Marvel and DC's Best Web Series Right Now: Loki, Moon Knight, Daredevil, The Penguin, Lanterns and Peacemaker
Superhero TV has gotten genuinely good. For a long time it felt like the leftovers after the movies got all the budget and attention, but that’s shifted. Marvel and DC are now using their shows to do things a two hour film just doesn’t have room for: slower character work, villain focused arcs, mysteries that unfold over multiple episodes instead of one big climax.
If you’re trying to put together a list of the best web series to watch this year, or you’re just looking for the most watched web series in the superhero space right now, this piece breaks down six of the biggest titles from both universes. These aren’t just popular web series because of marketing money either. Loki, Moon Knight, and Daredevil: Born Again on the Marvel side, and The Penguin, Lanterns, and Peacemaker on the DC side, are consistently named among the top rated web series critics and audiences point to when they talk about what modern comic book television actually looks like.
Loki: Marvel's Trickster Finally Gets the Spotlight
Ask any Marvel fan to name the show that changed how they thought about Disney+ series, and a lot of them will say Loki. It’s not hard to understand why. This is one of those rare cases where a side character from the movies got pulled out, handed his own storyline, and ended up reshaping the direction of the entire franchise. Among Marvel webseries, this is usually the first one that comes up when people are ranking the best fantasy web series of the last few years.
Tom Hiddleston, whose full name is Thomas William Hiddleston, has played this character since the first Thor movie back in 2011, but the films never really let him breathe outside of being Thor’s brother or Avengers’ antagonist. This show does. In loki avengers continuity, the setup starts right after he grabs the Tesseract during the time heist in Avengers: Endgame. That single choice gets him scooped up by the Time Variance Authority, an agency that manages the timeline, and he’s forced to help hunt down a dangerous variant of himself.
Loki season 1 ran for six episodes in June 2021 and became one of the most watched web series on Disney+ at the time. It introduced Sylvie, Ravonna Renslayer, and Hunter B-15, and ended with a twist that quietly set up the multiverse storyline for the rest of loki marvel continuity going forward.
Loki season 2 picked up right where that left off, again six episodes, airing weekly through October and November 2023. This time the god Loki is dealing with something called time slipping, basically losing his grip on linear time while the TVA is on the verge of falling apart. Owen Wilson returns as Mobius, along with Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Ravonna Renslayer. Ke Huy Quan joins as Ouroboros, and Jonathan Majors plays Victor Timely.
What makes this loki webseries stand out isn’t really the multiverse stuff, even though that gets a lot of attention. It’s that the show actually lets this character change. The version of Loki and Thor’s relationship from the early films, where Loki just wanted to cause chaos and see people scramble, is gone by the end of this series. If you haven’t seen the Thor movies, you can technically start here, but you’ll get more out of it if you know where he’s coming from.
Moon Knight: The Strangest, Most Personal Marvel Show
If Loki is Marvel going big with the multiverse, Moon Knight goes the opposite way. It’s small, uncomfortable at times, and rooted almost entirely in one person’s fractured mind. Out of everything in the moon knight marvel catalog, this moon knight webseries feels the most different from the rest of the studio’s output, and it’s often brought up in conversations about the best mystery webseries of the last few years.
The story follows Steven Grant, a gift shop worker in London who starts blacking out and waking up with memories that don’t feel like his own. Eventually he learns he shares a body with a mercenary named Marc Spector, and this is where Marc Spector Moon Knight lore really kicks in. The two are alters of the same person living with dissociative identity disorder, and Marc has made a deal with the Egyptian moon god Khonshu to become his avatar on Earth, known as Moon Knight.
Oscar Isaac carries basically the entire thing, often switching between personalities within a single scene. There’s Steven, there’s Marc, and later a third identity named Jake Lockley shows up too. Ethan Hawke plays Arthur Harrow, a cult leader who’s genuinely unsettling without ever raising his voice, and May Calamawy plays Layla El-Faouly, who ends up becoming a hero in her own right by the finale. The full cast of Moon Knight also includes F. Murray Abraham voicing Khonshu and Gaspard Ulliel as Anton Mogart.
Moon Knight season 1 ran six episodes, from March 30 to May 4, 2022, and told a full story on its own without leaning heavily on other MCU shows or movies. The writing pulls a lot from the original moon knight comic material rather than existing Marvel continuity, which is part of why it worked so well for people who don’t normally watch superhero stuff. You don’t need years of homework to follow it, and all six moon knight episodes hold together as one tight, self-contained arc.
