9 Most Perfect Fantasy Shows of the Last 15 Years

Image via AMC Published Jul 23, 2026, 8:08 AM 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 The last decade and a half has been a golden age for fantasy on TV. It's a stretch where dragons stopped being a niche interest and started dominating the Emmy conversation. Where witches and vampires and magic users earned, if not big ratings, certainly devoted fandoms. From blood-soaked epics to cozy romances, the fantasy shows on this list built worlds so complete you could get lost in them. Here they are, ranked from great to greatest. 9 'Wynonna Earp' (2016–2021) Image via SYFY What if every outlaw Wyatt Earp ever killed came back from the dead as a Revenant, and clearing them out was the inherited burden of his great-great-granddaughter? You'd get a show like Wynonna Earp. Melanie Scrofano plays Wynonna as a whiskey-swilling mess of a hero who talks trash to demons while carrying an heirloom Colt that lights up whenever one of them is near. Tim Rozon turns up as an improbably charming, weirdly immortal Doc Holliday, while Dominique Provost-Chalkley and Katherine Barrell anchor WayHaught, the queer romance that turned this scrappy Syfy Western into a fandom juggernaut. The fantasy here runs on small-town logic. Everything wicked is bottled up inside the Ghost River Triangle, a patch of cursed Canadian prairie nobody can leave while the Earp heir still breathes, and that single rule does a ton of heavy lifting. It gives the show a demon-of-the-week rhythm without ever feeling aimless as Revenants, angels, a literal Garden of Eden, and a widow or two pile up over four seasons. It is a horror-comedy that wears its heart on its bloodied, leather sleeve. 8 'The Magicians' (2015–2020) Image via SYFY Think Harry Potter, but everyone's old enough to drink and miserable enough to need to. That's The Magicians, and it jump-starts with Quentin Coldwater (Jason Ralph) acing his way into Brakebills Academy, trading a lifetime of moping over a Narnia-ish book series called Fillory for the real thing: a hidden school where magic is a punishing academic discipline. Sure he's the chosen one, but the rest of the schoolyard is what makes this thing hum, from Hale Appleman's velvet-voiced Eliot to Summer Bishil's bratty Margo to Stella Maeve's Julia, locked out of Brakebills and forced to learn her craft via illegal underground magic rings. The hook is that magic runs on misery. Spells require finger contortions and exacting conditions, and the whole system is rooted in its characters' worst impulses and most-hated flaws. The show also refuses to sit still, chasing its weirdos from campus intrigue into Fillory, the storybook kingdom that turns out to be a bureaucratic mess with a body count. Over five seasons on Syfy, it gets stranger and sadder and funnier all at once, sticking landing after landing that no sane series would attempt. 7 'Penny Dreadful' (2014–2016) Image via Showtime Eva Green spends this show contorting through demonic possession with such total commitment that you almost miss how much wild literary cosplay is happening around her. She plays Vanessa Ives, a spiritualist whose soul has become a battleground for something ancient and hungry. Creator John Logan's conceit is to drop the monsters of 19th century fiction into one shared story: Frankenstein and his Creature, an aging Dorian Gray, a certain thirsty count, all circling Vanessa as she fights for her own salvation. Josh Hartnett, Timothy Dalton, Rory Kinnear, and Reeve Carney fill out the haunted ensemble. Instead of building a mythology from scratch, the series borrows the bones of public-domain horror and reassembles them into something moody and unpredictable. The fun is watching these creatures bump into one another, a werewolf brooding in one corner, a witch coven scheming in another. It ran only three seasons on Showtime, wrapped on its own terms, and never found the mass audience its craft deserved. 6 'House of the Dragon' (2022–Present) Image via HBO Two hundred years before a Stark ever lost his head, the Targaryens sat on the Iron Throne with more dragons than they knew what to do with. This prequel zeroes in on the Dance of the Dragons, a succession war that pits King Viserys' (Paddy Considine) daughter Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock and Emma D'Arcy) against his second wife Alicent (Emma Carey and Olivia Cooke), two childhood friends slowly maneuvered onto opposite sides of a civil war. Matt Smith prowls through the middle of it as Daemon Targaryen, the show's agent of chaos. What sets this apart from its parent series is scale. Where Game of Thrones rationed its dragons because of story demands, House of the Dragon lets them fill the sky, because the source material, George R. R. Martin's Fire & Blood, is essentially a fake history book about Targaryen excess. The result is a fantasy of decadence, all inbred beauty and inherited doom, where the family that conquered the world starts eating itself alive. If you came for dragons doing dragon things, consider this your buffet. 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 5 'A Discovery of Witches' (2018–2022) Image via Sky One A historian of alchemy walks into the Bodleian Library, requests an old manuscript, and accidentally reawakens a magical world she has spent her whole life ignoring in Sky One's A Discovery of Witches. Teresa Palmer plays Diana Bishop, a witch in deep denial about her own considerable powers. Matthew Goode is Matthew Clairmont, a brooding vampire geneticist who becomes very interested in her, and in the enchanted book she alone seems able to summon. Their romance is forbidden, because witches and vampires and daemons are not supposed to mix, which is exactly the kind of rule a swoony fantasy exists to break. Think of it as Twilight for people with library cards. The mythology is smartly grafted onto real institutions, Oxford colleges, French châteaus, actual history, so the magic feels like a hidden layer under the world we know rather than a separate universe entirely. The trilogy of seasons even folds in time travel to Elizabethan London, where the couple rubs elbows with Christopher Marlowe (Kit Marlowe). Cozy, grown-up, and romantic without apology, it is the fantasy comfort watch you did not know you needed. 