The best Marvel TV shows are the ones that were allowed to be television first and franchise homework second. X-Men ’97 tops this ranking with a 99% Tomatometer for season 1, ahead of Netflix’s Daredevil and ABC’s Agent Carter. Every entry below holds at least 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, verified on September 2, 2026.
Last updated: September 2, 2026. All Rotten Tomatoes scores in this article were checked directly against each show’s Rotten Tomatoes page on that date.
How this Marvel TV ranking was built
Only Marvel-branded scripted series with a Tomatometer of 80% or higher qualified, which is the objective gate. The order is then editorial, judged on two things a comics site cares about: how well the show works as television with the movies switched off, and how intelligently it uses its source comics. The score gets a show in the door. It does not set the rank.
That is why a 98%-rated show can sit below a 92%-rated one here. Where a series has wildly uneven seasons, the peak season is named in the table so the average does not bury a great run of television.
Every Marvel TV show in this ranking, compared
This is the whole list at a glance: the rank, the run, where it streams now, the all-seasons Tomatometer, and the single season most worth your time.
| # | Show | Years | Streaming | Tomatometer | Peak season |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | X-Men ’97 | 2024– | Disney+ | 99% (S1, 81 reviews) | Season 1 |
| 2 | Daredevil | 2015–18 | Disney+ | 92% (196 reviews) | Season 1 (99%) |
| 3 | Agent Carter | 2015–16 | Disney+ | 87% (69 reviews) | Season 1 (98%) |
| 4 | WandaVision | 2021 | Disney+ | 92% (198 reviews) | Season 1 |
| 5 | Ms. Marvel | 2022 | Disney+ | 98% (311 reviews) | Season 1 |
| 6 | Loki | 2021–23 | Disney+ | 87% (225 reviews) | Season 1 (92%) |
| 7 | Jessica Jones | 2015–19 | Disney+ | 83% (210 reviews) | Season 1 (94%) |
| 8 | Hawkeye | 2021 | Disney+ | 92% (98 reviews) | Season 1 |
| 9 | Daredevil: Born Again | 2025– | Disney+ | 86% (194 reviews) | Season 1 (87%) |
| 10 | Moon Knight | 2022 | Disney+ | 86% (128 reviews) | Season 1 |
| 11 | Agatha All Along | 2024 | Disney+ | 84% (110 reviews) | Season 1 |
| 12 | X-Men: The Animated Series | 1992–97 | Disney+ | 83% (34 reviews) | Season 3 |
The 12 best Marvel TV shows, ranked
Each entry below leads with the case for its placement. Where a show slipped, that is said plainly rather than smoothed over.
1. X-Men ’97 (2024–)
Nothing else Marvel has made for television is this confident. X-Men ’97 picks up the 1992 cartoon’s continuity without apologising for it, then spends its first season doing the thing the movies spent 24 years avoiding: treating the Genoshan massacre and the Xavier/Magneto succession as a real political story with a body count. Season 1 holds a 99% Tomatometer from 81 reviews; season 2 sits at 97% from 38. It also has the cleanest relationship to its comics of anything here, lifting whole beats from the Claremont-era X-books and trusting viewers to keep up.
2. Daredevil (2015–18)
The Netflix run is the reason “Marvel TV” stopped being a punchline. Season 1 (99%) and season 3 (97%) are two of the best superhero seasons ever made, and season 3 in particular is a near-straight adaptation of Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli’s Born Again that understands the story is about faith and humiliation, not fighting. Season 2 (81%) is the weak link and the reason the overall score is 92% rather than higher — The Punisher half is excellent, the Elektra half is not.
3. Agent Carter (2015–16)
Two seasons, cancelled, and still better constructed than most of what replaced it. Season 1 holds 98% because it is a genuinely good 1940s spy serial that happens to star a Marvel character — Peggy Carter is sidelined by her own agency, and the show makes that the engine rather than a lesson. Season 2 (76%) loses the thread in Los Angeles, which drags the series average to 87%. Rank it on season 1 and it is untouchable.
4. WandaVision (2021)
The most formally ambitious thing Marvel Studios has put on television, and at 92% from 198 reviews it is level with Loki season 1 at the top of the live-action Disney+ wave. The sitcom pastiche is not a gimmick — it is a grief structure, and it lets the show adapt the emotional core of Tom King and Gabriel Walta’s The Vision and the West Coast Avengers-era Vision and Scarlet Witch material without literalising either. It loses points only for the final episode, where the show remembers it has a movie to feed.
5. Ms. Marvel (2022)
At 98% from 311 reviews this is, on paper, the highest-rated live-action Marvel series ever made, and the first four episodes earn it: the Jersey City setting, the animation flourishes and Iman Vellani’s Kamala Khan are the closest any MCU show has come to the texture of the G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona comic. It sits fifth rather than first because the back half hands its own story over to a Partition flashback and a sequel hook, and the show never fully recovers its own voice.
6. Loki (2021–23)
Season 1 (92%) is the best-directed thing on this list — a time-agency procedural that is far more interested in bureaucracy and identity than in Asgard. Season 2 (82%) spends its energy installing Kang, and the drop is audible; the series average lands at 87% from 225 reviews. It is also the clearest example of the pattern this list keeps running into: the more a Marvel show is asked to carry the next film, the worse it gets.
