2025 is drawing closer to its end. It’s been a decent year, but for me personally, it hasn’t felt at all memorable.
When you consider 2024, we had the likes of Fallout, The Boys, The Penguin, Superman & Lois, and more. In 2023, we had the likes of The Mandalorian, Ahsoka, Loki, and Titans.
A lot of the shows mentioned were memorable. The seasons, the action sequences, the stories, and how they ended were all something you never forgot.
2025 has been…off. It hasn’t felt quite up to standard. We’ve had some decent shows, don’t get me wrong. Daredevil: Born Again, for me, is probably the best show of the year, and even that wasn’t fully perfect despite how good it was.
Born Again had the added benefit of being a soft reboot of the Netflix version. The formula was already there to build on, which was a concern of mine about whether Disney would manage to pull it off. They did in a way. It felt gritty, powerful, and edgy. It’s exactly how the Netflix version was. I feel like they did well, although the finale was relatively weak; it does set up some intriguing angles for the second season.
Looking further into 2025 as a whole, Gen V had a solid second season, as did Wednesday. Some shows felt like a let-down as well. Peacemaker’s season 2 didn’t hit the same heights it did with the first season.
Maybe the issue isn’t that 2025’s shows are bad; it’s simply because they’re forgettable. It feels like studios are playing it safe, sticking to formulas that worked before without taking the same risks that made shows like Loki or The Boys stand out.
To be fair, a lot of this probably comes down to timing. The after-effects of the 2023 strikes meant many productions were pushed back or paused. That ripple hit 2025 hard. What we’ve had this year has almost felt like a stopgap between the big hitters. This is further shown with Ironheart being completely out of place when it was released.
I don’t know if I’m being pedantic regarding the releases this year. I had a conversation with a friend, and he felt the same way. It just hasn’t felt like anything truly blew the roof off the place. It feels like an extremely weird year, more so considering we’ve been running this website since 2019 and never once felt like this.
When we look at 2026, it already looks incredible. We have Wonder Man, Daredevil’s season 2, The Boys season 5, Lanterns, and more. It’s already shaping up to be a pretty powerful year, especially in comparison to 2025. I’m hoping a lot of these projects get people talking again.
Maybe 2025 was always designed to be a quieter year. Maybe these factors in that not every year needs to be a golden year, but even then, not everything was bad this year. Some stuff was great, I just hoped for more, especially with shows like Peacemaker and even Ironheart.
