Entertainment
7 Netflix Fantasy Shows Where Every Episode Is a Masterpiece
The Witcher used to be Netflix’s flagship fantasy series, the kind of show people were calling the next Game of Thrones because Season 1 was just that good. Then the creative team completely and utterly botched it. Storylines got rewritten past the point of recognition. Henry Cavill walked away from a role he was incredibly passionate about. And now, the show is absolutely unwatchable.
Netflix also took Avatar: The Last Airbender, arguably the greatest, most perfectly constructed animated series ever made, and adapted it into a live-action show that had none of the heart that made the original so beloved. After those two disasters, most people tend to write off anything with the Netflix fantasy tag without even bothering to check it out. Fair enough, because most of the time that instinct is correct. But there are a handful of Netflix fantasy originals that genuinely do not have a single bad episode in their entire run, and those are the shows we’re talking about today.
‘Locke & Key’ (2020–2022)
Locke & Key is adapted from the acclaimed comic series by Joe Hill, the son of horror legend Stephen King. Hill has become an acclaimed author in his own right, and Locke & Key is proof that the apple didn’t fall too far from the tree. The series follows the three Locke siblings after their father is murdered, and the family moves into his childhood home, Keyhouse, where they quickly discover the house is hiding a whole set of magical keys with reality-bending powers. For example, the Anywhere Key opens a door to literally any place you can picture. The Ghost Key turns you into a spirit who can wander the town while your body lies lifeless back home.
But things take a dark turn when one of the keys accidentally unleashes a malicious shapeshifting demon hell-bent on collecting every key in the house. As the world-building grows increasingly complicated and the stakes keep getting higher, the show also benefits from having a clear endgame in sight. Showrunners Carlton Cuse and Meredith Averill always envisioned a three-season run, and that’s exactly what they got. The show got to develop its mythology and ultimately bring the Locke family’s story to a satisfying conclusion and go out on its own terms.
‘One Piece’ (2023–Present)
For years, live-action anime adaptations were cursed. Death Note bombed. Cowboy Bebop got canceled after one season. So when Netflix announced it was adapting One Piece, arguably the most beloved manga on the planet, fans braced for another disappointing live-action anime adaptation. But then the show premiered, and it actually turned out great. It embraced a world of Devil Fruit powers, snail phones, and increasingly ridiculous villains without overdramatizing everything or forcing it into the grounded realism Netflix is often criticized for.
The series follows Monkey D. Luffy (Iñaki Godoy) as he sails through the East Blue with a ragtag crew of pirates, all chasing the legendary treasure, the “One Piece,” that will make Luffy the next Pirate King. Season 1 scored a strong 82% with critics and a near-perfect 95% with audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and Season 2 has topped it with a perfect 100% critic score and a 95% audience score! For a franchise this beloved, with this many ways to screw it up, One Piece has not missed once.
‘Wednesday’ (2022–Present)
Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) gets expelled from her normal school for releasing piranhas into a swimming pool and gets shipped off to Nevermore Academy, a boarding school populated by creatures like werewolves, vampires, and sirens, alongside normie humans. The series starts out as a fish-out-of-water story, and then turns into a full-blown murder mystery, with Wednesday hunting a monster stalking the town while trying her best not to make any friends. Ortega is the primary reason the show works as well as it does. She nails Wednesday’s deadpan humor and complete lack of interest in fitting in, and delivers a career-defining performance.
Tim Burton also serves as executive producer and the leading creative director behind the show’s look and tone, and he even directed four episodes in each of the first two seasons. No one does Gothic fantasy quite like him, and Wednesday feels like it was made specifically for his style. The result is a show that looks unlike anything else on Netflix, and Season 1 still remains the most-watched English-language series in Netflix history by a wide margin.
‘The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’ (2019)
The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance is a prequel to Jim Henson‘s 1982 cult classic film, set on the planet Thra, where the gentle Gelfling race lives under the rule of the evil Skeksis. But when three Gelflings uncover the horrifying truth behind their rulers’ power, that they have been draining the life essence out of their own subjects using the Dark Crystal, they set out to start a rebellion. It was a very faithful and surprisingly dark expansion of one of fantasy’s most beloved worlds, and fans absolutely loved it.
The series scored an 89% critic rating and an even higher 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and it even won the Emmy for Outstanding Children’s Program. Then, Netflix being Netflix, canceled it after a single season, reportedly over production costs and COVID-related delays, and left one of the best-looking fantasy shows ever made stuck on a cliffhanger forever. Still, what we got is pretty damn special.
‘Castlevania’ (2017–2021)
Loosely adapted from the 1989 video game Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse, this animated series follows Trevor Belmont (Richard Armitage), the last member of a disgraced monster-hunting family. He teams up with the sorceress Sypha Belnades (Alejandra Reynoso) and Alucard (James Callis), Dracula’s own half-vampire son, and the three of them set out to stop Dracula from wiping out humanity in Wallachia. It is Gothic, brutal, full of gruesome deaths, and does not pull a single punch on violence or profanity.
Castlevania became the first video game adaptation in history to earn a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It holds an overall 94% critic score, with Seasons 2 and 4 both landing a perfect 100%. That is an absurd track record for a genre that has historically produced some of the worst adaptations in Hollywood. It was also successful enough to spin off into Castlevania: Nocturne, set 300 years later, which has kept the streak of near-perfect scores alive.
‘Sweet Tooth’ (2021–2024)
Sweet Tooth is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a viral pandemic wipes out most of humanity. Around the same time, babies mysteriously started being born as human-animal hybrids, and people began fearing that the hybrids might be the cause of the plague and started hunting them. The story follows Gus (Christian Convery), a naive 10-year-old deer-boy hybrid who leaves his safe home in the forest and teams up with a gruff wandering loner named Tommy Jepperd (Nonso Anozie). Together, they journey across what’s left of the United States looking for answers about where Gus actually came from and what happened to his mother.
A kid with antlers named “Sweet Tooth” isn’t exactly the most enticing selling point, and at first glance, the whole thing looks like a kids’ show. And that’s why it remains criminally underseen; most people wrote it off before even giving it a chance. But the series holds an incredible 92% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. It perfectly blends a bleak post-apocalyptic world with an almost childlike sense of wonder and innocence. The entire series feels very Steven Spielberg-esque in tone, and it might be the best family show on this entire list if you’re looking for a show to watch with your kids.
‘Arcane’ (2021–2024)
Arcane is an animated prequel set in the League of Legends universe, but you do not need to know a single thing about the game to enjoy it. If anything, going in blind makes the whole experience better, because there are turns this story takes that hit twice as hard when you have no idea where these characters end up. The series is set in Piltover and Zaun, twin cities built on the discovery of Hextech, a way to bottle raw magic into crystals that anyone can use. The show is phenomenal from the jump, with insane action sequences, an incredible soundtrack, and visuals that genuinely rival the Spider-Verse movies.
But Season 1, Episode 3, “The Base Violence Necessary for Change,” is where the show reveals its true hand. It is a true point-of-no-return episode that completely changes the show’s trajectory, like Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) execution in Game of Thrones or Omni-Man massacring the Guardians in Invincible. And from then on, you just can’t predict where the story’s going to go. Arcane wrapped up after just two seasons and ended exactly where its creators wanted it to. It still boasts a rare 100% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes and remains one of the most perfect shows Netflix has ever created across any genre.
Arcane
- Release Date
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2021 – 2024
- Network
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Netflix
- Showrunner
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Christian Linke
- Directors
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Barth Maunoury, Marietta Ren, Christelle Abgrall
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