It’s no secret that 2021 was an incredible year for fantasy and science fiction television. The Wheel of Time, The Witcher, The Expanse, Arcane, Squid Game, and any number of other excellent shows dominated the conversation and kept us entertained for our second long year of extended indoor activity. And let’s not forget all those Disney+ Marvel shows we got as well.
But if 2021 was a good year for genre TV, 2022 is looking even better. Whether you long for thought-provoking voyages into deep space or distant lands filled with dragons and elves, this year we’ll be getting a ton of new shows to scratch that itch.
Including (drum roll)…House of the Dragon, HBO’s first Game of Thrones spinoff! Amazon’s highly anticipated and astronomically expensive Lord of the Rings prequel is set to air as well. So in addition to some groundbreaking new shows, we’ll also get some of the highest profile fantasy releases since Jon Snow shanked Daenerys and Drogon flew away with what remained of our hearts.
Since there’s a lot of new stuff to sift through, we’ve compiled as much of it as we could find into this one handy guide for your viewing convenience. We’ll be updating it throughout the year, adding new release dates and information as they’re announced, so make sure to check back or bookmark it for easy access. It’s dangerous to go alone, so take this!
Here are all the sci-fi and fantasy shows we know for sure are coming in 2022, as well as a few that may yet see their way to our screens. Starting with…
A Discovery of Witches season 3 — Sky One/AMC/Shudder — January 7 (AIRING NOW)
A Discovery of Witches may not be the biggest fantasy show out there, but its fans are incredibly passionate. An adaptation of the All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness, the show begins with mild-mannered historian Diana Bishop discovering a bewitched manuscript with all kinds of information about magical beings. As she uncovers its secrets with the help of a biology professor named Matthew Clairmont (who also happens to be a vampire), she must confront her own magical past, as she’s descended from a line of witches.
In this world, witches and vampires do not get along, which obviously means that Diana and Matthew start a love affair for the ages, which flies in the face of ancient taboos. The show gets pretty wild from there on out; most of the second season is spent time-traveling, and the vampire family tree is so complicated you could teach a university course on it.
The third season of A Discovery of Witches will be its last. Like a lot of other shows, it was affected by the pandemic, so there won’t be as many episodes as initially planned. It’s airing now on Sky One, AMC and Shudder. — Dan
Attack on Titan season 4, part 2 — Hulu/Funimation/Crunchyroll — January 9 (AIRING NOW)
Attack on Titan, based on the manga series of the same name by Hajime Isayama, is set in a world where humanity has been besieged for as long as anyone can remember by a race of dead-eyed, bloodthirsty giants. What humans remain have gathered behind high high walls, but the threat of the titans remains ever-present, and you just know those walls are coming down at some point.
And indeed they do, and all hell breaks loose, and it’s thrilling and exciting. It’s also hopeless; I can’t remember another high-octane animated action series that feels so…despairing. That can be a bummer, but it also gives the show a powerful emotional gravity. Humanity isn’t just fighting an uphill battle against the titans; we’re on our knees, and there seems little hope we’ll ever rise again.
That feeling is so compelling that it’s almost a letdown when the mystery behind the titans is peeled away layer by layer, but Attack on Titan has more tricks up its sleeve; there’s a complex story here about empire and warfare and mutually assured destruction. And the final season is kicking things up a notch by taking Eren Jaeger, our determined shonen protagonist, and turning him into an agent of armageddon set against his former comrades in arms, all of whom we’ve come to like. The show has never lacked for nerve and this is a nervy move.
And all of this is delivered through evocative, fluid animation that will often leave you unsettled; the titans especially are deeply creepy, and the animators love mangling their bodies in all kinds of inventive ways. If that doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, I don’t blame you. But if you’re at all intrigued, now is the perfect time to hop on board.
You can watch new episodes of Attack on Titan on Hulu, Crunchyroll and Funimation. — Dan
Superman & Lois season 2 — The CW — January 11 (AIRING NOW)
The CW has struck gold in Superman & Lois, with Tyler Hoechlin and Bitsie Tulloch as the title characters. This show dispenses with the Superman origin myth and catches up with the Kents several years into their marriage, tracing their lives as they move from Metropolis to Smallville to raise their sons Jon and Jordan. When Superman isn’t fighting baddies from another dimension, he’s trying to manage his teenaged sons, one of whom has powers of his own, while his wife adjusts to small town life.
Superman & Lois effectively combines superheroics with a down-to-earth slice-of-life drama, which apparently is exactly what the character needs. A common refrain about Superman stories is that they can’t have stakes because nothing can really hurt the guy. But if he’s part of an ensemble cast full of characters we come to love on their own, he has vulnerabilities aplenty.
The first season of Superman & Lois was well-received and the second is hotly anticipated. Let’s see how high this show can fly.
Naomi — The CW — January 11 (AIRING NOW)
Alongside Superman & Lois, The CW is airing a brand new superhero series called Naomi, from Selma director Ava DuVernay. Naomi McDuffie, who was introduced fairly recently to DC Comics, is a teenager who’s a big fan of Superman. A mysterious event event involving the hero alerts her to the fact that her own life may have a connection to superheroes.
With a talent like DuVernay behind the camera, Naomi could go far. You can watch the first season on The CW.
Legends of Tomorrow season 7, part 2 — January 12 (AIRING NOW)
Continuing on with our DC celebration, the seventh season of Legends of Tomorrow is back for more misadventures with the Legends. This has always been the loosest and more anarchic of the DC shows on The CW, and season 7 has kept up that tradition with a wild time travel plot.
And finally…
Batwoman season 3 — The CW — January 12 (AIRING NOW)
Batwoman is now in its third season, and new lead actor Javicia Leslie has settled into the role of Ryan Wilder after original star Ruby Rose had to be written off the show. This show features classic Batman villains like Poison Ivy, and has gotten back on its feet since its tricky transition.
And all these shows are airing concurrently. There’s one DC CW show left, but we’ll leave it for a bit later. — Dan
Peacemaker — HBO Max — January 13 (AIRING NOW)
Superman & Lois is the wholesome family superhero show of 2022. This is the other one. James Gunn is behind this HBO Max series about the least wholesome character from The Suicide Squad: Peacemaker, a jingoistic psychopathic meathead who is determined to have peace…even if he has to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth to get it.