As for Moon Knight season 2, nothing’s been officially confirmed as far as I know. Oscar Isaac has said publicly that it’s “not the last we’ve heard” of the character, but that’s about as far as it goes right now.
Daredevil: Born Again Brings Hell's Kitchen Back
Few shows have had fans waiting as long or as loudly as this one. The original Daredevil series on Netflix, which ran starting in 2015, got cancelled years ago, and a lot of people never really got over it. Born Again is Marvel’s attempt to bring that world back properly, treating the Daredevil Netflix series as real continuity instead of quietly pretending it didn’t happen. It’s regularly listed alongside the best crime thriller webseries currently airing, and honestly holds up next to the best drama web series on any network right now.
Matt Murdock, full name Matthew Michael Murdock in the comics, is a blind lawyer with heightened senses who spends his nights as a vigilante protecting Hell’s Kitchen. His whole code has always been about not becoming the violence he’s fighting against. This Daredevil Marvel Netflix follow up tests that harder than any previous version by putting his old enemy Wilson Fisk into a position of actual political power, as the newly elected mayor of New York.
Charlie Cox is back as Matt Daredevil, and Vincent D’Onofrio returns as Fisk in what’s probably the best performance of his career. Deborah Ann Woll and Elden Henson are back too as Karen Page and Foggy Nelson, and Jon Bernthal shows up as the Punisher, connecting Daredevil in the Punisher storylines fans remember from the original run. New additions include Margarita Levieva and Wilson Bethel, who plays Bullseye.
Daredevil season1, nine episodes total, ran from March 4 to April 15, 2025. It’s worth knowing this Daredevil Marvel series went through a rough production. It was originally filmed as something closer to a straightforward legal drama before Marvel brought in different writers to reshape it into something more serialized and closer in tone to what people loved about the Daredevil 2015 era. That gamble paid off. Critics responded well, and it’s genuinely one of the better received Marvel studios web series in years.
Daredevil season2 has already been confirmed and is in production, picking up right after that finale. For people who grew up on the old Netflix run watching this serie Daredevil Netflix from the beginning, this is the closest thing to getting that grittier, more grounded street level tone back inside the main MCU.
The Penguin: A Crime Saga That Doesn't Feel Like a Superhero Show at All
This might be the best thing either studio has put out, and a strong contender for one of the best rated web series of the decade regardless of genre. Set in the same world as Matt Reeves’ 2022 Batman film, it picks up right after that movie and follows Oz Cobb’s rise from Carmine Falcone’s driver to a genuine power player running Gotham’s underworld. This is one instance where Batman and the Penguin get treated with the same weight as a prestige crime drama.
Colin Farrell is buried under hours of prosthetics here, and it’s one of those performances people can’t stop talking about, partly because he’s almost unrecognizable and partly because he plays Oz with a strange mix of charm and menace. Cristin Milioti might actually steal the show as Sofia Falcone though. Her arc, going from wrongly imprisoned to calculated and dangerous, is one of the better villain stories in recent memory. Rhenzy Feliz plays Victor Aguilar, Clancy Brown plays Salvatore Maroni, and Shohreh Aghdashloo plays Nadia Maroni.
Eight episodes total, airing from September 19 to November 10, 2024, on HBO. If you’re picturing the campier, more comic accurate version from the DC Comics Penguin material or games like Arkham City’s take on the Penguin, this isn’t that. It plays more like a slow burn crime drama, closer to something like The Sopranos than a typical Gotham Penguin portrayal. That’s exactly why it’s often named among the best crime webseries currently running, and it picked up enough award nominations to prove it wasn’t just fan hype.
If you like antiheroes and slow, methodical power struggles more than action set pieces, this is the Penguin and Batman story worth your time.
Lanterns: DC's Big Swing Into Cosmic Detective Territory
This is the DC project people are watching most closely right now, mainly because nobody expected this approach. It’s being described as a detective story in the vein of True Detective, except set inside the Green Lantern Corps mythology, and it’s shaping up to be one of the best new web series on anyone’s radar heading into its release.
The premise follows two intergalactic cops, veteran Hal Jordan and new recruit John Stewart, investigating a dark murder in the American heartland that turns out to have much bigger cosmic implications than anyone expected. Kyle Chandler plays Hal Jordan, and Aaron Pierre plays John Stewart. Kelly Macdonald plays a local sheriff who’s suddenly dealing with superpowered beings showing up in her small town. Garret Dillahunt, Poorna Jagannathan, and Nicole Ari Parker round out the cast, and Ulrich Thomsen plays Sinestro.
