White takes his savage social satire to Thailand and somehow sharpens the blade further. Walton Goggins is giving a performance for the ages.
4. The Last of Us Season 2 (HBO) — TDW Score: 9.2
More brutal, more complex, and more emotionally violent than the first season — which itself was extraordinary. A defining piece of prestige drama.
5. Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+) — TDW Score: 8.6
The MCU street-level redemption continues. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are simply extraordinary together, and the action choreography has finally caught up to the Netflix-era hallway sequence standard.
The Case for 2025
The convergence of these shows in a single calendar year suggests the streaming wars, for all their economic turbulence, have produced a golden age for serialized drama. The race to retain subscribers has forced creative risk-taking that the old broadcast model never permitted.
Watch these shows. All of them. You’ll thank us.