It’s a funny premise, and it looks like Gunn is mainly looking to mine a comedic vein here, with a lot of action and some character work thrown in. With his hulking body and sharp comic timing, John Cena is definitely the man for the job. He had charisma to spare in The Suicide Squad and should easily be able to hold down his own series.
Peacemaker will also bring in Robert Patrick as Peacemaker’s cold and distant father, allowing Gunn and Cena to develop the character into something more than just a punchline, although there will be plenty of those. The show kinda-sorta takes place in the DC Extended Universe of movies that includes Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Justice League, but I wouldn’t expect any crossovers save for a few jokey references, unless Warner Bros. is saving a big surprise for us.
There are eight episodes of Peacemaker in total. The first three dropped on HBO Max on January 13, and the rest will drop one at a time on Thursdays. — Dan
Snowpiercer season 3 — TNT — January 24
Based on a 2013 movie of the same name from Parasite director Bong Joon-ho, Snowpiercer is set in a post-apocalyptic future where climate change has plunged the planet into an eternal winter. Remnants of humanity survive aboard a massive train called the Snowpiercer, which is constantly on the move and generates the energy the people on board need to avoid freezing to death.
Over the years, the train has become rigidly divided by class, with the wealthy elites living in style near the front and everyone else — including former detective Andre Layton (Daveed Diggs) — in the back. Naturally, Andre and his supporters eventually stage a revolution, but that’s only the beginning of their troubles.
The second season introduced Game of Thrones veteran Sean Bean as Mr. Wilford, the eccentric, super-wealthy inventor of the Snowpiercer. Folks used to seeing Bean play noble-hearted characters will get a kick out of watching him as this snake. And the second season ended with the implication that there’s hope for life on Earth outside of the train, which raises lots of interesting storytelling possibilities.
Snowpiercer also stars Jennifer Connelly as Melanie Cavill, the (former) voice of the train, so there’s some star power to go around on this show. The third season of Snowpiercer may not be the most hotly anticipated TV show of 2022, but the series has gathered a cadre of loyal fans. Season 3 premieres on TNT on January 24. — Dan
Resident Alien season 2 — SyFy — January 26
SyFy has a whole bevy of new programming on the block for 2022, including a second season of Resident Alien, the show where Alan Tudyk plays an extraterrestrial who comes to our planet to pave the way for his species to wipe everyone out and take over. But naturally, he finds himself getting attached to people here on Earth, although as the trailer above indicates, he definitely still has some “kill all humans” tendencies.
Alan Tudyk is one of those actors who: 1) Literally never says no to a job offer, and; 2) Improves everything he’s in, from Firefly to I, Robot to Tucker and Dale vs Evil. He’s definitely good enough to carry his own show. Will Resident Alien finally turn him into the superstar he deserves to be? For his sake, I hope so.
Astrid & Lilly Save the World — SyFy — January 26
Astrid & Lilly Save the World is a brand new supernatural comedy coming to SyFy about a pair of high school misfits who accidentally open a portal to the underworld and then get saddled with the responsibility of closing it before demons destroy all life on Earth. As it goes. These SyFy shows sure do have high stakes for such fun silly comedies, huh?
It’s cool to see original concepts on TV that aren’t at all tied to any existing IP. Astrid & Lilly looks worth checking out. Both it and the second season of Resident Alien premiere on SyFy on January 26. — Dan
The Legend of Vox Machina — Amazon Prime Video — January 28
Moving away from superhero and sci-fi shows for a minute, and on to…tabletop gaming? Yep, it’s D&D time! The Legend of Vox Machina from Amazon Prime Video sees the minds behind the Critical Role Dungeons & Dragons campaigns at the helm of their very own adult animated series, and it promises to be filled with plenty of humor and adventure.
For the unfamiliar, Critical Role is a group of experienced voice actors who come together to go on often hilarious Dungeons & Dragons campaigns in the fictional realm of Exandria. They’ve been at this for quite a while, and by now Critical Role has become a well-oiled machine.
The Legend of Vox Machina is an interesting one. This project was originally funded by a Kickstarter, which smashed all expectations and raised over $11 million. This led to the Critical Role team planning more episodes before eventually pairing up with Amazon to release a whole series exclusively on the streaming platform. Original Critical Role players Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II), Taliesin Jaffe (Final Fantasy XIV), Ashley Johnson (The Last of Us), Liam O’Brien (Star Wars: The Bad Batch), Matthew Mercer (Overwatch), Marisha Ray (Final Fantasy XV), Sam Riegel (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), and Travis Willingham (Marvel’s Avengers) are bringing their pro voice acting talents to the series, so if you enjoy their D&D campaigns there’s a very good chance this is going to hit that same sweet spot.
The first season of The Legend of Vox Machina will consist of 12 episodes, with three releasing each week. The first batch hits Amazon Prime Video on January 28 — Daniel
Raised by Wolves season 2 — HBO Max — February 3
Raised by Wolves didn’t get a ton of buzz when it premiered on HBO Max back in 2020, but maybe it should have, because it is…bold. Executive produced by Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott, it’s a heady science fiction story about a pair of androids who raise a group of human children after Earth is destroyed in a violent war.
The show has a lot of prominent religious themes, with the androids’ burgeoning human colony being torn apart by sectarian conflict. Danish actor Amanda Collin gives a uncanny performance as Mother, the lead android, and the biggest star in the cast is Vikings veteran Travis Fimmel as a solider in an atheist army. So this is a big budget idea-driven sci-fi show with mostly unknowns in the lead roles. Like I said, bold.
In the second season, the androids Mother and Father will take their brood of six human children to join a newly formed atheist colony on the exoplanet of Kepler-22b, in the mysterious tropical zone. As we can see in the trailer, Mother in particular is starting to behave more like a human, as all robots in science fiction stories inevitably do.
Maybe this will be the year Raised by Wolves catches on. You can see it when it premieres on HBO Max on February 3. — Dan
The Walking Dead season 11, part 2 — AMC — February 20
Hard as it is to believe, we are currently in the midst of the final season of The Walking Dead, the AMC zombie series that at one point looked like it would go on forever. We’ve already seen eight episodes and we’re about to get eight more, before there’s another break and we get eight final hours to finish out the series.
