Best of 2025: Found Families features spoilers for various shows. Please be advised if there’s something you don’t want to know.
The best part of any TV show will always be the found families. The relationships that we’ll keep coming back for week after week because the wholesome bonds are quite literally everything. We’ll always be romance fans through and through, but platonic relationships are just as significant, and we have to scream about them every year.
For more end-of-the-year coverage, be sure to check out our Best of 2025: Performances, the Best of the Best of 2025: Romantic Scenes, the Best of 2025: Romantic Relationships, and the Best of 2025: TV Episodes.
1. Woodstone Mansion Residents
Ghosts
Every year, my heart grows three sizes because of the dynamics in Ghosts, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. This show is so beautifully special, and it’s entirely because of the friendships. It’s why these gorgeous freaks will always be number one in our Best of 2025 found families list, and every year after until the show’s over. And there’s always so much with them that you can’t even try to sum it up with two paragraphs. So much of Season 4B and Season 5A rightfully focused on Sam and Jay, proving to us that there’s nothing the ghosts wouldn’t do to make their lives a little easier.
Are they all ridiculously selfish at times? Yes, but that’s exactly why we love them. It’s why their friendship hits when it does because they’ll get under each other’s skin as a true family, then do something completely unexpected to show that they’ll always go the extra mile—under the confines of the ghost border, obviously. In other words, if I loved this little found family less, I might be able to talk about them more.
2. Percy, Annabeth, Grover, and Tyson
Percy Jackson and the Olympians
The friendships in Percy Jackson and the Olympians were special in Season 1, but so much of it is rightfully elevated in Season 2, and it makes the show better. Braver and softer. Watching these characters consistently go the extra mile for each other is everything when we look at the big picture, but it’s also so substantial in the moment. Grover isn’t with them right now, but everything that Percy and Annabeth are doing to get to him is a big deal that contributes to the show’s strength.
How Tyson is welcomed, and the softness again in which these characters interact with one another, is a big deal because it also dismantles toxic masculinity from such a young age and touches on the significance of loyalty. It’s what’s been missing from YA series, and it’s a beautiful detail this year that’s making the space lovelier.
3. Morgan, Karadec, Soto, Oz, and Daphne
High Potential
High Potential is a gift that keeps on giving, and it’s entirely because of the friendships. I’m not going to pretend I don’t ship Morgan and Karadec, plus Daphne and Oz, but even the best procedurals will fumble if there aren’t found family vibes. And from the second the show aired, I knew that this group would end up in our Best of 2025 found families list, as well as every other year after, as it continued airing. There’s something so special about how they each play off one another and how well they work together, even while they don’t always see eye to eye.
And how the team came together when Oz’s life was threatened by the Game Maker is proof that they aren’t just co-workers, they’re a family. They’re a family in the way every single one of them is doing their part to find out what happened to Roman because of how much it means to Morgan. They’re a family, for how everyone’s upset that Soto was passed over as Captain. In every way, they have each other’s back, and witnessing it makes the show ten times better.
4. Hawkins Found Family
Stranger Things
When it comes to Stranger Things, we’ll always be here for the characters first, everything else second. And while we’ve only seen the first part while this article is being written, everything we get this year is proof that the friendships on this show are what make it so special. The way Robin looks out for Will. How Caleb refuses to leave Max’s side. The way Steve and Dustin aren’t exactly seeing eye to eye, but there’s still so much love there. How they’re all working together for Holly. Max and Holly—best for last.
This strange, adorably ridiculous little family is the heart of Stranger Things, and it’s exactly why everyone’s up in arms to ensure that none of them die by the finale. None of these characters wanted to be in this situation, and their paths may have never crossed if it weren’t for well…everything, but it’s how they continue sticking together that’ll be the thing which we’ll miss most when the show is gone. It’s what’ll hit so hard when we’re no longer back at Hawkins—the family that was thrust together under really horrible circumstances but chose to stay in spite of everything.
5. The Landry Women
The Way Home
From romances to platonic relationships, The Way Home has it all. It’s one of the biggest surprises of the year as one of the shows full of the most heart, and the dynamics we get between the Landry women are entirely why. Season 3 tests each of them in monumental ways as more secrets begin to unravel, but how they get even closer in the quiet moments is what makes the show so special because we haven’t had many shows where a generational relationship is centered like this since Gilmore Girls.
Yet, everything between the Landry women is a reflection of grief, trauma, and the importance of transparency. It’s about healing and how three women can come together to teach one another all that they know in order to make their lives a little easier and stitch up the wounds that are plaguing them. Season 3 brought them even closer together, and knowing this show, Season 4 will likely destroy us in the best way possible, as the last jump into the lake.
