2023 is over. We had some laughs, made some memories, and watched too much TV. And we’re looking forward to doing it all over again this year.
So what does 2024 have on tap for us TV lovers, particularly those of us who enjoy sci-fi, fantasy and superhero shows? As usual, a ton. Let’s run down what to look out for in the new year:
1. Echo (January 10, Disney+)
We’ll take these in chronological order, at least for those shows where we have some idea when they’re coming out. First on the docket is Echo, a Marvel superhero series that follows Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) as she returns home to Oklahoma after the events of Hawkeye. At the end of that show, she squared off against criminal mastermind Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio). Surely there will be consequences.
Maya is a deaf Native American Choctaw and an expert fighter you don’t want to cross. I wonder whether there are a ton of people interested in a Hawkeye spinoff, but Maya is an interesting character, and the prospect of seeing D’Onofrio back in action as the Kingpin is intriguing.
2. True Detective season 4 (January 14, HBO and Max)
Okay, we’re two shows deep and we’re already breaking the rules, since True Detective isn’t really sci-fi or fantasy. But it is kind of spooky and moody, and that’ll do in a pinch.
Plus it’s a good series. The firsts season is still the best, but with Jodie Foster and Kali Reis playing a pair of detectives investigating disappearances at a research center in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, perhaps season 4 can put the show back on top.
Season 4 is the first season of True Detective to come with a subtitle: Night Country. See? Spooky and moody.
3. Halo season 2 (February 8, Paramount+)
The first season of Halo, based on the popular video game franchise, aired on Paramount+ to decent reviews but little fanfare. We’ve always known that a second season of this military sci-fi drama was coming, but have heard next to nothing since. Still, star Pablo Schreiber (Master Chief) announced in May of 2023 that filming on season 2 was done, so we expect it to be along soon enough. Whether it can generate more buzz this time around remains to be seen.
4. Star Wars: The Bad Batch season 3 (February 21, Disney+)
And one more Star Wars show for the road! This will be the final season of Star Wars: The Bad Batch, an animated series about a group of rogue clone troopers who abandon the Empire to strike out on their own. This is the fifth Star Wars show airing on Disney+ in 2024, which is great news for Star Wars fans and maybe a bit exasperating for those looking for some variety in their TV diet.
5. Avatar: The Last Airbender (February 22, Netflix)
I’ll admit I’m excited for this one: Avatar: The Last Airbender was an animated series that ran on Nickelodeon for three seasons back in the 2000s. An epic fantasy inspired by East Asian cultures, the series remains beloved to this day, which isn’t surprising because it’s exciting, funny, charming and all-around awesome.
Now, years later, Netflix is making a splashy live-action remake. It could crash and burn like M. Night Shyamalan’s 2010 live-action movie version, or it could right what was wrong and introduce this story to a whole new generation. I’m hoping for the latter.
We’re not close to done. Click the button below to read on!
6. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (February 25, AMC)
The Walking Dead fans are in for a treat with The Ones Who Live, which will feature the long-awaited return of Rick Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) and Michonne (Danai Gurira), both mainstays of the original series who left before it wrapped up. The Ones Who Live will reunite them for what we imagine will be their last hurrah.
7. Invincible season 2, part 2 (March 14, Amazon Prime Video)
Invincible is an energetic adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s superhero comic book series. We follow fledgling superhero Mark Grayson, aka Invincible, as he battles Martians, sea monsters, gangs from alternate realities and even his own father, who beat him to a bloody pulp at the end of the first season before fleeing the planet Earth.
The first four episodes of Invincible season 2 aired in 2023. The back four will air in March.
8. X-Men 97 (March 20, Disney+)
Marvel Studios has been teasing that the X-Men will join the MCU ever since WandaVision gave us the Ralph Bohner fakeout in 2020. But next year, we’re finally getting a proper X-Men show! X-Men 97 is a revival of the classic 90s cartoon, which was a huge part of what made the mutant superteam the household names they are today. This new series is a sequel to the original series, continuing the story for Wolverine, Jubilee, Beast, Professor X and the rest of the team. — Daniel Roman
9. 3 Body Problem (March 21, Netflix)
Here’s another exciting one. The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, a chilling sci-fi story about humanity’s first contact with a hostile alien species. The books are firmly rooted in hard science, or at least are written well enough to convince me they are. They’re eerie, meticulous and thought-provoking. I can’t wait to see how they translate to the screen.
Moreover, this Netflix show is being overseen by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the guys who created Game of Thrones for HBO. This is their first big project since the end of that series. Are audiences ready to embrace them and their work again? Stay tuned.
10. Star Trek: Discovery season 5 (April 4, Paramount+)
Paramount+ launched a new era of Star Trek shows with Star Trek: Discovery back in 2017. Now the series that started this new wave with crest for the last time with season 5, which is due out early next year.