7. Jessica Jones (2015–19)
Season 1 (94%) is the best adaptation of a modern Marvel comic anyone has attempted. It takes the Purple Man arc from Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos’s Alias and builds a coercive-control thriller around it, with David Tennant’s Kilgrave as a villain whose superpower is the removal of consent. Seasons 2 (82%) and 3 (73%) are a long fade, and 83% overall is honest about that. The first 13 episodes are still essential.
8. Hawkeye (2021)
92% from 98 reviews, and the least self-important show Marvel Studios has made. It is a Christmas crime comedy with a deaf antagonist played by a deaf actor, a genuinely good Kate Bishop adaptation out of Matt Fraction and David Aja’s run, and no homework. It ranks eighth only because it is small by design — it does everything it sets out to do, and it does not set out to do much.
9. Daredevil: Born Again (2025–)
The revival has settled at 86% across two seasons (87% and 86%), which is a fair verdict on a show that was famously retooled mid-production. When it is a legal drama about a city electing its own Kingpin, it is as good as the Netflix run. When it remembers it is a Disney+ series in a shared universe, it stiffens. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio are carrying it, and they are enough.
10. Moon Knight (2022)
86% from 128 reviews for the strangest swing in the Disney+ era. Oscar Isaac plays dissociative identity disorder as the actual subject rather than a twist, and the Egyptian mythology is treated as religion instead of set dressing. The action is the weakest part, which for a Marvel show is an unusual and slightly admirable problem.
11. Agatha All Along (2024)
84% from 110 reviews. A spin-off nobody demanded that justified itself by being a road movie about witches with a real ending, and by giving Kathryn Hahn a character rather than a bit. It is the rare late-phase Marvel show that is not setting anything up, which by this list’s logic is exactly why it works.
12. X-Men: The Animated Series (1992–97)
83% from 34 reviews, and the number understates it. Fox’s Saturday-morning X-Men adapted the Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past and the Phalanx Covenant for children on network television, and it is the reason a generation knows those stories at all. It is last here on execution — the animation is inconsistent and the pacing is brutal — and first on influence. Its direct sequel is number one on this list.
The pattern: Marvel’s best TV happens at the edges
Line the scores up and something awkward shows through. Marvel’s highest-rated television is mostly about characters the next film did not need. Agent Carter season 1 (98%), Daredevil season 1 (99%) and X-Men ’97 season 1 (99%) were all made about characters who were, at the time, commercially peripheral. Nobody was waiting on them to unlock a release date.
Ms. Marvel is the useful exception, and it proves the point from the other side. Kamala Khan was needed — she had to be delivered to The Marvels — and the show is at its best in the four episodes before that obligation arrives and noticeably weaker afterwards. Same series, same cast, same 98% headline score, and you can hear the moment the assignment takes over.
The inverse holds at the bottom of the scale too. Secret Invasion, built explicitly to reposition Nick Fury and launch The Marvels, sits at 53% from 105 reviews. Inhumans, made to fill a hole left by a cancelled film, sits at 10% from 48 reviews, the lowest Tomatometer any Marvel series carries. Neither failed because of budget. They failed because the story was an assignment.
That is the useful takeaway for anyone deciding what to watch next: the reliable signal in Marvel television is not the character’s importance, it is whether the show was allowed to finish its own thought. Agatha All Along at 84% is worth more of your evening than a 53% show about the Skrull invasion, and the ranking above is ordered on exactly that basis.
Where to go next
If you want the other half of this argument, our companion ranking covers the 12 best DC TV shows of all time, where the pattern runs differently — DC’s best television was often made in defiance of the films rather than alongside them. For what is coming next from the mutant side, we have broken down X-Men ’97 season 2’s ten new mutants and its darker tone, and the live-action X-Men cast for the 2028 film.
Sources and score checks
Every Tomatometer figure quoted above was read directly from Rotten Tomatoes on September 2, 2026 rather than taken from a secondary roundup, because aggregate scores move as reviews are added. The primary pages used were Rotten Tomatoes’ X-Men ’97 season 1 page, its Marvel’s Daredevil series page and its Ms. Marvel season 1 page. Per-season figures for Loki, Agent Carter, Jessica Jones and Daredevil: Born Again came from the same source on the same date.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Marvel TV show?
X-Men ’97 is the best Marvel TV show. Its first season holds a 99% Tomatometer from 81 reviews and its second holds 97% from 38, the highest critic scores of any Marvel series, and it adapts its comics source more directly than any live-action Marvel show has.
What is the highest-rated live-action Marvel TV show on Rotten Tomatoes?
Ms. Marvel, at 98% from 311 reviews as of September 2, 2026. Netflix’s Daredevil season 1 is close behind at 99% for that individual season, though the series averages 92% across its three seasons.
Where can I stream the Marvel TV shows in this list?
All 12 stream on Disney+ in the United States. That includes the two former Netflix entries here, Daredevil and Jessica Jones, which moved to Disney+ in 2022 along with the rest of the Netflix Marvel slate. Streaming rights change, so check the platform before you plan a rewatch.
What is the worst-rated Marvel TV show?
Inhumans, at 10% from 48 reviews. Secret Invasion is the lowest-rated of the Disney+ era at 53% from 105 reviews. Both were built primarily to service other Marvel projects rather than to tell a self-contained story.
Is X-Men: The Animated Series worth watching before X-Men ’97?
Yes, but you do not have to finish it. X-Men ’97 is a direct continuation and assumes you know the Xavier assassination attempt that closed the original run, so the final stretch of the 1990s series is the part that actually matters.
