20 Best Sci-Fi Shows Of The 2020s (So Far)
Memory Ngulube joined Screen Rant in April 2024 as part of the Movies and TV team. Since then, she has written for the Perennials and Streaming team, covering a wide range of topics from new releases to old movies and TV shows. Memory is currently a Classic TV writer.
Before joining Screen Rant, Memory was a freelance copywriter who specialized in email marketing and social media management. While she enjoyed her job, her true passion was always movies and TV.
When she isn’t writing for Screen Rant, Memory can be found reading, baking (which is one of her passions), or watching her favorite K-drama.
Each decade brings something new to the sci-fi TV landscape, but no era has been as ambitious as the 2020s. The popularity of streaming has given creators more freedom to experiment, resulting in science fiction shows that might have struggled to find a home on traditional network television and have instead become some of the most talked-about genre series of the decade. The sci-fi TV shows we’ve seen in the decade have pushed the boundaries of storytelling to create stories that are not only intriguing, but are as character-driven as they are ambitious.
Thus far, Apple TV is ahead of the curve when it comes to sci-fi shows, with Severance, Pluribus, and Silo demonstrating how versatile the genre can be. Animated projects like Arcane and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners prove that some of the decade’s best science fiction series do not need to be live-action in order to be great. There are still four years until the 2020s come to a close, yet there are already several great sci-fi shows that viewers can keep up with. In fact, some of these series are already showing signs of becoming cult classics.
Devs (2020)
Devs is easily the best sci-fi show released in 2020, especially because it told a complete and unsettling story in just eight episodes. Unlike other science fiction shows, Devs isn’t particularly filled with action or a vast world. The series shines thanks to its slow-burning plot that is littered with philosophical musings about free will and determinism.
Devs creator Alex Garland gives the show an almost dreamlike quality. The result is a sci-fi that feels cold, mysterious, and strangely beautiful rather than simply futuristic. Devs’ quieter approach to storytelling makes its technology frightening precisely because it feels like something that could eventually emerge from today's obsession with artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and big data.
Tales From The Loop (2020)
Tales from the Loop didn’t make as much noise when it debuted as other popular science fiction TV shows, but it has since gained a loyal following. With its anthology-like structure, the Prime Video sci-fi series is easy to follow. While the characters and stories are interconnected, individual episodes often focus on different people and conflicts.
The series is also one of the most visually distinctive sci-fi productions of the decade. Inspired directly by Stålenhag's paintings, Tales from the Loop combines retro-futuristic machinery with quiet rural landscapes, giving the world a feeling that is simultaneously nostalgic, futuristic, and melancholic.
Raised By Wolves (2020-2022)
Created by Aaron Guzikowski and executive produced by Ridley Scott, who directed the show’s first two episodes, Raised by Wolves is as strange as a science fiction show can be. Weirdness aside, the HBO science fiction series has an interesting conflict, because it isn't simply about humans versus machines. The show, like Scott’s previous productions, is obsessed with faith versus reason and religion versus atheism.
Raised by Wolves was canceled after two seasons and is no longer available to stream on HBO Max.
Though the series’ religious themes give audiences much to ponder, Amanda Collin's Mother is arguably the show's biggest achievement. She begins as a seemingly emotionless android programmed to protect children, but her role gradually becomes much more complicated. The fascinating contradiction is that Mother is simultaneously a machine, a parent, a weapon, and potentially something much more mysterious.
Resident Alien (2021-2025)
The premise of Resident Alien sounds like it should be a conventional invasion thriller, with the alien being an all-powerful and scary creature. The series, however, goes in the total opposite direction. Resident Alien is a surprisingly funny show. There’s something hilarious about an alien trying to figure out how to be human while prepping to disintegrate the same planet that begins to feel like home to him.
Resident Alien’s isn’t the first time Alan Tudyk has dipped his toes in the sci-fi genre, with Firefly being one of his most famous roles. However, his performance as Harry Vanderspeigle in Resident Alien is probably the actor’s most memorable. Tudyk simply nails the fish-out-of-water act. He makes Harry as awkward as an alien can be while also ensuring viewers see his humanity.