When last we left Daryl, Carol, Maggie, Negan and the rest, they had eliminated the fearsome Reapers and were just discovering the full breadth and depth of the Commonwealth, a post-apocalyptic civilization bigger and more sophisticated than any they’d come across before. This new chunk of episodes will probe deeper into this new viper’s next…but not too deep; gotta save something for the big finish.
New episodes of The Walking Dead premiere on February 20, although subscribers to AMC+ can see them a week early. And this isn’t the only Walking Dead show AMC has on tap for this year…
Fear the Walking Dead season 7, part 2 — AMC — April 17
Set some time before the original series, Fear the Walking Dead has carved out its own space in this post-apocalyptic franchise. And this series takes “post-apocalyptic” seriously: at the moment, the characters on this show aren’t just dealing with zombies, but also the fallout from a nuclear blast at the end of season 6. As if they didn’t have enough to worry about.
But the big news for this next chunk of episodes is the return of Kim Dickens as Madison Clark, who was the lead on the show before “dying” in season 4. But we didn’t see a body, so you knew she’d be back eventually.
New episodes of Fear the Walking Dead start up on April 17, although again, you can watch them early if you subscribe to AMC+. — Dan
Star Trek: Picard season 2 — Paramount+ — March 3
2022 is going to be the year of Star Trek. Let’s begin with the second season of Star Trek: Picard, which brings back Patrick Stewart in the role of Jean-Luc Picard, which he originated on Star Trek: The Next Generation. This new show catches up with Picard in his twilight years enjoying an unhappy retirement on his vineyard. The first season saw him get back into the game, find a new crew, get closure about the loss of his old friend Data, and even get a new cyborg body. A pretty eventful year for an octogenarian ex-starship captain.
The second season will get weirder and wilder. I’ll quote Picard himself from the trailer above: “Q went back in time and turned our world into a totalitarian nightmare…The only way to heal our future is to go back and repair the past…There are ways of traveling in time.”
Yep, the second season will see Picard and company travel back to our time, a trick Star Trek has used before in 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. It was fun then and it looks pretty fun now.
The second season of Star Trek: Picard premieres on Paramount+ on March 3. And that’s not the only Trek show coming in early 2022…
Star Trek: Discovery season 4, part 2 — Paramount+ — February 10
The first new Star Trek show to air in years continues on February 10, when Captain Michael Burnham (Sonequa Martin-Green) continues her quest to discover the threat behind the mysterious Anomaly…or, more intriguingly, perhaps realize there is no threat and convince the other members of the Federation not to attack what could be an innocent alien species. Star Trek has always been at its best when it presents difficult moral quandaries, and Discovery is continuing in that tradition.
The first chunk of season 4 already aired towards the end of 2021. This will be the second and final part. But even after it and Picard season 2 are done, don’t worry: there’s more Star Trek on the way. But we’ll save that for later. — Dan
Outlander season 6 — Starz — March 6
The end of the droughtlander draws near! 2022 will see the return of Outlander on Starz, so rejoice, it is almost time to head back to Fraser’s Ridge.
However, as we all know, things are rarely calm around the Fraser family. After season 5’s absolutely brutal ending, there will be plenty of trauma for Claire and Jamie to work through this year as they try to put the past behind them.
But the past is rarely so cooperative. Aside from the fallout from Claire’s assault last season, we know that a figure from Jamie’s past will soon be coming to the Ridge: Thomas Christie, one of the other men who served time with Jamie at Ardsmuir prison. And from the teases about this season, the presence of the Christie family is bound to make things a lot more complicated.
There’s also the looming shadow of the Revolutionary War on the horizon, as hinted at in the trailer below:
The Frasers have always managed to toe complicated political lines, but this season promises to ratchet those tensions up to a new level. The land that Fraser’s Ridge was built on is property of the British crown…but thanks to Claire’s time traveling, she and Jamie know that England is predestined to lose the war. How they manage to support the Revolutionary effort and avoid falling afoul of the English soldiers is sure to be as difficult a task as anything Claire and Jamie have yet faced.
Season 6 of Outlander is going to be a bit shorter than usual due to COVID-19 complications during filming; this season will only be eight episodes. However to make up for it, season 7 (which is expected to begin production soon) will have a mighty sixteen episodes to balance it all out.
Outlander season 6 premieres on March 6 on Starz. — Daniel
The Flash season 7, part 2 — The CW — March 9
As we saw a few slides ago, there are a lot of DC CW shows out there, but after Arrow ended in 2020, the most popular one is most definitely The Flash. Grant Gustin has been playing Barry Allen for nearly a decade now, and is the frontman for the Arrowverse.
At the start of the show, Barry had a team by his side, but with actors like Carlos Valdes (Cisco) leaving it’s gone through some changes. Arrow lasted eight seasons before it closed up shop. Might The Flash follow suit?
In any case, we’ll pick up with Barry and company again in March, with new episodes following up on the five-part “Armageddon” event.
Charmed season 4 — The CW — March 11
No, Charmed isn’t a part of the Arrowverse, but if we did a separate slide for every genre series on The CW this article would never end.
This reboot of the old WB series follows a trio of sisters — Mel, Maggie and Macy — who lost their mother only to discover that they have supernatural powers and a destiny to protect others from the forces of darkness. Only season 4 will bring some twists, as Macy is gone and another Charmed One comes along to take her place.
Expect the fourth season of Charmed to premiere in March. — Dan
Moon Knight — Disney+ — March 30, 2022
The other big Marvel show coming to Disney+ this year is Moon Knight. Starring Oscar Isaac in the titular role, Moon Knight is about a caped vigilante who suffers from dissociative identity disorder. According to Disney+’s website, “the multiple identities who live inside him are distinct characters who appear against a backdrop of Egyptian iconography.” Which sounds pretty cool to me!
Moon Knight is a complicated hero. His main identity is Marc Spector, a mercenary who comes into contact with the Egyptian moon god Konshu after a job goes horribly wrong. Konshu imbues Spector to act on his behalf, which creates Spector’s Moon Knight personality. It also grants him occasional super powers (depending on how Konshu feels about Spector at the time). Spector has several other personalities, including Hollywood producer Steven Grant, which means that Isaac will get a chance to show off his range.
