10 Most Perfect Fantasy Shows of the Last 25 Years

Image via Mario Perez / © ABC / Courtesy: Everett Collection Published Aug 19, 2026, 6:03 PM EDT Jessica is a journalist, editor, TCA critic, and multimedia storyteller with a decade of experience covering pop culture, film, TV, women's sports, lifestyle, and more. She earned her degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina-Wilmington with a focus in creative writing before moving to N.Y.C. and getting her start at The Huffington Post. (She still misses those nap pods.) She's covered multiple film festivals, recapped some of your favorite series, worked too many red carpets to count, and even yapped on a podcast or two. When she’s not interviewing your favorite showrunner or ranking Ryan Gosling's best roles for places like UPROXX, Teen Vogue, Marie Claire, The Daily Beast, and Cosmopolitan, she’s busy being a full-time hype woman to her cat, Finn. You can find her on Bluesky and, sadly, Twitter. Sign in to your Collider account If you're the kind of fantasy TV fan who watches the credits roll on a series finale and immediately opens six tabs looking for more dragons, more magic, and more insane world-building, hi, hello, this list is for you. These fantasy shows from the last 25 years, ranked from great to life-altering, each with a pitch for why it should be the thing you queue up for tonight. Some run tight; a few pile on the laughs; and one features a 6' 5" Lee Pace as a touch-averse pie maker. But all of them earned the descriptor "perfect" in an honest way: by giving us incredible stories we can't stop thinking about. 10 'A Discovery of Witches' (2018–2022) Image via Sky One Deborah Harkness' academic-witch romance got a genuinely lush adaptation on Sky One, with Teresa Palmer as Diana Bishop, a reluctant Oxford historian, and Matthew Goode as Matthew Clairmont, the vampire geneticist who won't stop stalking her all over the Bodleian. Across three seasons and twenty-five episodes, A Discovery of Witches treats alchemy and evolutionary biology with the same straight-faced rigor it brings to the Congregation of supernaturals policing them both. Cinematographically, it's one of the prettiest fantasy shows of its era, shot with a painterly eye for English stone, Venetian canals, and the Auvergne countryside where the Clairmont family keeps its château. The plot layers together a lost alchemical manuscript, a genetic mystery about why the supernatural species are dying out, and a Season 2 time walk to 1590 London that lets Diana train with the School of Night and reintroduces Christopher Marlowe (Tom Hughes) as a member of Matthew's old circle. The show's real charm, though, is its worldbuilding: vampires, witches, and daemons are treated as distinct species with their own biology, history, and internal politics. All done in a three-season arc that's as swoony as book fans could hope for. 9 'Preacher' (2016–2019) Image via AMC AMC's adaptation of Garth Ennis' comic stars Dominic Cooper as Jesse Custer, a small-town Texas preacher on the verge of quitting the church when a rogue entity called Genesis, the forbidden offspring of an angel and a demon, hurls itself into his body and hands him the Word of God. Basically, whatever he says out loud, people obey. He picks up his old flame Tulip O'Hare (Ruth Negga) and a chatty Irish vampire named Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) and hits the road to find God Himself, who has abandoned Heaven and gone missing somewhere on Earth. Four seasons of that hunt, chased at every turn by a resurrected cowboy assassin from Hell and Herr Starr's doomsday-cult bureaucracy. Preacher is genuinely funny and, also, genuinely nasty, often in the same scene. There are chainsaw brawls, a Hitler subplot played for pitch-black laughs, angels getting killed and resurrected in motel bathrooms. The show swings hard at ideas most prestige dramas wouldn't touch with tongs, and when it connects, which is often after the New Orleans arc kicks in midway through Season 1, it's one of the most unhinged action-comedies of the last decade. 8 'The Magicians' (2015–2020) Image via SYFY Syfy's college-set fantasy took Lev Grossman's novels and grew it into something the books never quite managed: a musical, a heist, a therapy session, a surprisingly insightful argument about the ethics of magic. Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) is depressed and reading a Narnia knockoff at a Brooklyn coffee shop when he's yanked into Brakebills, a graduate school for magicians. There, he meets friends and foes, eventually going on an alternate-universe-spanning adventure with a bunch of gifted weirdos who become family. What The Magicians figured out is that fantasy is the best available language for the stuff realist drama flattens: depression, grief, addiction, and assault. The show routes all of it through a magic system that runs on precision and memory, through a cast of unforgettable characters. 