6. Split River Ghosties
School Spirits
Like Ghosts, so much of the reason why School Spirits is so special is that these characters are each thrust into this impossible situation where they’re forced to grow and become better versions of themselves. With this, they also become the very kind of found family that makes the trope so wholesome. And in every way, Season 2 is among the most wholesome shows of the year because of how these characters look out for each other. How Wally does his part to apologize to Charley. How everyone understands Janet’s decisions. How Quinn and Yuri are welcomed to the group. All of it.
There’s love on the show this season, too, but these friendships are easily what make shows like School Spirits shine. Being dead and stuck in high school is literally hell on earth, but the way they look out for each other and take care of each other is what makes their days easier—brighter. More warm. It’s what softens them all and strengthens them, too, allowing each of the characters to be fleshed out because of how those around them make them better in every way.
7. Wednesday and Enid Sinclair
Wednesday
Wednesday Addams and Enid Sinclair’s friendship remains the surprising heart of Netflix’s series, as it continues to shine throughout the sophomore run. As the women switch bodies in a Freaky Friday-esque manner, they grow closer than ever, learning more about each other in a way that may not have happened outside of this fortunate accident. So much of the season explores the idea of a person being whole, and in its strongest episode, “Woe Thyself,” it puts Wednesday and Enid’s friendship at the center.
We get proof of not only the great lengths the women would go to for each other, but of the fact that they’re truly each other’s person. Polar opposites, yes, but their friendship is a balm that truly allows the best versions of themselves to shine. Through thick and thin, countless disagreements and secrets, Wednesday beautifully centers their friendship as a means to voice just how significant their bond really is.
8. Lumon Employees
Severance
Stuck together in many ways by their own doing, but Severance Season 2 explores the found family element in an intriguing manner that’s not like the others in our Best of 2025 found families. These characters each have their own experiences that make it challenging to trust others, but bound by their shared desire to uncover the truth, their unique ways of looking out for one another are what stand out. This is especially the case in Season 2, Episode 4, “Woe’s Hollow,” when Irving realizes that Helena is posing for their Helly R.
It leads to some unfortunate circumstances, but at the end of the day, it’s still about protecting each of them, and Mark especially. It’s about choosing one another, wondering about the truth they’re carrying, and trying to ensure that they’re each safe when everything else is uncertain. The vast majority of the season might ultimately center around saving Gemma, but Mark’s choice to stay, in many ways, is also about protecting his friends. Where these characters will go and how they’ll come out of it in the end is unclear, but for now, we can safely assume that their bond is sealed tight.
9. Miyagi-do and Cobra Kai
Cobra Kai
Everything about Cobra Kai’s final season is noteworthy, but how everyone comes together for one last fight has me typing this through my tears. From fighting one another to genuinely terrifying and traumatic lengths to fighting for and with each other is only something that good writing can accomplish in a believable way, and that’s exactly what we get in the final season. Whether it’s Sam and Tori, Miguel and Robbie, and perhaps the most emotional reconciliation of Daniel and Johnny, the Miyagi-do and Cobra Kai unity is the very essence of what a found family is.
And it’s this very unity, in the final part especially, that brings everything full circle so beautifully, delivering the type of loyalty that’s unmatched. The final season was bound to be emotional, but it’s the friendships that crank up the dial and make every moment on and off the mat thoroughly compelling. These characters are stuck together now, in an inherently cosmic way, because they’ve each in some way helped one another accomplish something life-changing. And it’s been utterly gorgeous to see.
10. Toledo Truth Teller Journalists
The Paper
There’s a lot going on in The Paper Season 1, and the journalists working at the Toledo Truth Teller aren’t exactly the best of friends right off the bat, but we’re getting there. Slowly. It takes a beat for everyone to warm up to Domhnall Gleeson’s Ned Sampson, the new editor-in-chief, but once they do, things turn around. We start the season with hesitation and end with an award ceremony. Sure, characters are selfish, and they’re doing everything in their power to come out on top, but there’s still compassion here.
We get an especially lovely display of friendship between Ned and Mare, which then leads to a romance by the end of the season, giving us a compelling display of the strangers to friends to lovers trope. In the same way that characters on The Office weren’t always the best of friends, but there was something comforting about each of their workplace interactions, we get a similar sense of camaraderie in The Paper. They might not be each other’s favorite co-workers on the planet, but there are certainly worse people they can be stuck with, and we can’t wait to see where they go from here.
Honorable Mentions: Happy’s Place Employees (Happy’s Place), Abbott Elementary Teachers (Abbott Elementary), Eliza Scarlet and Ivy (Miss Scarlet), Rosemary Leveaux and Elizabeth Thornton (When Calls the Heart), Agnes van Rhijn and Ada Forte (The Gilded Age)
Who’s on your Best of 2025 found families list? Let us know in the comments below.