So far as Star Trek shows go, Discovery has been fairly divisive among fans, although it’s still found its audience. It’s explored time travel, alternate universes, and provided a springboard for spinoffs like Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. This will not be the final entry for Star Trek on this list.
11. Fallout (April 12, Amazon Prime Video)
Based on the popular Fallout role-playing games from Bethesda, this show is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland that, if the show stays true to the games, will have a 1950s aesthetic for reasons that may or may not become clear. After HBO had a big hit with its video game adaptation The Last of Us, can Amazon follow suit?
12. Dead Boy Detectives (April 2024, Netflix)
Dead Boy Detectives is what it sounds like: it’s about a pair of boys who are dead and also detectives. They have to solve mysteries while also avoiding moving onto the next life.
These characters were first introduced in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman series before getting their own comic and now their own TV show. With Gaiman behind the idea, you know it will be funny, inventive and a bit dark and twisted.
13. Interview With The Vampire season 2 (May 12, AMC)
Interview With The Vampire was another surprise hit back in 2022. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles had been picked pretty clean over the years, but AMC managed to breathe new life into this story of a trio of vampires who form a little family while grappling with the problems of immortality.
Season 2 will split up the gang as Louis and Claudia head to Europe while the unpredictable Lestat stays behind in America. We left him for dead, but I think we all know that’s not going to last.
14. Doctor Who season 14 (May 2024, Disney+ and BBC)
Doctor Who has been on the air for 60 years and isn’t slowing down. Right now, David Tennant has returned for a trio of specials. In 2024, he’ll be replaced by Ncuti Gatwa, who will take over as the Fifteenth Doctor. That’s him and companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) above, dressed in their Swinging London 1960s finest above.
Season 11 will feature the return of showrunner Russell T Davies, the guy who originally rebooted Doctor Who back in 2005. Doctor Who goes in and out of periods of growth and stagnation. This is looking more and more like one of the growth periods.
15. The Boys season 4 (June 13, Amazon Prime Video)
Speaking of supervillains, 2024 will see the return of The Boys, the subversive superhero show where the superheroes are sociopaths and the good guys are the ones trying to take them down.
The Boys has built a lot of momentum over the course of its first three seasons. In particular, the homicidal villain Homelander (Antony Starr) — a warped version of Superman with arrested development and a god complex — has gotten a lot of attention. It’s been fun watching him spiral more and more out of control with each passing year. If season 4 plays its cards right, 2024 could be the year when The Boys goes from being a popular TV show to an outright pop culture phenomenon.
16. Star Wars: Skeleton Crew (early 2024, Disney+)
Skeleton Crew is one of several Star Wars shows coming to Disney+ in 2024. This one is about a group of kids who find themselves in control of a spaceship. Their mission: somehow get home. Jude Law stars, presumably not as one of the kids.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is set after the fall of the Empire, which means it takes place roughly at the same time as The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett and Ahsoka. Crossovers are possible.
For my money, this is the most sophisticated show to come out of the Star Wars cinematic universe so far, if not the most fun. But it may have some competition in the form of yet another Star Wars series:
17. Star Wars: The Acolyte (summer 2024, Disney+)
Yep, there are a lot of Star Wars shows coming in 2024. The Acolyte is a brand new series that will be set some 200 years before the Star Wars prequel trilogy, which means it will take us further back in time than any Star Wars movie or show before it. It sounds like The Acolyte will explore the reemergence of the Sith at a time when the Jedi are at the height of their power. Details on this one remain fuzzy, but we may spend a lot of time with characters who embrace the dark side of the Force, which could be fun.
Alright, that’s enough frolicking in outer space. Let’s turn to one of the big fantasy shows returning next year…
18. House of the Dragon season 2 (summer 2024, HBO and Max)
Three years after Game of Thrones ended in 2019, HBO debuted the prequel series House of the Dragon, and in some ways, it was like we’d never left. The new show has all the high drama, sumptuous costumes and well-developed characters of its forebear, plus a lot more dragons.
House of the Dragon is set over 100 years before Game of Thrones, back when the Targaryen dynasty was at the height of its power. And lucky us: we get to watch the family destroy itself from the inside. The second season of the show will pick up where the first left off: Lucerys Velaryon, the son of Queen Rhaenyra Targaryen, is dead, slain by his own uncle Aemond Targaryen. Queen Rhaenyra wants blood. If we know this franchise, she’ll get it.
19. The Umbrella Academy season 4 (August 8, Netflix)
Speaking of endings, season 4 will mark the end of The Umbrella Academy, Netflix’s loopy action series about a family of dysfunctional superheroes who find themselves having to stop one apocalypse after another. Season 4 will be shorter than the first three seasons, but at least we’ll get to say a proper goodbye to the Hargreeves siblings.