7 'Pushing Daisies' (2007–2009) Image via ABC Bryan Fuller's candy-colored ABC confection about Ned the Pie Maker (Lee Pace), who can bring the dead back to life with a touch, was killed by the writers' strike before it could stretch its legs. What Pushing Daisies left behind is 22 episodes so aesthetically committed that the visuals feel like a Wes Anderson pop-up book, and a central romance between Ned and Chuck (Anna Friel), who can never touch again, that made an entire generation of TV writers rethink what "will they, won't they" could mean. Kristin Chenoweth sings. Swoosie Kurtz and Ellen Greene, as Chuck's shut-in ex-synchronized-swimmer aunts, spend most of the series eating cheese and harmonizing in a kitchen that looks like a Fabergé egg. The fact that it existed at all, on network television, in the late 2000s, is a small miracle. Collider Exclusive · Game of Thrones Personality Quiz Which Game of Thrones House Do You Belong To? Stark · Lannister · Targaryen · Baratheon · Tyrell Five great houses. Five completely different answers to the same question: how do you hold power in a world that will take it from you the moment you stop paying attention? Eight questions will determine where your loyalties — and your nature — truly lie. 🐺Stark 🦁Lannister 🐉Targaryen 🦌Baratheon 🌹Tyrell FIND YOUR HOUSE → 01 Someone powerful is acting dishonourably and everyone knows it. What do you do? In Westeros, the answer to this question has ended more than one great house. ACall it out, openly and on the record. If honour means anything, it has to mean something when it's costly. BUse it. Information about someone else's dishonour is leverage — and leverage is power. CAct decisively to correct it — with or without the approval of those around me. DChallenge them directly. Strength settles disputes more honestly than courtroom manoeuvring. ENavigate carefully — build alliances, apply quiet pressure, and create a situation where the right outcome becomes inevitable. NEXT QUESTION → 02 What is the source of your power? Every house endures because of something. What is it for yours? AThe loyalty of people who trust me — earned over generations, not bought with gold. BWealth, intelligence, and the willingness to use both without sentiment. CA legacy so fearsome and a vision so total that opposition becomes unthinkable. DPhysical strength, military force, and the respect that comes from being the kind of person nobody wants to fight. ECharm, connection, and the ability to make powerful people feel that my success is also theirs. NEXT QUESTION → 03 Who do you truly fight for? Strip away the banners and the words. The honest answer tells you everything. AMy family and my people — those who depend on me and have kept faith with me through everything. BMy family — the ones who share my blood, even when they exhaust me, even when they disappoint me. CMy cause — a vision larger than any single person, including me. DMyself, and those few who've proven themselves worth fighting beside. EMy house — its name, its future, the position I intend to leave it in when I'm gone. NEXT QUESTION → 04 How do you deal with your enemies? A house's method reveals its character as clearly as its words ever could. AHonestly — I face them directly, and I give quarter when it's warranted. BThoroughly — I don't leave loose ends, and I don't make the same enemy twice. CDecisively — fire answers questions that diplomacy only delays. DHead-on — I'd rather meet a threat on the battlefield than behind closed doors. EElegantly — I prefer to make former enemies into allies, or at least into people who owe me something. NEXT QUESTION → 05 What kind of ruler do you believe in? Westeros is full of answers to this question. Most of them end badly. AA just one — someone who serves the realm rather than using it, who leads by example rather than fear. BA capable one — someone smart enough to navigate the game, ruthless enough to win it, and realistic about what winning costs. CA transformative one — someone who doesn't just rule what exists but reshapes what's possible. DA strong one — someone whose authority is beyond question because the alternative is obviously worse. EA wise one — someone who understands that the realm is fed by more than armies, and that a full stomach keeps more peace than a sharp sword. NEXT QUESTION → 06 You suffer a devastating loss. How does your house respond? How a house handles defeat tells you more about it than how it handles victory. AWe grieve, properly and together — and then we endure, because endurance is what we do. BWe adapt. We reassess. And we ensure that whoever caused this loss comes to regret it completely. CWe burn hotter. Setbacks don't soften us — they clarify what needs to happen next. DWe hit back. Grief and revenge are the same motion in our house. EWe regroup quietly, rebuild our position, and return when we're ready — on our terms, not theirs. NEXT QUESTION → 07 Which of these truths about Westeros do you most believe? Every house has a philosophy. This is yours. AThe lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Nothing matters more than the people you protect. BA Lannister always pays their debts — in gold or in kind. Reputation is built on consistency. CI am the blood of the dragon. Some destinies are written before the person who carries them is born. DOurs is the fury. When we move, we move completely — and we don't stop until it's done. EGrowing strong means knowing when to bloom and when to wait. Patience is its own kind of power. NEXT QUESTION → 08 The Iron Throne is within reach. What do you do? The answer reveals not just your ambition — but your character. AClaim it only if the realm needs me to — and rule in a way that makes it worth having. BEnsure someone who owes us sits in it. The power behind the throne is safer than the throne itself. CTake it. It was always meant to be mine — I feel that in my bones and in my blood. DSeize it — with both hands, without hesitation. Opportunity in Westeros does not wait to be asked. EPosition my house to be indispensable to whoever sits there — influence outlasts any single reign. REVEAL MY HOUSE → The Maester Has Spoken Your House Is…Your answers point to the great house whose words, values, and way of surviving in Westeros match your own. Bend the knee — or don't. That's very much up to you. 