We’re living through an extended golden age of television; with so many high-quality shows, it can be hard to keep up with all of the new offerings. There’s such an abundance that we can create a list purely of action shows to look forward to in 2025.
Whether you’ve already finished season 2 of Squid Game and are hankering for more action or you need some high-octane fun to look forward to, these are the top 5 most anticipated action shows of 2025.
Want to look forward to more stuff in 2025? Then check out the 5 most anticipated comedy shows of 2025 and the 5 most anticipated Hulu shows of 2025.
Taylor Sheridan has rapidly become a show-running king at Paramount+, with Yellowstone, Landman, and 1923 all captivating audiences with tales of the blue-collar American West.
1923 is a prequel to the Emmy-nominated Yellowstone, set against the backdrop of Western expansion, Prohibition, and the Great Depression. Just as in the modern show, the Dutton family must do all in their power to protect their ranch from those who would do them harm. Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren star as Jacob and Cara Dutton, and they elevate 1923 from a mere spinoff to an electric show that stands on its own.
The second and final season of one of Disney+’s better Star Wars spinoff shows, Andor, is coming back sooner than expected. Season 1 wasn’t a huge eyeball-drawer, but it was a critical hit, winning three Emmys and earning the claim from Digital Trends that it changed Star Wars forever.
Season 2 will be released in four three-episode blocks, each covering a year of time. While the first season was effectively Star Wars’ version of a heist show, the second projects to be much bigger, going deeper into space and delivering even more fan service.
Alan Ritchson returns for the third season of one of Prime Video’s biggest shows, Reacher, this February. Based on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels about a retired military police officer drawn back into action by an insatiable thirst for justice, Reacher has become one of the most popular action shows on TV.
The third season is based on Child’s seventh Reacher novel, Persuader, in which Reacher is recruited to infiltrate the organization of an enemy he believed he’d taken down a long time ago.
One of HBO’s flagship shows returns sometime in April, likely after the conclusion of another highly anticipated show of 2025, The White Lotus. HBO is notoriously cagey about upcoming releases, and the trailer is, unsurprisingly, full of context-less action, but we do get a good look at new arrival Kaitlyn Dever as Abby, an important character in the video game franchise’s second release.
Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey are also back as Joel and Ellie, respectively, with the dour mission of synthesizing a cure to an apocalyptic pandemic from Ellie’s apparent immunity.
The only reason The Last of Us isn’t number one is because I absolutely love George R.R. Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas. In the three A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms stories, set about 90 years before Game of Thrones, hedge knight Ser Duncan the Tall (played by Peter Claffey) stumbles across the path of an importunate but canny child who insists on becoming his squire. Eventually, he learns that this boy is Aegon (played by Dexter Sol Ansell), a prince who is destined to be king.
Their little stories, serving the realm while keeping Aegon’s identity secret, add rich layers to the story and people of Westeros, and provide some much-needed levity after how grim Thrones gets. The books aren’t really all that action-packed, but the trailer seems to indicate HBO has found a way to ratchet up the medieval violence.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?
YouTube is changing how its Home page works, giving viewers more control over what shows up there and making some of the app’s most-used sections easier to reach. Custom Feeds are now replacing the existing topic chips for eligible users, while YouTube is also testing a redesigned top bar on mobile that moves Subscriptions closer to the Home feed.
YouTube first started experimenting with Custom Feeds earlier this year, letting you type out what you wanted to watch and turning that request into its own stream of recommendations. Now, the feature is starting to look less like a side experiment and more like something YouTube actually wants people to use as part of their everyday Home page.