20. The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon season 2: The Book of Carol (summer 2024, AMC)
The Ones Who Live isn’t the only Walking Dead spinoff we’re getting next year. AMC is also giving us another season of Daryl Dixon, which follows the adventures of the show’s favorite crossbow-toting redneck badass. Although this new season will be all about Daryl’s friend Carol. Hopefully they’ll share a scene or two together this time around.
21. Tales of the Jedi season 2 (October 2024, Disney+)
And we’re back to Star Wars. Tales of the Jedi is an animated anthology series where each episode follows a different Jedi. Past episodes have followed characters like Qui-Gon Jinn, Mace Windu and Ahsoka Tano. There’s no overarching story, so you can jump into this one at any point.
22. Outlander season 7 part 2 (2024, Starz)
Outlander is approaching the finish line! The first half of season 7 aired in 2023, and ended with perennially unlucky lovers Jamie and Claire Fraser leaving the Americas for Europe. Fans hopefully won’t have to wait too long to see more of this time-traveling romance series.
After that, Outlander will wrap up with season 8. There are only a couple more Droughtlanders to endure before the end.
23. Arcane season 2 (November 2024, Netflix)
The first season of Arcane was a surprise hit when it debuted on Netflix in 2024. Few expected a TV show based on the PvP video game League of Legends to be this dense, exciting, and visually spectacular, but Arcane pulled it off. Season 2 will return us to this steampunk dystopia and continue the story of Vi and Jinx, sisters who find themselves on opposite sides of a conflict in a futuristic, deeply divided city.
24. Beacon 23 season 2 (2024, MGM+)
Beacon 23 is a new sci-fi show starring Game of Thrones veteran Lena Headey as a lighthouse keeper in distant space. When a rogue AI starts getting up to no good, there’s no tell what could happen. And I mean that literally; the first season is still airing as I write this and I don’t know how it ends.
Normally, I wouldn’t have much hope that a show airing this late in the year could return in 2024. However, when we talked to Beacon 23 producer Glen Mazzara, he told us that the first and second seasons of this show were filmed back to back. So season 2 is already shot. If MGM+ decides to renew the series, it should be ready to air next year.
25. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3 (2024, Paramount+)
Star Wars isn’t the only science fiction with the word “star” in the title flooding the airwaves in 2024. The third season of Strange New Worlds, a throwback show set before the original series, will be along sometime in the new year.
Filming on Strange New Worlds ends in June of next year, but because the show is released one episode at a time, they don’t have to finish post-production on the entire season before the premiere date. Still, we wouldn’t look out for Strange New Worlds season 3 until the back half of the year.
26. Star Trek: Prodigy season 2 (2024, Netflix)
Sticking with Star Trek, Netflix will air the second season of this animated adventure sometime next year.
Prodigy is aimed at younger fans; it’s about a group of kids who find themselves in control of a spaceship and have to learn to operate it so they can get home. Helping them is a holographic projection of Captain Kathryn Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, once again played by Kate Mulgrew.
Prodigy originally aired on Paramount+ along with all the other Star Trek shows. However, Paramount+ cancelled the show before the airing of the second season. But then Netflix came to the rescue and could drop the new episodes at pretty much any time.
27. The Penguin (2024, Max)
There have been many TV shows about Batman over the years. Why shouldn’t one of his oldest enemies get some time in the spolight? Colin Farrell will reprise his role as the Penguin, which he first played alongside Robert Pattinson in 2022’s The Batman. This version of the Penguin is less a maniacal supervillain and more of a traditional gangster. We’ll watch him rise through the ranks of the Gotham underworld sometime in 2024.
28. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power season 2 (2024, Amazon Prime Video)
Amazon spent a ton of money on the first season of this Lord of the Rings prequel show back in 2022. It got mixed reviews, but Amazon isn’t going to walk away from this many sunk costs. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power will be back sometime in 2024. Galadriel, Elrond, and the rest will have to contend with the rise of Sauron during the Second Age of Middle-earth, thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings story most of us know.
29. Agatha: The Darkhold Diaries (2024, Disney+)
WandaVision was the Marvel series no one saw coming; it was an inventive blend of character drama, sitcom pastiche, and horror. The breakout character was Agatha Harkness, a wicked witch played with infectious enthusiasm by Kathryn Hahn. Naturally, she had to get her own series.
We don’t know a ton about what Agatha will get up to in Darkhold Diaries, but we know she’ll be in good company: her castmates will include Aubrey Plaza, Patti LuPone, and Joe Locke from Netflix’s Heartstopper.
30. Vikings: Valhalla season 3 (2024, Netflix)
Lots of shows are coming to an end in 2024, including Vikings: Valhalla, the follow-up to the popular show Vikings on History. This sequel series is on Netflix and picks up years after the end of the original show. It follows real-life Vikings from history like Leif Erikson and Harald Sigurdsson. Season 3 will bring this new saga to a close.
