From Andor's Massacre to Pluribus's Surreal Invasion: The TV Episodes That Defined 2025

Everyone wants to know the best TV of the year, but the truth is: even great shows wobble. The real magic is in those single, perfect hours that either lock a stellar season into place or rescue a shaky one. I tried to trim this to five. I failed. So here are six episodes that actually earned the hype (plus a few extras you should not sleep on). A couple are obvious, a couple slid under the radar, and more than one works as a one-off if you do not feel like catching up first.

Heads up: spoilers below for everything mentioned.

1. 6) The Wheel of Time season 3, episode 4: 'The Road to the Spear'

   One of the better shows that Prime Video unceremoniously ditched also delivered one of its finest hours here. Josha Stradowski wrecks you as Rand, forced through an Aiel trial that makes him live his ancestors' lives and face the ugly truth of how his lover Lanfear helped break the world. While he stares down the past, Rosamund Pike's Moiraine is slammed with visions of a future where either she or Rand has to die to stop the Dark One. Big, bold, and gorgeous to look at — top-tier fantasy doing exactly what it should.

2. 5) Alien: Earth episode 5: 'In Space, No One…' (Hulu / Disney Plus)

   This series finally remembers what makes Alien tick: evolution, dehumanization, and awful people making worse choices. The fifth episode flashes back to the xenomorph's first touchdown on Earth — the incident the whole show spins out from — and it nails the 1979 vibe: cold corridors, colder corporate logic, and the gross calculus of weaponizing life instead of protecting it. The new angle on who the real monsters are (meat or machine) just clicks here.

3. 4) Pluribus episode 1: 'We is Us' (Apple TV Plus)

   As pilots go, this one is a statement. We meet Rhea Seehorn's Carol Sturka, a novelist nursing a shattered heart, right as an alien message rewires humanity practically overnight. It plays like a modern spin on Body Snatchers — easily the season's most horror-forward chapter — and it is written and directed by Vince Gilligan returning to sci-fi for the first time since his early X-Files days. Behind-the-scenes nerd note: that pedigree shows; it is a confident, eerie launch that sets the whole series humming.

4. 3) It: Welcome to Derry episode 7: 'The Black Spot' (HBO)

   The season finds another gear in this brutal, breathless penultimate hour. The attack on the Black Spot speakeasy — a racist siege that ends in flames — is shot like one long panic attack, and Pennywise is only part of the nightmare. In the middle of the chaos, there is a gutting grace note: sweet Rich sacrificing himself to save Marge. Then the show yanks the floorboards up with a killer stinger — a blood-soaked Pennywise, up early from his 27-year nap, launches out of a fridge and blasts Will with the Deadlights. That is how you stick an episode landing.

5. 2) Severance season 2, episode 7: 'Chikhai Bardo' (Apple TV Plus)

   Director Jessica Lee Gagne (yes, this was her Emmy-winning directorial debut) pulls us out of Lumon's antiseptic glare and into the warm glow of memory — until it curdles. Watching Mark and Gemma's marriage fray is devastating, especially the moment he steps out without saying the words that might have saved everything.

   'I love you'

   That omission is the domino that eventually creates Ms. Casey. The gentle visual texture plus a knockout performance from Dichen Lachman makes this one of the year's most quietly brutal hours.

6. 1) Andor season 2, episode 8: 'Who Are You?' (Disney Plus)

   The powder keg on Ghorman finally blows, and with it the Empire's stranglehold starts to slip. The episode's spine is Syril: a true believer whose ambitions are ground into dust by a machine that only ever saw him as a tool. Kyle Soller turns that collapse into something unforgettable. What follows is a tense, bleak political thriller — pure Tony Gilroy disdain for Imperial boardrooms — that still finds a small, stubborn spark of hope, the kind that will eventually ignite an actual rebellion.

Honorable mentions

The Witcher season 4, episode 5: 'The Joy of Cooking' — A left-field delight where the Hansa trade backstories as musical bits collide with animated interludes. It sounds chaotic. It works.

The Last of Us season 2, episode 2: 'Through the Valley' — Joel's murder ate the headlines, but the siege of Jackson is equally gripping — and it was not in the game, which makes the tension land even harder.

Squid Game season 3, episode 2: 'The Starry Night' — The final season's standout turns hide-and-seek into a pressure cooker while Gi-hun barrels into a one-man revenge mission.

Adolescence episode 3: 'The Conversation' — All four chapters could be here, but this extended interview sequence plants a flag for Owen Cooper as a major new talent.