Lanterns season 1 has been confirmed for eight episodes, with production starting in early 2025 under showrunner Chris Mundy, who worked on Ozark, alongside Damon Lindelof of Lost and Watchmen and comic writer Tom King. Teasers started coming out in early 2026, so this is clearly being treated as one of the flagship shows in DC Studios’ current slate. There’s no confirmed release date I can point to as of now for the full run of Lanterns episodes, so keep an eye on official HBO announcements rather than rumors.
Peacemaker: Loud, Ridiculous, and Somehow Genuinely Moving
If The Penguin is DC’s prestige drama and Lanterns is its ambitious gamble, Peacemaker is proof the studio can just have fun too. The character first showed up in James Gunn’s 2021 film The Suicide Squad, and the reaction was strong enough to justify giving him his own show. People sometimes misspell it as “p eacemaker” when searching, but John Cena’s Peacemaker is exactly one word and exactly one very loud personality.
Peacemaker season1 ran eight episodes and follows Christopher Smith, a superhero so obsessed with peace that he’s willing to kill to get it, which is obviously a joke on its face but somehow becomes one of the more sincere shows about toxic masculinity and father son trauma in the genre. John Cena Peacemaker carries it well, and the supporting cast, Danielle Brooks as Leota Adebayo, Jennifer Holland as Emilia Harcourt, Freddie Stroma as Vigilante, and Steve Agee as John Economos, all get real character moments instead of just being comic relief.
That first season, Peacemaker 2022, set streaming records for Max at the time, and a lot of that had to do with the opening credits dance number becoming an internet moment on its own. If you check IMDb Peacemaker reviews from that release window, the finale is consistently rated as one of the strongest episodes of superhero TV that year.
Peacemaker season2, confirmed as the final season, ran eight episodes from August 21 to October 9, 2025. This one deals directly with the DC universe reboot under James Gunn and Peter Safran, since season one technically existed in the old continuity. Frank Grillo joins as Rick Flag Sr., now running A.R.G.U.S. and looking for revenge over his son’s death. Isabela Merced shows up as Hawkgirl, and Nathan Fillion returns as Guy Gardner. Peacemaker ep6 of this season is where a lot of fans say the plot really turns, though I’d recommend not skipping ahead. If you’re planning to watch Peacemaker s2, don’t skip season one first. The emotional stakes depend entirely on relationships that get built there.
Beyond These Six: Other Marvel and DC Shows Worth Knowing About
These six aren’t the only reason to pay attention to superhero television right now. Hawkeye, another Disney+ Marvel show, follows Clint Barton training a new archer named Kate Bishop during the holidays, and it’s a much lighter, more grounded watch if you want something outside the multiverse heavy stuff. It’s often mentioned in the same breath as Loki and Moon Knight when people talk about the strongest run of Marvel studios web series during that stretch of Disney+ releases.
On the ranking side, if you’re putting together your own list of the top 10 web series worth watching this year, these six cover most of the ground between big spectacle and grounded character drama. Loki and Lanterns lean into fantasy and cosmic stakes. The Penguin and Daredevil lean into crime and drama. Moon Knight sits somewhere in the mystery and psychological thriller space. Peacemaker is the one that reminds you superhero TV doesn’t have to take itself completely seriously.
Which Ones Are Actually Worth Watching First
If you want something dense with lore and multiverse stakes, Loki delivers that better than almost anything else on this list. If you want something stranger and more personal, Moon Knight is still one of the most unusual shows either studio has made. Daredevil: Born Again is the pick if you want grounded, street level stakes with real consequences.
On the DC side, The Penguin is the clear standout if you’re into crime dramas more than superhero action. Lanterns is worth keeping an eye on if the detective angle sounds interesting to you. And Peacemaker is just a good time, with more heart than the premise suggests.
Between the two studios, it’s less about picking a side these days and more about picking the right mood. Some nights you want multiverse chaos, other nights you want a slow burn crime story. Both Marvel and DC have finally figured out how to give you both.
Quick Questions People Ask
Yes, that's just how the title gets typed without spaces in a lot of searches. It's the official continuation of the Daredevil Netflix series, now under Marvel Studios.
Same show, different spelling. John Cena's Peacemaker is one word as the official title, but a lot of people naturally type it as two words when searching.
No, not as of now. It's been talked about by the cast, but there's no official announcement or release window.
Eight episodes for the first season, though an official premiere date hadn't been locked in as of the most recent reporting.
Yes. Christopher Smith's character debuted in the 2021 film before getting his own spinoff series.
Loki, Moon Knight, and Daredevil: Born Again are all on Disney+. The Penguin, Lanterns, and Peacemaker are all on HBO Max. None of these six are currently on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Voot.
