Superhero television has come a long way from the days when Batman and Robin were climbing walls and animated heroes were mostly confined to Saturday mornings. Streaming has given Marvel and DC room to explore characters who might never get their own movies, while shows like The Boys and Invincible have found considerably bloodier ways to approach the genre. Some of the best superhero stories don’t even need a traditional hero at the center.
Our selection of the 20 best superhero TV shows brings together animated classics, live-action dramas, comedies, and a few shows that stretch the definition of superhero TV. There are mutants fighting for acceptance, Gotham gangsters fighting for power, and ordinary people wondering why everyone else got superpowers first.
From classic cartoons to contemporary dramas, these 20 shows cover very different corners of the superhero genre. Here’s where to find them in the US.
Streaming availability is based on US listings checked in September 2026 and may change.
The success of 1989’s Batman and its sequel Batman Returns helped pave the way for Batman: The Animated Series. Its art deco Gotham City, noir-inspired storytelling, and surprisingly emotional episodes gave it a look and tone that still feel distinctive decades later.
Kevin Conroy’s Batman and Mark Hamill’s Joker became inseparable from the characters in many fans’ minds. Bruce Timm, Paul Dini, and their collaborators also found ways to make familiar villains feel richer, while introducing Harley Quinn, who would eventually become one of DC’s biggest characters.
Plenty of Batman shows have followed, but few have balanced the detective, the intimidating vigilante, and the compassionate Bruce Wayne this well.
Alan Moore has distanced himself from adaptations of his work, but HBO’s Watchmen isn’t another attempt to film the graphic novel. It’s a continuation of the story he created with artist Dave Gibbons.
Set primarily in Oklahoma, the series follows Angela Abar (Regina King), a masked detective investigating a conspiracy involving a white supremacist group and the legacy of earlier costumed vigilantes. Creator Damon Lindelof puts race and historical injustice at the center, opening with the real-life 1921 Tulsa race massacre.
Like the graphic novel, Watchmen is interested in what happens after supposedly heroic decisions have been made. Its characters inherit secrets, grudges, and institutions shaped by people who came before them. That gives this sequel plenty to say without simply dragging the old characters back out.
Bringing Marvel’s mutant heroes to Saturday mornings in 1992 was a bigger swing than it might seem now, especially when superhero adaptations were still considered risky television material.
The series wasn’t afraid of ongoing storylines, adapting comic-book arcs involving the Phoenix, the Sentinels, Apocalypse, and plenty of interpersonal drama along the way. Characters lived, loved, argued, and occasionally died, which gave the show more continuity and emotional weight than many children’s cartoons of the era.
The theme song obviously helped. But the real achievement was making a huge superhero team accessible without sanding away everything messy about them. Decades later, X-Men ’97 had something substantial to build on.
Reviving a cartoon that an entire generation remembers fondly is risky. X-Men ’97 could easily have turned into a nostalgia exercise, but it doesn’t spend much time admiring the past.
Picking up after X-Men: The Animated Series, it throws Cyclops, Jean Grey, Storm, Wolverine, and the rest of the team into a leadership crisis following Professor Xavier’s absence. Magneto’s unexpected new role makes that transition even more uncomfortable.
The upgraded animation gives the battles more speed and scale, while the serialized story pushes familiar relationships somewhere new. As Digital Trends’ review points out, nostalgia is only part of the appeal. The revival treats the old series as a foundation, not something too precious to touch.
Two seasons are now available on Disney+, with Season 2 wrapping in August 2026.
Trust us, you don’t want very young kids watching Invincible. This remarkably faithful adaptation of Robert Kirkman, Cory Walker, and Ryan Ottley’s comic earns its TV-MA rating with some absolutely brutal violence. The bloodshed works, though, because Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) is so earnest about becoming a hero like his father, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons).
The longer the series goes, the clearer it becomes that good intentions aren’t enough. Mark’s father’s legacy, the Viltrumites, and the damage caused by increasingly destructive battles keep forcing him to reconsider what being a hero actually requires.
Four seasons have aired, with more announced. Somehow, underneath all the broken bones and flying body parts, Invincible is still a coming-of-age story.
In the disturbingly familiar world of The Boys, superheroes belong to the powerful Vought International corporation. Its costumed “supes” spend as much time making commercials, shooting movies, and protecting their brands as they do saving anyone.
Billy Butcher (Karl Urban) leads a group determined to expose Vought, particularly its most dangerous creation, Homelander (Antony Starr). The TV adaptation gives its heroes and villains more dimension than the exaggerated caricatures in Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s original comic.
The show’s favorite target isn’t simply bad superheroes. It’s everything surrounding them: PR teams, executives, advertisers, fans, and institutions willing to package almost anything for sale. All five seasons are now available, bringing Butcher and Homelander’s conflict to its conclusion. Subtlety was never really the point.
Netflix’s Daredevil works best when it treats Matt Murdock’s corner of Marvel’s universe like a crime thriller.