🐺 House StarkWinter is Coming — and you have always known it. You prepare not out of fear but out of duty, because the people who depend on you deserve someone who takes the long view. You lead with honour even when it costs you, because you understand that a reputation built on integrity is the only one worth having. Your loyalty to family and people runs deep — not as sentiment but as a code that doesn't bend when things get difficult. The North endures because Starks endure — not by being the cleverest players in the game, but by being the kind of people others are willing to follow into the cold. You are that kind of person. The pack survives. The lone wolf dies. You already know which one you are. 🦁 House LannisterYou understand the game — its rules, its exceptions, and exactly when the rules become the exception. You play it without illusions and without apology. You are sharper than most people realise, and you have learned to use that gap to your advantage. A Lannister always pays their debts — and you always keep your word, because your word is an instrument of power, and instruments must be kept in working order. You love your family with a ferocity that sometimes blinds you, and you know it, and you do it anyway. The lion doesn't concern itself with the opinion of sheep. Neither, in the end, do you. 🐉 House TargaryenYou carry a sense of destiny that is difficult to explain and impossible to ignore — the feeling that you are not simply participating in the world but meant to reshape it. You are capable of extraordinary things, and you know it, and that knowledge is both your greatest strength and your most dangerous quality. Fire and blood are not just words to you — they are a philosophy about what change requires and what it costs. The Targaryens at their best were transformative rulers who broke chains and defied the limits of what anyone thought possible. At your best, so are you. The dragon has three heads. You are one of them. 🦌 House BaratheonYou are a force — direct, powerful, and difficult to ignore when you enter a room or a conflict. You do not negotiate with challenges. You meet them. Ours is the fury — and yours is a kind of intensity that commands attention, respect, and occasionally fear from those who underestimate what's behind it. You value strength and straight dealing. You'd rather know where you stand in a fight than navigate a web of courtly whispers. The Baratheons built their house on the back of one of the greatest military victories in Westerosi history — and then struggled with what came after. The lesson of your house is that winning is not the end of the story. Governing is. You are learning that too. 🌹 House TyrellYou understand that power does not always announce itself — that sometimes it arrives with flowers, good wine, and a smile that doesn't quite reach the eyes. Growing strong is your house's motto, and you live it: patiently, strategically, always investing in the relationships and resources that will matter most when it counts. You are charming by choice and calculating by nature — a combination that makes you one of the most effective players in any room you enter. The Tyrells fed King's Landing and shaped its politics without ever sitting on the Iron Throne — and they were arguably more powerful for it. You know that the person who controls the food controls the kingdom. And you always know where the food is. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ 6 'Lost' (2004–2010) Image via ABC Yes, the ending. We're all going to talk about the ending forever, and that's fine, because it means we're still talking about Lost two decades after the pilot aired. Damon Lindelof's brainchild gave us six seasons, 121 episodes, one polar bear, and roughly 48 characters worth caring about. Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly), Sawyer (Josh Holloway), Hurley (Jorge Garcia), Locke (Terry O'Quinn), Sayid (Naveen Andrews), Sun (Yunjin Kim), Jin (Daniel Dae Kim), Ben (Michael Emerson), Desmond (Henry Ian Cusick), Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell): pick a favorite, defend them to the death. Structurally, Lost invented the modern mystery-box show. Oceanic 815 goes down over the Pacific, the survivors wash up on an island that isn't quite an island, and across six seasons they contend with a smoke monster, a decades-old scientific cult called the Dharma Initiative, and an ancient feud between two immortal brothers who have been using the island — and the people who wash up on it — as pieces in a much longer game. It's a fantasy show pretending to be a survival drama, and once you accept that, everything clicks. 