The 48 Best Shows on Disney+ Right Now

Disney+, if you didn’t know, isn’t just for kids. With its ownership of the Lucasfilm brand and the Marvel titles, the streaming service offers plenty of grown-up content in its bid to compete with Netflix and Amazon—and we’re not just talking movies. Since launching the service, Disney has used the name recognition of Star Wars and Marvel to launch scores of TV shows, from The Mandalorian to Loki. In the list below, we’ve collected the ones we think are the best to watch, from those franchises and beyond.

Want more? Head to our best movies on Disney+ list if you’re looking for movies, and our guides on the best shows on Netflix and best shows on Apple TV+ to see what Disney’s rivals have to offer. Don’t like our picks, or want to suggest your own? Head to the comments below and share your thoughts.

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Tola Martins (Simisola Gbadamosi) is an adventurous 10-year-old who longs to discover more about the history and culture of her native Nigeria, which is portrayed as a kind of Wakanda. But her father, a wealthy scientist and tech CEO, prefers that his daughter remain within the bubble of privilege he has built around her on their island home. When she decides to travel into the city to surprise her dad, his own worst fears are realized when she is kidnapped. The limited sci-fi series, which is set in a futuristic Lagos, plays out a bit like a graphic novel—which is a good thing. With its striking animation and themes of class and racial divide and social justice, Iwájú is the thinking family’s next binge-watch.

“We don’t call her Mother Nature for nothing,” says Angela Bassett in the trailer for Queens, a new Nat Geo series that documents six far-flung places around the world where women rule the animal kingdom, from the mountains and rainforests to the oceans and savannas. The series’ final episode also pays special tribute to the women working to protect their fierce female warriors.

Nineties kids no doubt remember this sitcom about a family of dinosaurs. Earl Sinclair is a fortysomething Megalosaurus living with his family in Pangaea circa 60,000,000 BCE. While his days are spent working as a tree pusher (yep, he pushes over trees), he lives for his family: wife Fran and kids Robbie, Charlene, and Baby Sinclair, whose running gag of hitting his dad over the head with a frying pan and shouting “gotta love me!” never gets old. Not even three decades on.

Since first premiering in 2017, Nat Geo’s Genius series has given viewers an exhaustive history of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, beginning with Albert Einstein (masterfully played by Geoffrey Rush). For its latest season, the network is diving into the real histories of the lives of civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) and Malcolm X (Aaron Pierre). Rather than just hit the high points, like the famous speeches you likely know by heart, Genius delves into the past and deep below the surface to show how their backgrounds and personalities led them to become the icons we know today.

Marvel’s newest series continues the studio’s recent trend of shining a spotlight on its fearless—and complicated—female characters. In this case, that character is Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox), aka Echo, who is best known to audiences as a baddie from Hawkeye. But over the course of its relatively short five episodes, all of which are streaming now, we learn why Maya—one of the MCU’s few deaf characters—must reconcile the events of her past and reconnect with her Native American roots in order to confront the future she has created for herself. The series is already earning solid reviews, especially for the work of Hollywood newcomer Cox, who deftly manages to shoulder the weight of an entire MCU series.

Nearly 20 years after the release of the first book in Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, this small-screen adaptation of that first title—which premiered in December—is being praised for how faithful it has remained to Riordan’s beloved words. Being a tween is hard enough, but for 12-year-old Perseus “Percy” Jackson (Walker Scobell) it gets even harder when he learns he's the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and that he has pissed off his uncle, Zeus, who believes that Percy has stolen his thunderbolt. (And you thought having a zit was bad!) Fortunately for Percy there is Camp Half-Blood—a place where demigods like himself can learn to harness their powers and use them for good. It’s there that Percy learns the whole “with great power comes great responsibility” thing and embraces it—even if he'd rather be playing video games with his friends.

The further removed people become from any particular decade, the more ridiculous that decade seems to become. And the ’90s are no exception, especially when you’re reminded that the government feared Furby, of all things. This limited series from Nat Geo is a loving look back at the decade that made us dependent on the internet, introduced us to the Spice Girls, and made Fabio a sex symbol around the world. If you don’t know who Fabio is, you now have even one more reason to watch. (Disclosure: WIRED's culture editor, Angela Watercutter, is a talking head in this series.)

For sci-fi fans, the holiday season is about one thing: new Doctor Who specials. In 2023, however, the rollout of those specials was a bit peculiar. Whereas previous seasons of the long-running BBC show are available on Max, the three new 60th anniversary specials—featuring fan favorites Catherine Tate and David Tennant (here playing the Fourteenth Doctor) plus Ncuti Gatwa’s debut as the new Doctor—landed on Disney+ in the US. These new installments feature Tennant’s Doctor matching wits with the Toymaker (a scenery-chewing Neil Patrick Harris); Gatwa, meanwhile, is joined by Millie Gibson as new companion Ruby Sunday. Their official first season, which will also be streaming on Disney+ (outside of the UK and Ireland), will arrive later this year.

