The 12 Best TV Episodes of 2025 (So Far)
Before "Chikhai Bardo," I could not have told you the last time I watched an episode of television and immediately wanted to talk to the person who made it. That's exactly what I did after seeing Severance's late-season swerve, which was masterfully directed by the show's longtime director of photography: Jessica Lee Gagné.
As Severance's DP, Gagné shaped the visual language of the series to that point—thank the 37-year-old Canadian cinematographer for Lumon's blinding white lights, sterile cubicles, and penchant for long takes. In "Chikhai Bardo," she's tasked with directing Severance's most important episode to that point—finally lifting the curtain on the show's greatest mysteries (i.e. what happened to Gemma and Lumon's inner workings). Gagné answered the call with an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-esque trip through Mark (Adam Scott) and Gemma's (Dichen Lachman) love story—shot on film, by the way—which reveals that the two weren't quite the immaculate couple we imagined. The result is a hauntingly beautiful exploration of memory, love, and resilience. In a decade, though, we just might remember "Chikhai Bardo" as the breakout moment for a generational director.—Brady Langmann
Andor didn't only say "genocide"—"Who Are You?" shows it, in all its abject horror. After spending several episodes on Ghorman, a planet unmistakably evocative of Nazi-occupied France, Andor episode 8 assembles all of its thematic pieces into one place... and opens fire. The Ghorman Massacre, first muttered in whispers via a Star Wars RPG sourcebook, becomes a pivotal series set-piece that takes viewers by the collar to show the monstrous visage of fascism at eye level. Behold the Ghor sing their national song and feel yourself moved to tears; bear witness to their sudden murder, and feel yourself quake with fury. For the first time in Star Wars history, Andor dared to be what most of the movies and cartoons rarely are: brave.—Eric Francisco
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Listen, it's okay to admit it: Hacks season 4 isn't exactly the cheeriest batch of episodes. Ava (Hannah Einbinder) and Deborah's (Jean Smart) on-and-off beef finally turned venomous—which is outright brave of series creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, who clearly weren't content to keep racking up Emmys with the same formula. But it didn't make for a whole lot of laughs. That said, the midseason entry "I Love LA" is everything that makes Hacks great. The focus is on the ever-deepening portrait of Deborah's psyche—she's having panic attacks just before the debut of her late-night show—but the B plot is classic Ava. (Her car is towed in a sex-shop parking lot—and the future two-thirds of her new throuple gives her a ride home.) At the very end of episode 4, Hacks delivers its most resonant image: A banged-up, weary Deborah watching her own premiere from a hospital waiting room.—B.L.
If The Studio nailed anything about Hollywood in its two-part season 1 finale, it’s that the presentation matters more than what you’re actually selling. Audiences holler for films like Kool-Aid just because Ice Cube busts out of the wall and proclaims, “Oh yeah!”—even if the film flops harder than Joker: Folie a Deux. But viewers are largely rooting for Seth Rogen’s fictional film studio in the Apple TV+ comedy. So, the comedian fills the hours leading up to their CinemaCon presentation with hilarious hijinks including a coked-out Dave Franco, a stoned-out-of-her-mind Zoë Kravitz, and a wild goose chase through Las Vegas for their off-the-rocker CEO.—Josh Rosenberg
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For millennia, philosophers, science fiction writers, and technological doomsayers have put their collective brainpower toward predicting the end of the world. And for most of Paradise on Hulu, creator Dan Fogelman and co. led viewers to believe that the U.S. President (James Marsden) initiated global Armageddon by way of nuclear fallout. It isn’t until the penultimate episode that Paradise finally clues viewers in on what exactly occurred the day the world ended. I won’t spoil one of the show’s many twists here, but “The Day” is one of Marsden’s finest hours on screen.—J.R.