5 'What We Do in the Shadows' (2019–2024) Image via FX Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's 2014 mockumentary was already a cult object, but the FX series they developed from it did the near-impossible and improved on the source, trading Wellington flatmates for Staten Island housemates and giving the bit room to actually breathe. Nandor the Relentless (Kayvan Novak), Laszlo (Matt Berry), Nadja (Natasia Demetriou), Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch), and human familiar-turned-vampire-hunter-turned-something-else Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) share a crumbling New York house and, for a decade of viewer time, absolutely nothing changes about their vibe, which is the whole point. Berry delivers every line as if he's tasting it. Guillén's slow-burn Guillermo arc is one of the great long-form character studies in recent comedy. Novak's Nandor is a 750-year-old warlord rendered as the loneliest man on Staten Island, and Demetriou's Nadja — Balkan-accented, monstrously vain, in a codependent feud with her own ghost trapped in a doll — is one of the funniest performances anyone gave on television in the 2020s. The comedy here makes the fantasy better…and vice versa. 4 'Interview with the Vampire' (2022–Present) Image via AMC Rolin Jones' AMC adaptation of Anne Rice's novel reframes the story in 2022 Dubai, where an aging, Parkinson's-afflicted Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian) sits down with the vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) for a second, more honest interview decades after their first one. What follows is Louis' life across 15 episodes: turn-of-the-century New Orleans, his making by Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), the vampire child Claudia (Bailey Bass and Delainey Hayles) they raise between them, and the Parisian coven that eventually takes them all apart. Anderson and Reid are the reason it works. Anderson plays Louis as a Creole man trying to hold his dignity together while the century and his boyfriend take turns dismantling it. Reid's Lestat is theatrical, cruel, needy, and impossibly in love. Season 2 hands the back half to the Théâtre des Vampires, a coven that stages actual murders as avant-garde theater, and lets Ben Daniels devour every frame as Santiago. The trial and the ruined-house reunion in the finale are the best 20 minutes of television anyone put out that year. Bailey Bass and then Delainey Hayles are both extraordinary as Claudia, Assad Zaman's Armand reshapes the show’s power structure, and the universe the series built keeps expanding. 3 'Arcane' (2021–2024) Image via Netflix Netflix's League of Legends prequel had every reason to be a corporate cash-grab and instead turned into a two-season, 18-episode animated epic that made grown adults sob over sisters from an underground slum. Vi (Hailee Steinfeld) and Jinx (Ella Purnell) grow up in Zaun; up in Piltover, Jayce (Kevin Alejandro) and Viktor (Harry Lloyd) invent Hextech and doom everyone. That's the basic plot. Arcane's animation, by the French studio Fortiche, is the best-looking work in the medium right now, and the show uses its soundtrack, filled with hits from Imagine Dragons, Stromae, and Ashnikko, to help its emotional beats land. One late-season episode set in an alternate timeline is, on its own, worth the price of admission. 2 'Game of Thrones' (2011–2019) We know. But, the first four seasons of Game of Thrones are, minute for minute, still the best sustained run of fantasy TV ever produced. Ned Stark's (Sean Bean) execution, the Red Wedding, Tyrion's (Peter Dinklage) trial, Oberyn (Pedro Pascal) versus the Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson), Blackwater Bay. Lena Headey, Emilia Clarke, and Diana Rigg circling each other for a decade, 73 episodes, and eight seasons. Yes, we're all going to fight about which point the wheels came off. What still holds up is the cultural shift the show pulled off. Fantasy went from a genre people apologized for liking to one dissected weekly by New York Times critics. It reset HBO's budget ceiling. And it briefly made swords and dragons the default cultural conversation instead of a niche one. 1 'The Leftovers' (2014–2017) Image via HBO If you love fantasy TV for the way it can bend reality until something true falls out, The Leftovers is your show. Lindelof and Tom Perrotta built a series on one gorgeous, terrifying premise: two percent of the world's population vanishes at the exact same second. Three seasons follow the people left behind, including Justin Theroux's grieving cop Kevin Garvey, Carrie Coon's Nora Durst (who lost her entire family in a single instant), plus Amy Brenneman, Christopher Eccleston, Regina King, and Kevin Carroll as they try to figure out how to keep going. The show leans all the way into its weirdness in the best possible way. There's a cult that dresses in white and refuses to speak. There's a hotel in the afterlife where Kevin has to sing karaoke to save the world. There's a Season 2 opening credits sequence set to an Iris DeMent song that you will never get out of your head. It's dreamy and devastating, and too good to spoil. If you've ever finished a fantasy show and wished the emotional stakes matched the mythology, this is the one. The Leftovers Release Date 2014 - 2017-00-00 Showrunner Damon Lindelof Writers Damon Lindelof, Tom Perrotta Seasons 3 Story By Tom Perrotta Streaming Service(s) MAX