Disneyland, Walt Disney’s very first theme park, opened in Anaheim, California, in 1955. In the nearly 70 years since, Disney parks have become a worldwide phenomenon and inspired rabid fan bases who make annual (if not more frequent) pilgrimages to these so-called Happiest Places on Earth. But what goes on behind the scenes? From the creation of major attractions like the Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean to its bustling food scene (Dole Whip, anyone?), this docuseries goes behind the scenes of the world’s most famous amusement parks.

November 22, 1963, will forever be remembered as one of the most traumatic days in American history. To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, NatGeo assembled this fascinating three-part miniseries that relives that tragic day, as told by the people who witnessed it.

For more than 30 years, R. L. Stine’s Goosebumps books have fed the nightmares of young readers—much to their delight (well, usually). Now Disney is inspiring a whole new generation of horror lovers with this fun series, which follows the lives of a group of high schoolers who begin to unravel the terrifying truth about a decades-old murder—and the roles their nearest and dearest might have played in it—in their otherwise picture-perfect hometown. While the always-affable Justin Long stars as a teacher who may or may not be possessed in season 1 of this anthology series, season 2—which was just announced—will bring an all-new cast with it.

The MCU is exhaustingly huge. Yet while Loki is undoubtedly part of that universe, the series could just as easily work as a stand-alone piece, and it's all the more fun and surprising as a result. There are enough plot twists, silly one-liners, and time-travel antics to keep everyone entertained, and even a wisecracking alligator. If that doesn’t do it, Loki has a visual effects budget that would put most Hollywood blockbusters to shame. Sure, it’s not the most intellectually stimulating show out there, but Tom Hiddleston does a great job of turning Loki into a fairly complex, interesting character. No word yet on whether there might be a third season in Loki’s future.

Before Disney+ became the home for all of Marvel’s TV content, Netflix was the place to find it—beginning with Daredevil, in which blind attorney Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) spends his days seeking justice and his nights looking for revenge as a masked vigilante attempting to rid his Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of its criminal element. While the series ended in 2018, Cox has reprised the role and is at work on a new series, Daredevil: Born Again, which will be a Disney+ exclusive when it arrives in 2024—hopefully (the reboot is in the midst of a massive overhaul).

We know what you’re thinking: Wait, another Star Wars series? And we don’t blame you for asking the question. But for old-school franchise fans, Ahsoka just might surprise you. Rosario Dawson reprises the title role as Ahsoka Tano, a former Jedi who studied under Anakin Skywalker, which she first played in season 2 of The Mandalorian. Here, Ahsoka sets off on a journey to locate Grand Admiral Thrawn (Lars Mikkelsen, Mads’ brother)—a master manipulator who seems to be on a mission to become the grand ruler of the galaxy. A second season is in the works.

In 2021, writer-producer Saladin K. Patterson (Frasier, The Bernie Mac Show) rebooted the award-winning, and much beloved, series The Wonder Years for a new generation. Don Cheadle narrates the adventures of Dean Williams (Elisha “EJ” Williams), as he comes of age in Montgomery, Alabama, in the final years of the Civil Rights Movement. Both seasons of the worthwhile series are now streaming.

While Black Panther may have gotten an official sequel with 2022’s Wakanda Forever (which is, of course, available to stream on Disney+), this animated anthology series is in many ways a spiritual successor to that Oscar-winning MCU flick. More than a dozen up-and-coming African storytellers were handpicked to write and/or direct these 10 short films, which build on the makers’ cultures and histories to paint a fascinating, gorgeously animated—and often dystopian—picture of Afrofuturism.

It’s never too late to find your calling. Just ask travel journalist Jeff Jenkins, who had never even stepped on an airplane until the age of 20. Fifteen years later, Jenkins has certainly made up for lost time. And in this new adventure series, which will air simultaneously on National Geographic, Hulu, and Disney+, Jenkins is setting out to learn about the world and its many cultures through travel—and test his own limits. Because, as he explains on the series: “As a chubby Black guy, I don’t see a lot of folks who look like me exploring the world.” Jenkins’ enthusiasm for what he does is infectious.

From the moment it launched, Secret Invasion sparked conversation—although not for the reasons Marvel might have hoped. Turns out, the studio used artificial intelligence to create the show’s opening credits, a move that turned off some fans. Whether it’s curiosity about those Midjourney-looking visuals or general interest in what Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) has been up to, Secret Invasion is worth a look. Captain Marvel costars Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn (Talos) team up again, and the show follows the two as they investigate a clandestine invasion of Earth by a shape-shifting alien race known as the Skrulls. If that doesn’t do it for you, you might want to tune in for Olivia Colman and Emilia Clarke’s first—though surely not their last—forays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.