The 7 best sci-fi/fantasy TV episodes of 2023

Bonus: "Connor's Wedding," Succession (HBO)

Okay, true, Succession is neither a fantasy nor a sci-fi show. But you could argue that it was HBO's most natural successor to its phenomenal fantasy hit Game of Thrones. Think about it: Succession is about a family a of uber-wealthy power players who try to out-maneuver each other in order to take their rightful seat on the throne of their father's company. It's like if the Lannisters lived in modern-day times and didn't have to deal with dragons.

The fourth and final season of Succession was also one of the best seasons of TV this year, so I didn't want to leave it completely unremarked upon. And "Connor's Wedding," predictable a pick as it is, was the best episode. This was the episode where Logan Roy, patriarch of the hugely influential and wealthy Roy family, died...offscreen, during his eldest son's Connor's wedding. He doesn't attend the wedding, of course; he was a cold, emotionally distant man, which is part of the reason his kids are so uniformly screwed up. But we see them come together, at least briefly, in the wake of their father's death. The show observes their selfish, cascading emotional crises with its usual eye towards sensitivity and pathos. These kids are a bunch of screw-ups, but they're our screw-ups, and they've suffered a crushing blow.

The episode also gets points for its unpredictability; Logan Roy was the hinge on which Succession turned, so to kill him off in the third episode of a 10-episode season was a shocking masterstroke. It set up the rest of the season to be a richer, fuller experience. It'll be a while before we see another show like Succession.

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