Foundation (2021-Present)
With Foundation, Apple TV proved why it is the home of prestige sci-fi TV shows. Isaac’s Asimov’s stories are vast and complicated, none more so than Foundation. So the fact that the series captured what made the book an epic read is an admirable achievement, more so because the show doesn’t diminish what Asimov was trying to say in his hard science fiction novel, even with changes that have been made to the source material.
Simply put, Foundation looks spectacular. Apple clearly gave the series’ creators the resources necessary to make its galaxy feel enormous. Obviously, aesthetics aren’t everything, but Foundation’s visual ambition is essential because Asimov's original stories were much more interested in ideas, politics, economics, and historical cycles than in cinematic spectacle. The television series therefore had to expand the relatively abstract material into something that could work visually on screen.
Arcane (2021-2024)
Arcane is often categorized as fantasy or steampunk, which it is, but it's also a show that is deeply rooted in science fiction through Jayce and Viktor’s experiments. The show’s creators did such a great job of crafting its story that viewers don't need to know anything about League of Legends to appreciate it. The series takes characters and concepts from Riot Games' enormous gaming universe and constructs a self-contained story around them.
It might not seem like it, but Arcane is also a philosophical sci-fi series. The show touches on everything from the military application of technology to the consequences that come with biological advancements. Arcane only has two seasons, and it doesn’t need more. It’s a great example of quality over quantity, as each episode is as perfect as can be.
Severance (2022-Present)
Not only is Severance one of the best sci-fi shows of the 2020s, but it's Apple TV's most-watched series of all time.. The genius of Severance is that its sci-fi concept immediately creates an ethical nightmare. Imagine going to work every day but having no memory whatsoever of your life outside the office. When your workday ends, your "outie" remembers nothing about what happened inside. From the employee's perspective, it is almost as though another person is living those eight or nine hours for them.
Severance is deliberately disturbing. The series takes recognizable aspects of modern corporate culture, such as work-life balance, employee wellness, and corporate loyalty, and pushes them to their logical extreme. Severance has incredibly important things to say about how we view both work and life and whether they truly should be separated.
The Man Who Fell To Earth (2022)
Alien invasion stories are popular in the sci-fi landscape. With so many to pick from, a series exploring that trope must find a way to stand out, which The Man Who Fell to Earth does extremely well. As a sequel to the 1976 movie of the same name, the series deepens the story that was introduced in the film.
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More importantly, The Man Who Fell to Earth flips the extraterrestrial invasion story on its head. Instead of the alien destroying the planet, his mission is much simpler, and in many ways noble, as he just wants to return to his home and save it from the catastrophe it is slowly hurling towards.
Pantheon (2022-2023)
Pantheon doesn't get the recognition it deserves, especially for a show that is as thought-provoking as it is. For years, humans have struggled with death and often question if there is a way to stay alive long after our bones turn to dust. Pantheon presents an answer to that question through its introduction of Uploaded Intelligence, a way in which people can become immortal through uploading their consciousness to the cloud.
The series could have become a sci-fi thriller about computers and artificial intelligence. What happens instead is that it ends up being a show that is deeply human due to its themes of grief and identity. Pantheon only has two seasons, but in those short episodes, the show does a brilliant job of presenting ideas about what it means to be human.
Cyberpunk: Edgerunners (2022)
At its best, cyberpunk isn't really about futuristic technology; it's about what happens when technology advances faster than society can handle. Cyberpunk: Edgerunners understands this perfectly. Night City is filled with extraordinary technology, but that technology hasn't created a better society. Instead, it has intensified the divide between the incredibly wealthy and everyone else.
Like Arcane, Edgerunners is a video game adaptation, but it can still be enjoyed by anyone, whether they are aware of its IP or not. Perhaps the most impressive accomplishment is that Edgerunners succeeded where many video game adaptations struggle because it didn't try to recreate the game. Instead, it created a completely new story inside the existing universe.
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