Best of 2025: TV Episodes features spoilers for various shows. Please be advised if there’s something you don’t want to know.
Though it felt like this wasn’t exactly the strongest year of TV, we got some of the best episodes earlier in the year with shows that still have such a tremendous high that people are still raving about them. From series finales to two pilot episodes, and a few incredible flashbacks, we’ve gotten gorgeous depictions of how enamoring storytelling can be when it’s thoughtfully crafted.
For more end-of-the-year coverage, be sure to check out our Best of 2025: Performances, the Best of 2025: Romantic Scenes, the Best of 2025: Found Families, and the Best of 2025: Romantic Relationships.
1. “Chikhai Bardo”
Severance
From the moment I watched Jessica Lee Gagné’s “Chikhai Bardo,” I knew that no other TV would top it in 2025. From the directing and cinematography to the quiet storytelling, it’s the type of episode that lingers and haunts. It etches itself deep into your bones and stays there, becoming something that’s impossible to put into words because it’s that good. And really, the entirety of Severance Season 2 is a masterclass in storytelling, so to even choose a single episode in a sea of greatness feels like a crime of sorts. Still, “Chikhai Bardo” is a breathtaking spectacle that feels like something we should study, tirelessly pick apart, and marvel at.
Adam Scott and Dichen Lachman deliver career-defining performances as they give us a story that’s both achingly contained and a part of something bigger. It’s a quietly bold spectacle on all fronts, proving that great television doesn’t always require epic twists and turns. The finale delivers this on all fronts, but sometimes, the beauty is unveiled in the ordinary. It shines in a slow, sweeping montage that encapsulates a whirlwind of indescribable emotions to build character and set the stage for all that’s to come.
2. “I’ll Believe in Anything”
Heated Rivalry
Emotionally jam-packed and full of indescribably exceptional performances, Heated Rivalry’s Season 1 penultimate episode leaves a brilliant mark in storytelling, making an unmistakable Best of 2025 TV episode as well as one of the greatest TV episodes of all time. Every episode does an effective and gorgeous job of adapting Rachel Reid’s novel, but “I’ll Believe in Anything” is pure art for the naysayers who tried to deem the series as mindless smut. The ones who refused to process when we said it’s one of the best shows of the year. Because every moment of vulnerability in this episode, which starts and ends with a phone call, depicts the importance of communication and what it truly means for two people to fall in love with each other. Because every moment honors its characters beautifully.
Ilya and Shane’s phone call alone would be enough to deem this episode as an excellent one, but how everything pans out from start to finish is a paradigm in how to structure a climax. It’s a true turning point that supplies a full range of emotions in a profoundly nuanced approach, filling every moment of screentime with masterful character development. It’s poetic, meaningful, and unlike anything else that’s been done with the genre.
3. “Jedha, Kyber, Erso”
Andor
Andor Season 2 isn’t just full of great episodes that are impossible to choose from, but individual moments that leave a huge mark and expand upon the Star Wars lore while simultaneously delivering timely narratives in a brilliant manner. But if we have to choose one episode to highlight in our Best of 2025 TV episodes, then it’s got to be the series finale, “Jedha, Kyber, Erso,” as an effective send-off into the story we know as Rogue One. It’s a near-perfect finale in every way, but more than anything, it’s a hopeful reminder of legacies and the next generation.
It’s the beginning of the end as a story full of goodbyes and the start of the rebellion that’ll change a galaxy far, far away forever. With radiant and enormously impressive performances from the whole cast and astounding directing with shots that’ll stay with viewers for a long time, it thoughtfully delivers something special in every way where it matters, making every beat throughout feel earned and significant.
4. “Goodbye”
The Bear
If nothing else, The Bear Season 4 firmly cements that the show isn’t a comedy and, in the same breath, delivers one of the best episodes of its run in “Goodbye.” It’s no “Fishes” or “Napkins,” but in many ways, it’s a stronger showcase of the sheer talent running through every star in this show. It’s unclear what’ll happen after “Goodbye” and if Season 5 will be the show’s last, but every loud argument and quiet declaration make for a wreck that leaves viewers glued to the edge of their seats. This is the one episode of the year that I watched with my heart in my throat the entire time because everything that we see here is the build-up of four seasons and careful character development.
Sure, it’s funny at times, but trauma runs deep in The Bear, both on the show and in the titular restaurant. Grief is a major character that continues to haunt all our main players and forces them into impossible situations that they spend years trying to untangle themselves from. It’s the episode that not only authenticates Sydney Adamu’s importance as the heart of the show, but it also finally gives the Berzatto siblings a moment to feel everything. A moment to understand and truthfully realize that they aren’t alone in any of this, and that whatever comes next, maybe healing can follow. The single scene that spans throughout the episode is a bold choice to unleash every emotion that’s been kept under lock and key.
5. “7:00 A.M.”
The Pitt
This choice might come as a bit of a shock to some of our readers, but it’s one I went back and forth on a lot—for months, really. But rarely is a pilot episode this exemplary, and while there are a number of solid ones to choose from in The Pitt Season 1, it’s how the pilot stands on its own that makes it exemplary For example, years from now when people look back, it’ll be clear that this really is an admirable way to thrust people into the chaos that’ll eventually ensue. And more than that, what people fail to remember is that the first episode rarely ever does this much work to stand on its own.