Allow me to reintroduce the episode that is certainly the reason why Leonardo DiCaprio told fifteen-year-old Adolescence star Owen Cooper that he was a fan of the series. You likely already know that every episode of Adolescence is shot in a single take, with the series managing to travel miles and change locations without a single hitch. But the effect is most striking in episode 3's claustrophobic, tense session between psychologist Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty) and the young (Owen Cooper) Jamie Miller, accused of murdering a classmate. By letting the camera roll on Ariston's deft questioning of Miller, Adolescence gives the unfiltered look inside the minds of troubled young men that is so desperately needed right now.—B.L.
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Season 2 of The Rehearsal started out with sky-high ambitions, but episode 3, "Pilot's Code," broke through the stratosphere. While it starts with a seemingly unrelated (and let's be frank, crackpot) series of experiments involving house pets, "Pilot's Code" comes to life when Nathan Fielder reveals his intentions: simulate the life of Captain "Sully" Sullenberger to understand how he pulled off his miraculous January 2009 landing on the Hudson River. Watching Fielder as an infant Sully defies words; theorizing he saved lives because Sully had Evanescence on his iPod defies description. And learning that Fielder masturbated in an airplane next to a robot actress defies, well, just about everything.
The Righteous Gemstones went all out for the HBO comedy’s final season. Opening with a flashback to a Gemstones’s ancestor in 1862, Bradley Cooper plays the televangelist family’s progenitor to an absolute T. The episode follows Elijah Gemstone (Cooper) as he murders a priest and steals his robes. Then, he impersonates the godly man for money and is saved from death by firing squad due to his perceived religious connections. The episode truly cuts to the heart of what made Gemstones such a fantastic comedy. Danny McBride’s televangelist family is simply trying to survive in this crazy world by wearing the preacher’s protective collar. Beyond the veil, they’re just as batshit as the rest of us—and even more so.—J.R.
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Choosing just one great episode of The Pitt feels antithetical to the entire message of the series—every hour in every shift matters, as does every hospital worker, from the EMTs to the Chief of Surgery. But episodes 12 and 13 of The Pitt—which see PTMC intake a harrowing amount of victims after a mass shooting—mark the moment when The Pitt declared that it wasn't just a medical drama. Now that we've seen the entire season, we know that The Pitt star Noah Wyle and co. always had designs on telling the story of modern America within fifteen hours in a single emergency room. Episode 13 ultimately lands on this list, because it not only makes you reckon with what the fallout of gun violence actually looks like—but in Dr. Robby's (Wyle) breakdown, the sheer trauma it inflicts on healthcare professionals.—B.L.
If Joel's death in The Last of Us season 2 happened too soon, then episode 6 is a chance for a proper farewell. Essentially a flashback episode, "The Price" gracefully traces the years Joel and Ellie (played by Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, respectively) spent together in Jackson. At first, they grow together before slowly growing apart, as Ellie's suspicions of Joel mix with garden-variety hormonal teenage rebellion. An all-too-brief guest appearance by Joe Pantoliano (as fellow Jackson resident Eugene) is just the cherry on top of this emotionally charged sundae of an HBO Sunday.—E.F.
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At the end of the day, good television is about putting on a show. Few know how to put on a show like WWE, and the world's premier wrestling promotion brought the house down when Monday Night Raw—a longtime heavyweight of cable television—debuted on Netflix back in January. In the debut episode of Raw on Netflix, CCO Triple H greeted the roaring fans in Los Angeles to a bold new era in pro wrestling, and for the streaming ecosystem at large. The special occasion was topped off by a barn burner of a main event: Seth Rollins versus CM Punk, who beat the living snot out of each other in a four-star grudge match of the ages.—E.F.
I imagine that it takes a great deal of effort to secure Taylor Sheridan’s approval of a competing Western series. And yet, Peter Berg told Esquire in May that American Primeval received the Yellowstone creator’s seal of a “smile and nod.” Much like 1923’s exciting shootouts, Primeval’s debut episode took audiences back to the Utah War of 1857 to reenact the horrifying Mountain Meadows Massacre. As arrows whiz by and the camera stays locked on the action, Berg skillfully captures one of the scariest (and real) events of the American West.
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