Charlie Cox plays Matt as a determined but deeply flawed vigilante trying to protect Hell’s Kitchen, while Vincent D’Onofrio’s Wilson Fisk is just as compelling as the man trying to control it. Their confrontations carry plenty of tension even when nobody is throwing a punch.
The hallway fights became famous for good reason, and Jon Bernthal’s Punisher is a highlight of the second season. But Matt’s real problem is that his beliefs and his methods don’t always fit comfortably together.
The original series concluded after three seasons, with Cox later returning for two seasons of Daredevil: Born Again.
A lot of viewers didn’t know what to make of WandaVision when it debuted in 2021. The series dropped Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Vision (Paul Bettany) into the corny world of television sitcoms without initially explaining why two Avengers were suddenly behaving like the leads of Bewitched and The Brady Bunch.
Each jump to a new television era changes the costumes, sets, performances, and even the way the show looks. Meanwhile, little cracks start appearing in Wanda and Vision’s apparently perfect suburban life.
The sitcom gimmick eventually becomes more than a clever visual trick. It’s the language Wanda uses to build a place where loss can be rewritten, at least temporarily. For such a strange Marvel experiment, the emotional idea underneath it is surprisingly simple.
Justice League Unlimited takes the already ambitious animated Justice League and decides what it really needs is a ridiculous number of additional superheroes.
Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are still around, but Green Arrow, Stargirl, Huntress, the Question, and dozens of lesser-known DC characters get opportunities to carry stories of their own. One standout is For the Man Who Has Everything, an adaptation of the classic Superman story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons.
A cast this large could have turned the show into a parade of cameos. Instead, even obscure heroes regularly get a reason to be there. It’s hard to think of another DC series that makes its enormous fictional universe feel this connected without becoming completely unwieldy.
There have been plenty of Spider-Man cartoons, but The Spectacular Spider-Man remains one of the strongest versions of Peter Parker’s world.
The show makes excellent use of Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane Watson, Eddie Brock, Flash Thompson, and the rest of Peter’s supporting cast. His friendships, crushes, and school problems aren’t things to rush through before the next fight. They’re usually the reason being Spider-Man becomes such a headache.
Villains like the Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Venom are also tied into Peter’s everyday life instead of simply dropping in for an action scene. The series lasted only two seasons, which still feels unfair. At least it gave us a ridiculously catchy theme song on the way out.
Legion makes it clear pretty quickly that it has little interest in behaving like a normal superhero series.
Created by Fargo‘s Noah Hawley, it stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, the powerful mutant son of Charles Xavier. His conflict with Amahl Farouk, also known as the Shadow King (Navid Negahban), plays out through unreliable narration, musical sequences, shifting realities, and trips through the astral plane.
None of that strangeness is there just to show off. David’s perception of events is part of the problem, and the show regularly makes viewers reconsider what they’ve seen and who they should trust.
Across three seasons, Legion keeps pushing farther away from capes and costumes and closer to surreal psychological drama.
The heroes of Doom Patrol rarely fight crime, and when they do, it tends to go badly. Their adventures might involve battling a world-threatening sex demon or reaching another dimension through the mouth of a donkey.
That nonsense works because the team itself is such a disaster. Its members include a disfigured pilot, a former race car driver whose brain is trapped in a robot body, and a woman living with multiple identities. They bicker, retreat into their own problems, and regularly make bad situations worse.
Then the show will suddenly stop being ridiculous long enough to land a genuinely painful character moment. Doom Patrol ended after four seasons in 2023, leaving DC with one fewer place for its absolute weirdest ideas.
Krysten Ritter stars as Jessica Jones, a superpowered private investigator with a drinking problem and almost no patience for anyone who gets in her way.
Jessica survived the abuse of Kilgrave (David Tennant), a sadistic man who can control other people’s actions. Getting away from him didn’t make what happened disappear, and the first season is at its best when it shows how his influence continues to shape Jessica’s relationships, decisions, and ability to trust people.
Her pursuit of Kilgrave plays more like a tense crime thriller than a succession of superhero battles. Rachael Taylor’s Trish Walker adds another layer as the show digs into what different people think power is actually for.
The series ran for three seasons, but that first confrontation remains the one that’s hardest to shake.
After Batman: The Animated Series worked so well, its creative team turned to a character who could hardly be more different.
Tim Daly voices Superman, Dana Delany gives Lois Lane plenty of bite, and Clancy Brown makes Lex Luthor genuinely threatening without needing a giant robot every five minutes. The show embraces the strange corners of Superman’s comic-book world while keeping Clark Kent at the center of it.
Its slow-building conflict with Darkseid (Michael Ironside) and the New Gods eventually leads to a terrific two-part finale. More importantly, the series rarely treats Superman’s enormous power as a problem that needs fixing. Give him enemies who can challenge what he believes instead, and the stories take care of themselves.
After years of stories asking what would happen if Superman turned evil, My Adventures with Superman tries something almost radical: Clark Kent is a genuinely nice guy.