Moon Knight will premiere on Disney+ on March 30. We wonder if it might lead into a Marvel Werewolf by Night Halloween special coming to Disney+ later in the year. In the comics, Moon Knight was introduced in an issue of Werewolf By Night; he is hired to take down the titular hero. After battling for three nights under the light of the moon, Moon Knight captures Werewolf by Night, aka Jack Russell…only to decide he’d rather release the teenage werewolf than turn him in.
Might this be the plot of the Werewolf by Night special? Let’s watch Moon Knight first, and then return to that thought down the line. — Daniel
Halo — Paramount+ — March 24
Whether it’s Netflix’s breakout success with Arcane or the news of a Fallout television series underway at Amazon, the 2020s feel like feel like they could be a great time for big budget video game adaptations. Lots of video games have great stories, and while movie and TV adaptations of them haven’t always done great in the past, Hollywood is clearly ready to gamble on them now.
The first big video game adaptation of 2022 is Halo. Based on the hugely popular first-person shooter games for the Xbox consoles, Halo follows a genetically altered soldier called the Master Chief as he attempts to stave off the extinction of humankind at the hands of an alliance of alien races called the Covenant. Generally, the way Master Chief does this is by killing everyone with a huge assortments of weapons, defying the odds at every turn. The games had a decent if simple story, so it feels like there’s a lot of room for Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Studios to craft a compelling tale.
Halo stars Paul Schrieber (American Gods) as the Master Chief. His AI companion Cortana is being voiced by Jen Taylor, who also voiced the character in the video games. The cast also includes Natascha McElhone as the scientist who started the program that created super soldiers like the Master Chief, so it’s likely we’re going to be getting some backstory exploration for how this far future space-war came about.
Halo premieres March 24 on Paramount+. — Daniel
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds — Paramount+ — May 5, 2022
Remember when we said there was more Star Trek to come? We weren’t lying. In addition to new seasons of Discovery and Picard, Paramount+ will premiere a brand new Star Trek series in the form of Strange New Worlds, while will star Anson Mount, Rebecca Romijn and Ethan Peck as Christopher Pike, Number One and Spock respectively. This is the team from the original Star Trek pilot way back in ’60s, before even William Shatner came on board as Captain Kirk. They were reintroduced in an earlier season of Discovery and now they’re getting their own series.
Unlike Discovery and Picard, which are heavily serialized, the plan for Strange New Worlds is to keep to an adventure-of-the-week format, with every episode bringing a new planet, a new challenge, etc. It’s the kind of Star Trek show we haven’t seen for a long time.
Strange New Worlds will premiere on Paramount+ on May 5.
Star Trek: Lower Decks season 3 — Paramount+ — 2022
Still want more Star Trek? I hope the answer is yes, because you’re getting it. Star Trek: Lower Decks, an adult animated series that takes inspiration from the Next Generation era, returns for a third season sometime in the summer. And if that still isn’t enough, the kid-friendly CG-animated series Star Trek: Prodigy is airing right now and wraps up in early February. It’ll be out later in the year.
2022 is the year of Star Trek, or so Paramount+ would have us believe. — Dan
Doctor Who Specials — BBC America — Spring & Fall 2022
2022 is the year when the current Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) will regenerate into a new form, always an exciting time for a Doctor Who fan. But not quite yet. We already watched the first of three Doctor Who specials in “Eve of the Daleks,” which found Whittaker and company facing off against a group of Daleks in a Groundhog Day-like time loop. The second special, which is coming sometime in the spring, is called “Legend of the Sea Devils” and pits the Doctor against an enemy she hasn’t faced since the classic series was still airing back in the ’80s:
"This episode finds the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker), Yaz (Mandip Gill) and Dan (John Bishop) in 19th century China, where a small coastal village is under threat – from both the fearsome pirate queen Madame Ching (Crystal Yu) and a monstrous alien force which she unwittingly unleashes. Will the Doctor, Yaz and Dan emerge from this swashbuckling battle with the Sea Devils to save the planet?"
Technically the Sea Devils aren’t aliens but rather the original reptilian race that occupied the planet Earth, but we’re not here to quibble.
Later in the year — we don’t yet know when — we’ll get the big show: a special wherein the Doctor regenerates. We don’t know who will play the next Doctor, but we do know that Russell T. Davies — the guy who revived Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston and then David Tennant way back in 2005 — is returning as showrunner for season 14, which came as a surprise. How often does that kind of thing happen?
But again, we still have two more specials with Jodie Whittaker in the lead before we have to worry about that.
Obi-Wan Kenobi — Disney+ — May 25
In the history of TV, there have never been more Star Wars series on offer than there are right now. But one in particular has had fans buzzing since it was announced. The new Obi-Wan Kenobi series coming to Disney+ this year sees Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen reprise their roles as Obi-Wan and Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader from the Star Wars prequel trilogy. It’s the kind of thing that stands to be pretty special if Disney pulls it off.
Obi-Wan Kenobi will be set during a dark period of the titular Jedi Knight’s life: when he’s living in obscurity on Tatooine after the dreaded execution of Order 66 at the end of Revenge of the Sith, which saw the Jedi nearly wiped out. According to the sole teaser that has been released for the show thus far, that leaves Obi-Wan with really just one mission left in his life: to defend the infant Luke Skywalker.
How Obi-Wan and Vader will come to cross paths again remains to be seen, but we’re all here for it. The show is being helmed by The Mandalorian director Deborah Chow.
As for release dates, the only thing that’s been confirmed is that Obi-Wan Kenobi is coming out in 2022. The show wrapped filming in September of 2021, meaning it’s likely already deep into post-production. Add to that the fact that Disney has yet to announce anything for May the 4th (aka Star Wars day), and that a tie-in novel by Mike Chen called Star Wars: Brotherhood — about the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin — is slated to come out on May 10…and we’d bet our landspeeder on Obi-Wan Kenobi getting a late spring/early summer 2022 release.