(I recently started watching The X-Files, and I can’t believe how brilliant the pilot is in setting everything up. Years from now, when people discover The Pitt for the first time, I imagine that they’ll have similar reactions.) And in every way where it counts, The Pitt sets the stage with a well-written introduction that hints toward where we’re going while focusing closely on the characters to show us how far they’ve come. As mentioned in my feature for it: “‘7:00 A.M.,’ doesn’t do something tremendously unique in its approach outside of carefully following the necessary formula in beginning a story. Yet, every actor, every frame, and every narrative beat is so exceptional that it transforms the episode from an ordinary beginning to a significantly profound starting point.”
6. “We Is Us”
Pluribus
It’s been a while since there’s been a pilot episode that, upon release, is already considered a masterpiece. Not only are you introducing audiences to characters and plot lines without fully revealing the tricks up your sleeve, but doing it in a way that hooks you immediately and never lets go. This is 100% true about Apple TV’s newest sci-fi drama, Pluribus. Vince Gilligan reteams with his Better Call Saul star Rhea Seehorn in this post-apocalyptic series where she, Carol, is one of a handful of people who are immune to this event, “the Joining,” an alien virus that assimilates humanity into a hive mind.
What makes this episode so brilliant is the use of time. It starts with a countdown at different points in time, revealing the slow, gradual march towards the Joining through deliberate pacing. Instead of following this moment in time across the world, audiences see it through Carol’s eyes as it happens. Tragically, although she’s immune to the chaos around her, Helen, her partner, is not. Audiences are with Carol through her confusion and devastation as the world she once knew completely slips away beyond her control. The end of the series premiere feels like a relief once Carol gets to her house and finally gets some answers. Packed with tracking shots and an emotionally charged performance from Seehorn, “We Is Us” stands tall as one of the year’s best episodes. [BY: Meredith Loftus]
7. “The Day”
Paradise
Something special happens when Dan Fogelman works with Sterling K. Brown. I’m not joking. The two made magic together during This Is Us. Three years after the finale, the two teamed again in Hulu’s political, post-apocalyptic thriller, Paradise. A cataclysmic event forced survivors into an underground bunker in Colorado, and “The Day” recounts the emotional hours that changed the world forever. After Xavier Collins takes the job to be on President Bradford’s Secret Service detail, he is trusted with the information that a megatsunami is going to wipe out humanity. When that day finally arrives, audiences are treated to a flashback episode to that fateful day.
It’s surreal to think about something this massive in scale happening, or even to imagine what you’d do in that scenario. Both Sterling K. Brown and James Marsden give such layered, complex performances through the shock and ethical dilemmas they’re faced with as the day unfolds. The stakes have never been higher, and it culminates with these men lashing out at each other after Xavier isn’t able to save his wife when Bradford tries to get her out of there. Six episodes of build-up had led to this moment of payoff, and it’s a riveting hour of television that left me breathless by the end. [BY: Meredith Loftus]
8. “My Mind Is Made Up”
The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age delivers its strongest, most exhilarating season this year, making it impossible to choose a single episode to highlight when there’s something in each of them. Still, the Season 3 finale, “My Mind Is Made Up,” is an undeniable winner as it sets up the fourth season with thrilling angst, moments of longing, heart-pounding beats of uncertainties, lavish balls, exciting romantic set-ups, and performances that’ll haunt us. Written by Julian Fellowes and Sonja Warfield with gorgeously memorable directing from Salli Richardson Whitfield, the finale is the kind of episode period dramas thrive with.
Leaving viewers with a jaw-dropping cliffhanger, the episode sets up what turns out to be one of the most exciting arcs that challenges the entire cast to bring their A-game. Every single person delivers something so magnetic that there’s not a single moment in the episode that can’t be analyzed further to contemplate what’s ahead.
9. “After You”
Only Murders in the Building
It’s the year of flashback episodes delivering some of the best storytelling in a show’s season, and from the moment Only Murders in the Building’s “After You” aired, I knew it’d have a spot on this list. Teddy Coluca’s Lester is, in every way, the heart of The Arconia, and the flashback carefully lays the floor plan for what’ll be built as the world we know it today. It’s heartwarming, surprisingly wholesome, and so well placed in the season that it amplifies the stakes in every way.
There’s a softness throughout the episode that’s so achingly poignant to underscore just how this place became a home for so many people. There’s a nostalgia that, even though this is the first time we’re seeing this side of The Arconia, it feels like we’ve known about it all along because we’ve felt it throughout the show’s run. The season is special in every way, but so much of its heart glimmers in this episode.
10. “Ex-Degenerate”
Cobra Kai
Some series finales are excellent, but only a few are genuinely perfect. Cobra Kai’s “Ex-Degenerate” is the latter, delivering a jaw-dropping and epic conclusion that pulls all the punches. On and off the mat, it’s an emotionally satisfying endgame that honors every character and their legacy while simultaneously building on the compelling bonds that have been developing since Season 1. Stacked with flashbacks from The Karate Kid films to emphasize some of the narrative points in the present, the finale delivers something exceptionally earned that features the type of win that feels like it’s been years in the making.
Brimming with exceptional performances, a thoughtful screenplay, and stellar directing, there’s truly no flaw in the execution. It’s emotional, action-packed, brilliant, and compelling in how it wraps up the story with the type of full-circle development that works from every angle we examine it from.
What are the Best of 2025 TV Episodes you’d choose? Let us know in the comments below.