Jack Quaid voices a younger Clark beginning his career at the Daily Planet alongside Lois Lane (Alice Lee) and Jimmy Olsen (Ishmel Sahid). He’s still figuring out his Kryptonian heritage, but the friendship among the three leads gives the series much of its charm.
The anime-inspired animation adds plenty of energy, while Clark and Lois’ awkward romance keeps things personal. As Digital Trends noted in its earlier coverage, this Superman would rather make a friend than throw a punch.
Sometimes watching three young reporters figure themselves out is enough. Three seasons are now available, with the third arriving in 2026.
Perhaps the biggest test of Harley Quinn’s popularity was whether she could carry an animated series outside the Joker’s shadow. Five seasons later, that question feels pretty well settled.
Kaley Cuoco voices Harley as she leaves the Joker (Alan Tudyk) and builds a spectacularly dysfunctional gang that includes Clayface, Doctor Psycho, and King Shark. Their attempts at supervillainy often feel like a workplace comedy where the office happens to explode every few episodes.
The show’s real center is Harley’s relationship with Poison Ivy (Lake Bell). Their friendship becomes a romance while Harley continues figuring out who she is when the Joker isn’t defining her.
Batman and the rest of DC’s supposedly serious characters regularly become punchlines along the way. Harley would probably prefer it that way.
Hardcore comic book fans may do an angry spit-take at the idea of honoring the ’60s Batman show, but the camp classic is much easier to appreciate once you stop asking it to behave like modern Batman.
Adam West and Burt Ward turned Batman and Robin into household names with punny dialogue, ridiculous costumes, and leisurely climbs up the sides of buildings. Cesar Romero famously refused to shave his mustache to play the Joker, which tells you almost everything about the show’s relationship with realism.
The death traps, cliffhangers, and exaggerated villains are the point, not flaws waiting to be corrected.
For anyone accustomed to Batman brooding in the rain, the 1966 series is a useful reminder that the character can survive being very, very silly.
Batman barely needs to appear in The Penguin for Gotham City to feel dangerous. Set after The Batman, this eight-episode crime drama follows Oswald “Oz” Cobb (Colin Farrell) as he tries to take advantage of the power vacuum left by Carmine Falcone’s death.
Oz is a manipulative gangster willing to betray almost anyone, while Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti) has plans of her own. Farrell gives Oz an uncomfortable mix of charm and ruthlessness, and Milioti makes Sofia feel like someone who might actually outmaneuver him.
Digital Trends’ review highlights the performances and the show’s ability to stand independently. Strip away the costumes and gadgets, and this is two dangerous people fighting over who gets Gotham.
Imagine living in a world where practically everyone develops a superpower at 18. Now imagine being 25 and still waiting for yours. That’s Jen’s (Máiréad Tyers) problem in Extraordinary.
Her friends can communicate with the dead and turn back time, but those abilities haven’t stopped any of them from making terrible decisions. Jen is convinced getting a power of her own will finally give her some direction.
That’s also the joke. Superpowers haven’t made anyone better at adulthood. People still have awful jobs, messy relationships, and a remarkable talent for making things worse for themselves.
Extraordinary ran for two seasons before being canceled, so parts of Jen’s story are left hanging. What’s there is still a wonderfully odd take on people who happen to have powers rather than traditional superheroes.
The South Korean series Moving starts with teenagers hiding extraordinary abilities, then slowly reveals how much work their parents have done to keep those powers secret.
Kim Bong-seok (Lee Jung-ha) can float when his emotions get the better of him. His mother, Lee Mi-hyun (Han Hyo-joo), has spent years making sure nobody notices. His friendship with Jang Hui-soo (Go Youn-jung) gradually exposes links between their families and a history involving secret government operations.
The action gets surprisingly brutal, but the parents are what give Moving its weight. Most of them already know exactly what happens when powerful organizations discover people like their children.
Across 20 episodes, it somehow finds room for superhero action, espionage, romance, and a lot of very understandable parental panic. A second season is now in development.
We looked at storytelling, performances, animation where applicable, cultural influence, and what each series brings to the superhero genre. Variety mattered too, which is why the list mixes animation and live action, household-name heroes and stranger picks, and shows that don’t always look much like traditional superhero stories.
The list includes both completed and ongoing series, as well as productions from outside the US. Critical reception helped inform the selection, along with the original article’s editorial choices, but ratings and popularity weren’t enough on their own to earn a spot.
Paulo Vargas is an English major turned reporter turned technical writer, with a career that has always circled back to technology. He got his start covering consumer tech as a journalist, writing about gadgets, apps, and the rise of Android when flashing custom ROMs was still a badge of honor. Over the years, his work has ranged from gadget reviews and magazine features to film criticism, small-press zines, and in-depth documentation for global software companies.
Today, Paulo focuses on making complex tools easier to use, whether that means turning technical features into clear guides or cutting through marketing fluff to show readers what really matters. Outside of writing, he spends his time playing modern pixel RPGs, but steers clear of first-person shooters since they make him nauseous. Besides, he’s always been more at home with words than crosshairs.
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https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
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