And if reports are to be believed, this isn’t the only Star Wars show we’ll be getting this year…
Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 2 — Disney+ — Spring 2022 (reported)
Another Star Wars show we’re expecting in 2022 is the second season of The Bad Batch, the animated series which follows a team of rogue clone troopers who escaped servitude to the Empire after the end of the Clone Wars. The Bad Batch picks up right after the end of the much-beloved Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series, and follows this group (almost all of whom are voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) as they strike out on their own and take up a slew of mercenary missions.
Per The Direct, a leaked poster for The Bad Batch season 2 made its way to Reddit in late January, reportedly from an upcoming issue of the official Star Wars magazine that tagged the show with a spring 2022 release. Of course, until we get any official confirmation for The Bad Batch we will take all this with a grain of salt. But for now it’s enough to know that it’s on the radar and there’s a solid chance it’s coming to Disney+ in 2022. — Daniel
The Orville season 3 — Hulu — June 2
After a long wait, The Orville will finally be returning with its third season this year as well. Season 2 of the Seth MacFarlane Star Trek parody finished airing all the way back in 2019, which feels like it may as well have been another lifetime ago. I’ll be honest, I forgot The Orville even existed until we were compiling this list.
But it does, and it’s coming back, and that’s awesome! The Orville was a fairly unique show: one part comedy, one part sci-fi saga, and one part call back to the sort of thought-provoking adventure-of-the-week fare that originally made Star Trek so enjoyable. MacFarlane’s unique brand of comedy fit the medium really well, and he was great fun to watch as Captain Ed Mercer. The rest of the crew, including an impressive array of often ridiculous aliens, were fantastic as well.
The Orville flagged somewhat in its second season, relying a bit too much on its clearly impressive special effects budget rather than the sharp storytelling that made the first season such a breakout success, but it was still far from a flop. This might be one of those instances where the long gap between seasons could really work to the show’s benefit. MacFarlane and his team have had almost three years to polish up their next outing on the USS Orville. Who knows what strange worlds await?
The show is also being rebranded for its third season as The Orville: New Horizons. Though initially slated for a March release, The Orville’s premiere has since been changed to June 2. — Daniel
The Boys season 3 — Amazon Prime Video — June 3
Amazon has hit filthy cheeky gold with The Boys, an adaptation of Garth Ennis’ anti-superhero superhero comic series. You know how heroes like Superman and Spider-Man want to help people and make the world a better place? The heroes on The Boys are just as powerful, but they wouldn’t lift a finger to save their own mother from a burning building; they probably put her there.
Basically, the premise of The Boys is that the superheroes of the world have been bought and paid for by corporate interests, and a small squad of ordinaries must expose them from for the hedonistic tyrants they are. The series, led by Supernatural showrunner Eric Kripke, has tons of fun mocking our current superhero obsession, but it has plenty of ammunition to go around. The show goes after corporate hegemony, partisan politicians and even home-grown extremism. The Boys isn’t a subtle show, but it does have something to say and it has a blast saying it.
When last we left our…let’s call them heroes…they had humbled the unstable, super-powerful Homelander, backing him into a corner and hopefully delaying his fascistic meltdown…although we all know it’s coming. Season 3 will bring in Jensen Ackles as Soldier Boy, a World War II-era hero we’re sure has some sick secret that will be exposed.
The first few episodes of The Boys will drop on Amazon Prime Video on June 3, and come out once per week after that. It also sounds like we’ll get to watch an animated The Boys spinoff series called Diabolical at some point this year. — Dan
Ms. Marvel — Disney+ — Summer 2022
Last year, it at times felt like we were being buried beneath all the new Marvel shows released on Disney+. In 2022, the studio is paring things back, at least for now; with Marvel, this could all change at the drop of a hat.
As things stand, the only Marvel Disney+ show with a confirmed release window is Ms. Marvel, which we know is coming in the summer. The show follows Kamala Khan / Ms. Marvel, a Pakistani-American teenager living in Jersey City. Kamala is a huge fan of Captain Marvel and has a hard time fitting in at home and at school…until she discovers that she has super powers of her own. Cue an uplifting superhero origin story.
Ms. Marvel is a relatively new character in the comics; she was only introduced in a 2013 issue of Captain Marvel before going on to head up her own run of comics. Nonetheless, she has captured many hearts. It’s really exciting to see Marvel bring a newer character into the MCU, and especially one who means so much to so many people.
Ms. Marvel is coming to Disney+ in summer 2022. — Daniel
Stranger Things season 4 — Netflix — Summer 2022
The third season of Stranger Things came out in the summer of 2019. Three whole years will have passed before we see new episodes. That’s partly because COVID delayed production, but it’s also because Stranger Things likes to take its time. Netflix’s sci-fi period piece has rarely stepped wrong, and the fourth season looks to be the most ambitious yet.
The Byers family, along with Eleven, has moved to California. Sheriff Hopper is, somehow, in a Siberian prison. And the rest of the cast remains in Hawkins, investigating the creepy Creel house. (Patriarch Victor Creel is played by Nightmare on Elm Street veteran Robert Englund, because you know this show has to have its ’80s references.) Then there’s Eleven’s past to explore, and how the younger characters are growing into young adults. Stranger Things has never had quite so much on its plate, but based on the teasers released so far, it’s up to the task.
What's in a name?
— Netflix (@netflix) November 6, 2021
Stranger Things 4 premiering Summer 2022. pic.twitter.com/leznp8XJbh
Stranger Things has turned into one of the premiere genre TV series of the 21st century, and arguably the show that Netflix is best known for. It has a tall order topping itself after the excellent season 3, but with the amount of time the team has taken, hopes are high.
We don’t have an exact release date for Stranger Things season 4 yet, but expect it in the summer. — Dan
The Lord of the Rings prequel — Amazon Prime Video — September 2
When it comes to highly anticipated fantasy shows coming in 2022, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel has to be one of the frontrunners. Not necessarily because of the plot or characters — we know very little about both, aside from the show being set during the Second Age of Middle-Earth. No, we’re all waiting to see what Amazon’s show will actually be like because of the sheer audacity of the thing. If Jeff Bezos packed his entire spaceship full of thousand dollar bills, it probably still wouldn’t come close to the amount of money that the studio is throwing at this Lord of the Rings prequel. Amazon reportedly spent upwards of $250 million just to buy the rights from the Tolkien estate, and then another $250 million or so to produce the first two seasons. For reference, that is almost double what New Line Cinema spent on Peter Jackson’s entire trilogy of Lord of the Rings films.
