Netflix has had an interesting year. Its ad tier, introduced last year, has grown significantly, and its live TV initiative has expanded to include not only weird one-offs like hot-dog-eating grudge matches but also WWE programming. Taking KPop Demon Hunters off Sony’s hands for the business equivalent of $200 in a potato chip bag also turned out to be a pretty smart move for Netflix. The animated feature about, well, demon-hunting K-pop stars, became the most watched movie in the platform’s history and a global cultural phenomenon in its own right. The sing-along theatrical release sold out, songs from the movie sat comfortably at the top of music charts for weeks, and we got Huntr/x in Fortnite and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade mere months after the movie’s release.
But KPop Demon Hunters wasn’t the streamer’s only quality offering this year. Here’s a list of Netflix’s best of 2025.
Sean Combs: The Reckoning
There are two life lessons to take away from this documentary: Don’t be a horrific abuser and never piss off a self-described petty man with cash to burn. This four-part docuseries, directed by Alex Stapleton and produced by Lifetime Achievement Fellow in the Hater Hall of Fame Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, chronicles the rise of Sean “P Diddy” Combs from music video character actor, to hip-hop business mogul, to convicted criminal.
The documentary features new interviews from former associates, employees, and friends who allege everything from cheating business partners out of their share to having knowledge of if not outright arranging the hit that took Tupac Shakur’s life. This is not a “fun” watch, so heed the content warnings, but if you want a succinct accounting of where Combs came from and how the business of hip-hop can turn men into monsters, this is an informative overview.
There is vanishingly little I can say about KPop Demon Hunters’ brilliance that hasn’t already been said. So I’ll let what has been said speak for it:
- Making KPop Demon Hunters sound magical meant finding the right harmonies
- KPop Demon Hunters was this year’s biggest surprise, but can Netflix do it again?
Rian Johnson’s Knives Out series has once again delivered a sharply funny, intensely moving whodunit. Daniel Craig as Benoit Blanc drips southern charm, aided by an ensemble cast featuring Josh Brolin as a fiery Catholic priest and Glenn Close as his secretary. Josh O’Connor delivers some beautiful moments as a junior priest struggling to find meaning in his faith, creating interesting tension against Blanc’s cold, grim logic. With them working together, Wake Up Dead Man becomes a fun story that examines the purpose faith can have in our lives.
One thing director Guillermo del Toro is gonna do is make a luxurious, sumptuous-ass movie with over-the-top sets and costuming. But Frankenstein is not just a visual delight. Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein and Jacob Elordi as his monster give incredible performances that are both grounded in the movie’s late Victorian aesthetic while resonating with the stories of today. A quote unquote learned man irresponsibly using technology to create something he doesn’t understand and in his arrogance tries to control that winds up destroying his life and others? It’s not that Frankenstein is any one allegory for today, it has multiple applications.
And while we have numerous Frankenstein adaptations, there’s nothing quite like watching GDT do it. You just know that man is gonna grab all the production designers, make-up artists, and costumers, give them some cash, and say essentially “Cook,” and damn if they didn’t do exactly that.
The Great British Baking Show
I live for The Great British Baking Show (known as The Great British Bake Off outside the US). When the sun starts setting at 4:30PM and seasonal affect starts disordering my life, I’m okay because I know that means it’s Baking Show season. This year, the show has done some interesting things with the format, trying new variations on the show’s technical challenge where bakers are tasked with making something with stripped-down directions. I wish the challenges weren’t so overly focused on sweets, but it’s always fun learning the absolutely bonkers names the Brits have for their pastries. There is no way in a logical world that an oatmeal bar like this should be called a flapjack — it doesn’t even flap! Honestly, yelling about how British English is Wrong is just as much fun as watching the amateur bakers themselves.
The first half of the final season of Stranger Things is out, and while we can quibble about whether or not it’s quality television, it is good for one specific reason: it is finally ending. The show started off really strong, telling a fun tale about kids saving the world from the adults that are trying to ruin it. But that kind of storytelling got lost in the near decade between the first season and now — even though the Duffer Brothers want us to believe that it’s only been four years since Will first went to the Upside Down. It’s okay that stories end, and I’m glad we’ve got the opportunity to end this show on a high note by returning focus to what made it so great in the first place — them meddling kids.
Squid Game is another one of Netflix’s tentpole hits that has come to an end this year. Gi-hun / Player 456 (Lee Jung-jae) has returned to Mr. Beast’s Murder Island to expose the organizers of the deadly games once and for all. He’s befriended another crop of desperate people willing to do whatever for life-changing amounts of cash and just like in the first two seasons it’s brutal to watch the games destroy them one by one.
Clocking in at just under 200 days, James Garfield has the second shortest term of a US president, and I was genuinely enthralled watching Death By Lightning chart his rise to the office and tragic fall via an assassin’s bullet. As with Frankenstein, Netflix is once again on time with a metaphor appropriate for current events. Death By Lightning takes a look at how incendiary political discourse, like the kind fomented against Garfield by his own party, can lead to violence.
But more than the prescient political commentary, the performances make this show. Michael Shannon imbues Garfield with a salt-of-the-earth quality that makes you root hard for him. Shea Whigham has entered his character actor villain era playing New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, and Matthew “Mr. Darcy / Tom Wambsgans” Macfadyen gives a heartbreaking performance playing Garfield’s assassin Charles Guiteau.
The show’s best moments come from Nick Offerman as Garfield’s reluctant vice president, Chester A. Arthur. Offerman as Arthur is regency-era Ron Swanson. Throughout most of the show’s four episodes, Offerman is either drunk, fighting, raving about sausages, or a combination of all three. That man is having a blast chewing the scenery in a top hat and mutton chops, and I would genuinely watch a whole White House sitcom with him as the star.
