2025 has arrived, and it’s bringing a lot of interesting new and returning TV with it. Severance season 2 was the year’s first major return, but since it already debuted, it will not be on this list.
Looking toward the rest of the year, we’ve sussed out the dramas that we’re most looking forward to in 2025. All of these shows are returning in 2025 because so many were caught up in delays around the writers’ and actors’ strikes. That does mean there will be an abundance of riches to choose from in 2025. Without further ado, these are the drama shows we’re looking forward to most in the year ahead.
The roller coaster ride of Stranger Things has turned the show from an underground phenomenon into one of the biggest shows on TV. In that time, the show’s quality has also been a roller coaster ride, from the highs of season 1 to the lows of season 2. When season 4 ended on a cliffhanger in 2022, though, no one thought it would take us three years to get the final installment.
Now, though, Eleven and the boys know the threat they’re facing, and they’re ready to face it head-on. Season 5 looks epic and long, but given the show’s enormous popularity, it’ll also be eagerly anticipated.
You can watch Stranger Things on Netflix.
As one of the more surprising small-scale TV phenomenons in recent memory, Yellowjackets will return for its third season with a mixture of apprehension and anticipation. The series follows the aftermath of a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and the survivors of that crash who are still haunted by it decades later.
Yellowjackets continued to unspool mysteries around what was happening in that wilderness and what the women who survived are hiding decades later. The show’s second season was not quite as universally beloved as the first, but there’s still plenty of room for optimism heading into season 3.
You can watch Yellowjackets on Paramout+.
Every time The White Lotus debuts a new season, it always captivates its intended audience. The show, which focuses on a different luxury vacation in a different locale each year, is set to focus on a group of Americans vacationing in Thailand for its second season.
The ensemble cast that has been assembled for this new season includes Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan, Walton Goggins, and Jason Isaacs, among others. While we don’t know how this new season will unfold, most White Lotus seasons involve a dead body, and this one probably won’t be any different.
You can watch The White Lotus on Max.
Star Wars television has not, on the whole, been all that good. That’s why the first season of Andor was such a major surprise. The show, a prequel to Rogue One, tells the story of Cassian Andor as he transforms from a thief into a genuine diehard rebel.
Along the way, though, it becomes a meditation on what it’s like to live under fascism and how much easier it is to keep your head down than it would be to openly rebel. Andor‘s second season will be eagerly anticipated because the first season exceeded expectations. Hopefully, it doesn’t disappoint.
You can watch Andor on Disney+.
When its first season debuted in 2023, many were amazed at how well The Last of Us avoided many of the crutches plaguing most video game adaptations. Set 20 years after a fungal virus has turned most of humanity into flesh-eating zombies, The Last of Us follows a man and a young girl as they travel across the country together after discovering that the girl is immune to the infection.
The second season will be adapted from the hugely acclaimed and somewhat controversial The Last of Us Part II, which features a time jump and several other surprises but is just as dark and thrilling as the first installment.
You can watch The Last of Us on Max.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
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?