So of course we’re all beyond curious to see how this prequel series is going to turn out. It could end up being one of the best fantasy shows we’ve yet to see, or it could combust like the One Ring dropped into the fires of Mount Doom. We won’t know until we see more than the single image that has so far been released.
On the lore side of things, there’s quite a bit to be intrigued by. The Second Age is detailed in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, so we do at least know a few things about what to expect, such as the Elven paradise of Valinor (which is where the Elves are all sailing away to in The Lord of the Rings), Númenor (a mighty human island kingdom which has some serious Atlantis vibes; that’s where Aragorn’s Dunedain bloodline originates), and a very different take on Sauron, who in this Age is known for his deceptive beauty and charisma. The Dark Lord is just starting to get his jewelry-making game on here, so I imagine we will likely get quite a bit of backstory for the Rings of Power.
All told, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel is undoubtedly one of the biggest genre releases of 2022. And since they announced a release date very far ahead of time, we know exactly when it’s coming: September 2, 2022. So mark your calendars and make ready to return to Middle-Earth! — Daniel
House of the Dragon — HBO — 2022
Now we move from the shows we have release windows for and onto those we know are coming in 2022, but we don’t know when. And of course, we’d be remiss to start anywhere but with the big one, the show we’re all waiting for with bated breath: House of the Dragon, HBO’s first Game of Thrones spinoff.
House of the Dragon is set 200 years before the original series, and will tell the tale of a brutal Targaryen civil war known as the Dance of Dragons. Not only will Targaryens and their vassals be fighting each other, but there will be dragons as well. Lots of dragons. The time of the Dance was when House Targaryen was at the peak of its power, and there were more dragons in Westeros than at any point before or since. After the Dance, the Targaryens go on to rule for a couple hundred more years, but their power would be ever in decline.
Like Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon has a large cast. The story, based on George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, serves up all the twists, turns, betrayals and battles that fans of the original show could ask for. We don’t yet know exactly when House of the Dragon will premiere, but filming was winding down in January. Based on that, we’re expecting it to come along late in 2022, although it’d be great if it hit earlier.
All we know for sure is that this year, we’ll be able to return to Westeros. — Daniel
The Witcher: Blood Origin — Netflix — 2022
Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings aren’t the only fantasy franchises getting the prequel treatment this year. Netflix has its own high fantasy hit with The Witcher, starring Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia. Now, the streaming service is hard at work expanding The Witcher universe with spinoffs and specials. We already got an animated Witcher movie called Nightmare of the Wolf, and in 2022 we’ll see the live-action prequel series The Witcher: Blood Origin.
Blood Origin is set 1,200 years before the main series and will explore an event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres. This was when multiple worlds (or spheres) overlapped, and elves, monsters, humans, and any number of other races were stranded on the Continent.
The Conjunction was mentioned quite a few times in The Witcher season 2, likely in part to set up this spinoff. Blood Origin stars Michelle Yeoh, and while I never knew I needed Michelle Yeoh to play a badass elf warrior, now that I’ve seen the trailer there’s no doubt that she’s the hero 2022 needs.
A teaser for Blood Origin was attached to the end credits of The Witcher’s season 2 finale, which confirmed that the prequel will be coming to Netflix this year. Considering that the show wrapped filming in November and that it has a smaller six-episode run, it could drop anytime. — Daniel
Westworld season 4 — HBO — 2022
2022 will also see the return of HBO’s mind-bending AI drama Westworld. What began as a relatively straightforward story about self-aware androids in a western-themed amusement park has transformed into something so complicated it’s hard to put into words. Westworld is one of those rare shows that has had to reinvent itself every season, and so far it’s managed this feat pretty well. Season 1 was about the titular theme park going off the rails — think Jurassic Park but with robots who realize they are being constantly murdered by the park’s human tourists. Season 2 was about those androids, called hosts, waging a war for their freedom. Season 3 saw a handful of the main host characters escaping the now-defunct theme park only to discover that humanity is similarly enslaved by a future-predicting quantum computer called Rehoboam.
Season 4…well, what happens next is anyone’s guess. In the season 3 finale, Dolores (Evan Rachel Wood) sacrificed herself in order to break the hold that Rehoboam had on human agency. So now human fate is no longer decided by a computer, several other hosts are free out in the world, and all bets are off.
We also got a hint that another copy of Dolores inhabiting the body of a host named Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) is building an army of robots for some nefarious purpose. Whatever’s coming this season, the one thing we can count on with Westworld is that it’s likely to be pretty crazy.
It was confirmed in HBO’s 2022 sizzle reel that Westworld will be returning this year. It’s been speculated that this could be the final season of the show, but so far that has yet to be confirmed. — Daniel
She-Hulk — Disney+ — 2022
Back in Marvel-ville, another show that’s coming to Disney+ this year is She-Hulk. While Mark Ruffalo will be appearing in this series as Bruce Banner / the Hulk, this show is all about Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), a cousin of Banner’s who gains her own Hulk powers after undergoing a blood transfusion.
One of the interesting things about She-Hulk is that it’s being described on the Disney+ site as a comedy. Pretty much every Marvel movie and TV show has a a strong comedic undercurrent, but it’s intriguing to see the company outright brand She-Hulk that way, because I can’t recall any of their other projects being given that label.
According to Marvel head Kevin Feige, She-Hulk will be a half-hour legal comedy, which will follow Jennifer Walters / She-Hulk as she comes to grips with her powers while also continuing to work as an attorney specializing in superhero-related cases. It sounds like it’s going to be pretty fun, and I kind of love that Marvel is leaning into the comedy.
In addition to Maslany and Ruffalo, She-Hulk will also see Tim Roth return as the Abomination, a role he played in 2008’s The Incredible Hulk and briefly reprised in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. No release date has yet been announced for She-Hulk, but it was confirmed as a 2022 release during Disney+ Day. The show wrapped filming in August 2021, so this feels like a title that could drop at anytime this year.
His Dark Materials season 3 — HBO — 2022
The third and final season of His Dark Materials — HBO’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s controversial fantasy trilogy — is on its way this year. The show has mostly flown under the radar, never getting the acclaim and attention of other suitable-for-teenagers fantasy series like Stranger Things, but it’s a nice piece of work.