31. Superman & Lois season 4 (2024, The CW)
Superman & Lois is the last show left over from the once-thriving DC Arrowverse on The CW. That said, it’s always stood more or less on its own. This superhero family drama will get one last go, albeit with a reduced episode count, a smaller cast, and a diminished budget. At least the fans will have a chance to say goodbye.
32. My Adventures With Superman (2024, Adult Swim and Max)
One Superman ends and another gets going. My Adventures With Superman is an anime-inspired series that charmed audiences on Adult Swim and Max earlier this year. We don’t know exactly when the second season is coming along, but producer Josephine Campbell has said the team worked on seasons 1 and 2 around the same time, so we fully expect it out in sometime in 2024, maybe even early on.
33. What We Do in the Shadows season 6 (2024, FX)
FX’s comedy about a dysfunctional family of vampires has been going strong for years now, and unless something catastrophic happens, we fully expect it to be back in 2024. There’s not much to say about this one. Watch it if you enjoy laughter.
34. Futurama season 8 part 2 (2024, Hulu)
As long as we’re talking comedy, we have to include Futurama, the animated sitcom that’s been running on and off since 1999! The latest in a long string of revivals happened on Hulu, which aired the first half of Furturama season 8 starting in July of 2023. The back half is coming in 2024.
35. The Legend of Vox Machina season 3 (2024, Amazon Prime Video)
And speaking of animated shows, there’s been no official word about the third season of The Legend of Vox Machina — Amazon’s adaptation of the popular Critical Role podcast — but given that the last two seasons were popular and came out like clockwork, we expect the same to happen for season 3.
Critical Role is a show where a bunch of voice actors sit around playing Dungeons & Dragons. This show is an adaptation of their adventures. If that sounds fun, check it out.
36. Castlevania: Nocturne season 2 (2024, Netflix)
It feels like we’re on a roll with animated series here. Castlevania: Nocturne is a follow-up to the Netflix series Castlevania, which itself is based (very loosely) on the classic Konami video game series. The story is always the same: a member of the Belmont clan must stop the vampires, demons and forces of darkness from ravaging the world. Nocturne is set a few generations after the original show and doesn’t (yet) feature an appearance from Dracula, but the stylish ultra-violence is as fun as ever.
Netflix announced that Castlevania: Nocturne was coming back for a second season in October; in fact, production was already underway. Given that the original series usually released one season per year, we’d bet that Nocturne will be back sometime in 2024.
37. Severance season 2 (2024, Apple TV+)
This mind-bending workplace sci-fi drama gained a lot of fans when it premiered on Apple TV+ in 2022. When employees are in this office, they don’t remember their personal lives. And when they’re out, they don’t remember what they did at work. What is behind this mystery. Finding out has been fascinating.
Ideally, the second season of Severance would already be out, but filming was hit with some delays, in part thanks to the writers and actors strikes that shut down Hollywood for part of 2023. We could be wrong, but we’re betting and hoping that season 2 comes out in 2024.
38. The Ark season 2 (2024, SyFy and Peacock)
The Ark is a science fiction series about the vestiges of humanity fleeing a dying planet Earth and looking for a home elsewhere. Even more people perish on the way, including those in charge. The survivors of the survivors must take things from there.
NBCUniversal renewed this show pretty early in 2023, so it should be on track for a 2024 release. Things may have been thrown off by the actors and writers strikes, but we’ll choose to remain optimistic.
39. Ironheart (2024, Disney+)
Let’s end with a couple more Marvel shows for the road. Ironheart is about Riri Williams, an engineering student who is inspired by Tony Stark, aka Ironman, to build her own suit of mechanized flying armor. After that, there’s nothing to be done but to become a superhero.
40. Daredevil: Born Again (2024, Disney+)
This show has been through it. When fans first heard that Disney was reviving Netflix’s Daredevil series, complete with lead actor Charlie Cox back in the lead role of Matt Murdock (and Vincent D’Onofrio back as the villainous Wilson Fisk), they were overjoyed. But the show has encountered difficulties behind the scenes, to the point where Disney decided to retool the whole thing. Hopefully it comes out the other end better and stronger and not too drastically different from the moody Netflix show people remember and love.
And those are all the sci-fi/fantasy shows to keep an eye out for in 2024! Keep in mind that some of them may get bumped to 2025. Which are you excited about? Which are you dreading? Any we missed?
41. Star Wars: Andor season 2 (2024, Disney+)
This is the last Star Wars show on our list, and probably one of the best. The first season of Star Wars: Andor was a surprisingly hard-hitting spy drama that explored how title character Cassian Andor goes from being a selfish opportunist to a freedom fighter willing to give his mind, body and soul to the cause of taking down the tyrannical Empire. This second and final season will take Cassian to when we meet him at the start of the movie Rogue One. If it’s anything like the first season, it could be spectacular.
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