4 'The Wheel of Time' (2021–2025) Image via Prime Video A powerful sorceress rides into a sleepy village certain that one of five local kids is the reborn savior who will either save the world or break it. That's the premise of The Wheel of Time, Prime Video's adaptation of Robert Jordan's fourteen-book fantasy saga, developed for TV by Rafe Judkins. Rosamund Pike anchors the whole thing as Moiraine, one of the Aes Sedai, an ancient sisterhood of women who can wield power and are feared and courted by rulers across the world. The kids get yanked out of their quiet hometown and pointed at a destiny none of them wanted. The books are famous for how huge their world is, and the show's smartest move is a magic system split by gender. Women can channel the One Power safely, but the male half has been poisoned, so any man who taps into it slowly loses his mind. That ticking clock gives the magic a real edge. Amazon canceled the show in May 2025 after three strong seasons, and the fan campaign to save it tells you how loved it was. 3 'Outlander' (2014–2026) Image via Starz Caitríona Balfe has one of the most complicated love lives on television, and it stretches across two centuries. Her Claire is a British combat nurse, freshly reunited with her husband after World War II, who touches a standing stone in the Scottish Highlands and tumbles two hundred years into the past, waking up in 1743. Dropped into a world of clan warfare and Jacobite plots with nothing but her modern medicine, she survives by marrying a strapping young Highlander named Jamie Fraser (Sam Heughan), and what could have been a gimmick becomes one of the great sweeping romances of the past decade. The fantasy element is almost stubbornly restrained. No dragons, no spell books, just those stones and the ache of a woman torn between two timelines and two husbands. Diana Gabaldon's novels use time travel as a vehicle for impossible choices, and the show follows suit, letting the supernatural stay quiet so the history and the heartbreak can do its heartbreaking work. Add lush Scottish scenery and a frankly scandalous amount of chemistry, and you have a genre-bender that hooks people who swear they hate fantasy. 2 'Interview with the Vampire' (2022–Present) Image via AMC You think you know this story, and then you turn the channel to AMC's rendition and realize that Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise's version is, respectfully, chopped liver. Still, the small-screen version of Interview with the Vampire follows a lot of the same beats as its cinematic cousin. Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) sits down with a journalist in the present day to recount his very long life, starting in the 1910s New Orleans, where a magnetic, monstrous vampire named Lestat (Sam Reid) seduced him into eternity. The framing device is a masterstroke, because Louis is an unreliable narrator and the reporter, Eric Bogosian's wonderfully caustic Daniel Molloy, keeps catching him in his pretty lies. Anne Rice's vampires were always about desire and damnation, and this adaptation leans all the way in, handing us a toxic love story with real fangs. The world-building stays intimate rather than epic, more concerned with the suffocating politics of who gets to be a vampire and who gets left for dead than with grand mythology. Season 2 swept the show off to a Parisian coven of theatrical bloodsuckers, and the latest third season, retitled The Vampire Lestat, is delivering a full rock-and-roll reinvention. Sumptuous, funny, and genuinely unsettling, it makes vampires feel dangerous and just a bit camp again. 1 'Game of Thrones' (2011–2019) You already know. Whatever you feel about how it ended, no fantasy series in the last 15 years hit harder or reached further than this one. In Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin's Westeros arrives fully formed, a continent of feuding houses where a game of politics turns lethal the second somebody suggests the throne is up for grabs. The cast reads like a genre hall of fame now, with Peter Dinklage's Tyrion, Emilia Clarke's Daenerys, Lena Headey's Cersei, and Kit Harington's Jon Snow, and for years it felt like anyone could die at any moment, because they usually did. The show's worldbuilding is the gold standard for a reason. Magic is scarce and slow to return, so dragons and White Walkers are treated like miracles or harbingers of doom rather than everyday fixtures, and every noble house comes with centuries of grudges you must somehow keep straight. It rewired what mainstream audiences expected fantasy to be, dragging the genre out of the nerd corner and into the center of the cultural conversation, water-cooler deaths and all. Flawed final season aside, it remains the mountain every other show on this list is still climbing. Game Of Thrones Release Date 2011 - 2019-00-00 Showrunner David Benioff, D.B. Weiss Nine noble families fight for control over the lands of Westeros while an ancient enemy returns after being dormant for millennia. Directors David Nutter, Alan Taylor, D.B. Weiss, David Benioff Writers D.B. Weiss, George R.R. Martin, David Benioff Franchise(s) Game of Thrones Main Genre Drama Seasons 8 Producers Frank Doelger, Christopher Newman, Duncan Muggoch, Bernadette Caulfield, Greg Spence, Lisa McAtackney, Mark Huffam, Ralph Vicinanza Creator(s) David Benioff, D.B. Weiss Story By George R.R. Martin Streaming Service(s) MAX Executive Producer(s) Carolyn Strauss, David Nutter, Frank Doelger, Miguel Sapochnik