His Dark Materials tells the story of Lyra and Will, two children from different worlds who get caught up in an interdimensional conspiracy involving witches, airships, talking polar bears, quantum mechanics and literal angels. It’s a heady mix of themes and plot elements, and I don’t think HBO has ever quite made the series as enchanting as the books, but that’s a tall order so I’ll cut them some slack. The performances are good (especially Ruth Wilson as the icy Mrs. Coulter), the effects effective and the intentions pure. And the third and final book in the series, The Amber Spyglass, has some eye-popping climaxes to look forward to.
HBO filmed the first two seasons of His Dark Materials back to back, so they ran the second a mere year after the first. The third season they shot separately, so we’ve had to wait longer for it. We don’t know exactly when it’s coming out but we know it’ll be this year. — Dan
The Sandman — Netflix — 2022
Published between 1989 and 1996, The Sandman may be the best comic book series ever written. I know that’s a really dramatic statement, but until a better comic book comes along I’m sticking to it.
The Sandman is about Dream, the anthropomorphic personification of dreams. He is one of several beings known as the Endless, all of whom are responsible for a different facet of the human condition, from Despair to Desire to Death. Very roughly, The Sandman traces Dream’s journey as he tries to put his realm back in order after a long period of captivity, but no blurb can do justice to this sprawling, highly imaginative tale. Throughout the pages of this comic, we will see what cats would do if they ruled the world, learn where Shakespeare really got the ideas, go to Hell, and much more. With a premise this wild there’s really no place the story can’t go, and author Neil Gaiman takes it just about everywhere.
The Sandman is dense, complex, funny, weird, horrific, and tense. It’s complicated, which makes it a tricky story to adapt. I have my doubts as to whether Netflix can pull it off — I have my doubts as to whether anyone can pull it off — but the very fact that they have the guts to try has me intrigued. I wish them the best.
Filming on The Sandman is over, but we don’t know exactly when this year it’s going to premiere. Look out for it sometime in the middle of the year. — Dan
The Umbrella Academy season 3 — Netflix — 2022
Another Netflix release coming in 2022 is the third season of The Umbrella Academy. Superhero stories have become so much the rage this past decade that now there’s a rush to subvert them; The Boys, which we talked about earlier, is doing that. So is The Umbrella Academy, which is Netflix’s entry into the superhero arms race. The show has been a solid success for the streaming platform, racking up both views and critical acclaim, so it was no surprise when the streamer renewed it for a third season back in 2020.
The Umbrella Academy is a pretty fun show, serving up equal helpings of dark humor and superhero action. The series follows a dysfunctional family of seven superpowered individuals who were adopted and raised by an even more dysfunctional scientist/father figure who taught them to harness their gifts.
After the first season’s explosive finale, the show’s second took us on a time travel adventure to the 1960s. But when the team got back to their own time, they found things much changed, which is always a risk when time travel is involved. Season 3 will see the Hargreeves family trying to make their way in this alternate future, where they discover that their foster father never adopted them and started the “Sparrow Academy” with mostly different superpowered individuals instead.
Whatever this new future holds, with The Umbrella Academy you can bank on it being weird as well as highly entertaining. Season 3 is coming to Netflix sometime in 2022. — Daniel
Resident Evil — Netflix — 2022
We’ll also be getting a very different Netflix series in 2022: Netflix’s live-action Resident Evil series. Based on the classic survival horror video games of the same name, Resident Evil will tell the story of a zombie outbreak that threatens to end the world, courtesy of a virus created by the nefarious pharmaceutical giant the Umbrella Corporation. In no particular order, you should expect zombie people, zombie dogs, giant monsters, small monsters, monsters with long razor-sharp tongues, zombie spiders, and any number of other creatures.
There have been plenty of screen adaptations of Resident Evil in the past, most famously the six-film series starring Milla Jovovich and last year’s much more faithful Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City. But where this new Resident Evil show gets interesting is in the characters it’s choosing to focus on: longtime franchise villain Albert Wesker and his two daughters.
The story will follow the Wesker family in two separate timelines: one where they move to Raccoon City, which is pretty much always ground zero for the outbreak in these stories, and one set 10 years later when the population of the world has been reduced to only 15 million people due to the zombie outbreak. Albert Wesker (played in the show by Lance Reddick) is often the one pulling the strings to thwart the heroes in the video game series, so for him and his children to be the focus of their own series is a really interesting twist.
Netflix has confirmed that Resident Evil will be getting a 2022 release, but little else about the show is known at this point. — Daniel
The Nevers season 1, part 2 — HBO — 2022
The Nevers is an ambitious period drama about a group of people in Victorian London — mostly women — who are granted extraordinary abilities when a mysterious alien craft flies over the city…although only a couple people know that’s what happened. The series is a strange beast, an expensive, earnest adventure that mixes comedy, drama, fantasy, sci-fi, history and superheroics, all of it anchored by a layered performance from Laura Donnelly as Amalia True.
Even if production on the show had gone off without a hitch, The Nevers would be a hard sell to the masses, and production did not go off without a hitch. To start, The Nevers was hit badly by the pandemic, resulting in HBO only filming half of the proposed 10-episode first season. We ended up getting six episodes, and now we’re going to get six more to see where this wild tale goes next.
Then there’s the fact that the show was created by The Avengers director Joss Whedon, who was essentially banished from show business after a series of scandals came to light. With so many problems I wondered if HBO would just cut its losses with The Nevers, but they hired British screenwriter Philippa Goslett to replace him as showrunner and moved on.
Filming on the remaining episodes of The Nevers wrapped by the end of 2021, so it’ll be along sometime this year; we just don’t know quite when. — Dan
Willow — Disney+ — 2022
Disney is very fond of reviving and repackaging its old movies and shows in new forms, and it doesn’t look like it’ll be slowing down any time soon. Hence we’re getting Willow, a TV version of the 1988 film of the same name starring Warwick Davis as an aspiring sorcerer who finds himself protecting a baby from a tyrannical queen.
The new series will pick up decades later, will Willow Ufgood now an established sorcerer about to go on a new quest: a princess is assembling a party to help her rescue her twin brother, and she needs Willow’s expertise.
As in the original film, Willow will travel with a motley band of adventures, although so far there’s no sign that Val Kilmer will return as the mercenary swordsman Madmartigan, although he shared top billing in the 1988 movie. There are some things even Disney’s money can’t tempt an actor to do, although I wouldn’t be surprised if Kilmer at least turned up for a cameo or something.
If House of the Dragon will provide us with the dark fantasy we want in 2022, and The Lord of the Rings the fantasy series you can watch with the whole family, perhaps Willow will be aimed more at the younger set. The series is confirmed to be heading to Disney+ sometime this year, although we don’t know quite when. — Dan
Russian Doll season 2 — Netflix — 2022
The first season of Russian Doll premiered on Netflix in 2021 and became a nice little sleeper hit. It’s about a software engineer named Nadia (Natasha Lyonne) who gets caught in a time loop on her 36th birthday, which also happens to be the day she dies. Think of it as Groundhog Day for millennials.
During her adventure, she runs into Alan (Charlie Barnett), who’s in a very similar situation. They help each other figure things out, and the show ends with them preventing each other’s deaths and meeting in an alternate, pre-loop timeline where they become friends.
The show left plenty of mysteries unresolved, so there’s lots of room to explore in a second season; the producers (who include Lyonne, Leslye Headland and Amy Poehler) have said that they have plans for a third and final season beyond that. And Barnett has said that Russian Doll season 2 is “very different” from the first go-round. Are there no time loops this time around? Are there more time loops? The public desperately wants to know.
Filming on Russian Doll season 2 was delayed by the pandemic, but it was still completed midway through 2021, so the show should have no trouble premiering in 2022. In fact, it’s odd that Netflix still hasn’t unveiled a release date or teaser or something. We would say that season 2 was a shoo-in for an early 2022 release, but until we hear more, we’re not committing. — Dan
Other shows that could be coming in 2022
For all the amazing shows we’ve discussed so far, there are also quite a few that could be coming this year…but may also get pushed to 2023. So to wrap things up, we’re putting all these shows into this final round-up.
None of these series have been confirmed for 2022, but based on their production schedules or prior release schedules, it’s at least possible that we’ll see them this year. If we get confirmations, we’ll move them onto the list proper. If we learn they won’t be coming out this year, they will be cast into the abyss.
Without further adieu, here’s every other sci-fi or fantasy show on our radar that could be coming out this year:
- The Wheel of Time season 2 — The first season did a relatively solid job of adapting Robert Jordan’s immense fantasy book series. Filming on season 2 was already underway when the first season was airing, and rough cuts of the first few episodes are done. If this show comes in 2022, it will likely be after Amazon’s Lord of the Rings prequel. So November at the earliest.
- The Mandalorian season 3 — Season 2 of The Mandalorian left us all with a lot of questions about where things were headed for Din Djarin and Grogu, and alas, we don’t yet know when we’ll be getting answers. Season 3 was filming in 2021. Judging by the late year releases of the first two seasons and The Book of Boba Fett’s New Year’s release, we’re wagering that if we see the Mando again at all this year, it will be in late fall or early winter.
- The Witcher season 3 — The scripts are written, but as of the start of 2022, filming had not yet begun on the third season of Netflix’s monster hunting fantasy series. Considering that the prequel Blood Origin spinoff is coming out in 2022, it’s very possible we won’t see The Witcher’s third season until 2023. If it comes this year, it will almost certainly be a December release.
- Shadow and Bone season 2 — Filming began for Shadow and Bone’s second season in January 2022. It’s possible we’ll see it in late 2022, but considering it’s a very special effects-heavy series and Netflix likes to release full seasons at once, 2023 is also a strong possibility.
- Invincible season 3 — The first season of Robert Kirkman’s anti-superhero superhero series was a hit in 2021, and Amazon quickly ordered more seasons. But considering that production hadn’t started by the beginning of 2022, it seems doubtful we’ll see more this year.
- Carnival Row season 2 — The second season of Amazon’s neo-noir fantasy show about socio-political upheaval in a world populated by humans and fae was a strong debut for the streaming platform in 2019, but its second season has undergone numerous delays due to the pandemic. Season 2 wrapped filming in late 2021 which means it’s very likely we’ll see finally see it drop this year, however Amazon has yet to confirm a 2022 release date.
- Foundation season 2 — Apple TV+ is adapting Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi series Foundation. The show was renewed in 2021, but we don’t know when filming will begin. It’s possible that season 2 could premiere in 2022, but 2023 seems more likely.
- Avatar: The Last Airbender — Netflix was staffing up for it’s live-action remake of Avatar: The Last Airbender towards the end of 2021, with filming set to run through this year. We could see it late in 2022, but 2023 seems just as likely, if not moreso.
- Dune: The Sisterhood — Denis Villeneuve’s Dune movie is a hit, and Warner Bros. is looking to capitalize by creating a TV show about the Bene Gesserit, the secretive conclave of women who exert a huge influence on the running of the galaxy. But considering we haven’t heard anything about casting or shooting, they probably won’t debut it this year.
- The Last of Us — HBO is pouring a lot of money into this screen adaptation of the popular video game from Naughty Dog, but it wasn’t in the network’s 2022 sizzle reel, so it’s an open question whether it premieres this year.
- The Handmaid’s Tale season 5 — Hulu’s dystopian series about a world where the birth rate has fallen sharply has been going strong for years now, and while work is underway on a fifth (and maybe final) season, it’s unclear when it will premiere, especially after season 4 was hit with massive delays.
- The Peripheral — Westworld showrunners Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy are adapting William Gibson’s sci-fi novel The Peripheral for Amazon Prime Video, although we don’t know when it will come out.
- Interview with the Vampire — AMC is planning a new cinematic universe based on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles novels, although we don’t yet know if it’ll be out in 2022.
And thus concludes our expansive list of every major science fiction and fantasy television show to watch in 2022. Clearly, this year is going to be a serious adventure for genre fans. Make sure to revisit this guide and check back throughout the year, as we’ll be updating it whenever new release dates are announced.
Which series will you be watching? And are there any that we’ve forgotten? Let us know in the comments!
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