Welcome to 2023, a year full of quality TV shows. Superheroes, detectives, cowboys, Jedis, teenage girls in the woods, and a**holes with going-to-work-in-a-helicopter-money will tell stories that will make us sit in front of our TV, theorize, discuss, laugh, and love 2023. Some shows are coming back with new seasons, others haven’t even started and already have big expectations surrounding them, and all of them look like a great time. Here are 10 shows we can’t wait to see in 2023.
10) Justified: City Primeval
Timothy Olyphant is back as Raylan Givens, the coolest, smartest, craziest, most charismatic U.S. Marshal there ever was. The ending of Justified was pure perfection (“we dug coal together”), so if Olyphant and the creative team want to tell a new story, it must be worth it. We can’t wait to listen to Elmore Leonard’s dialogue and meet new quirky, unique characters as the miniseries is inspired by his book City Primeval: High Noon in Detroit.
There’s not much known about the new season yet. Being Justified, it will probably involve peculiar criminals, Raylan being pulled into a case he doesn’t want while giving sarcastic quips, her daughter being in danger, and showing Detroit in a different, new light.
The new season has a great cast. Olyphant, Aunjanue Ellis (King Richard), Vondie Curtis Hall (Chicago Hope), Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Norbert Leo Butz (Bloodline), and Olyphant’s daughter, Vivian, playing the role of Raylan’s daughter. It’s also rumored that Quentin Tarantino himself is going to direct some of the episodes of the miniseries. Olyphant, Tarantino, Leonard. We can’t wait!
Justified: City Primeval will premiere on FX during the summer.
9) Poker Face
Rian Johnson is more than a whodunnit aficionado, and after breathing new life into the Agatha christie inspired mystery, his new objective is to reinvent the detective drama with the help of Natasha Lyonne (Russian Doll).
Lyonne will play Charlie Cale, a woman who can tell when someone is lying in this case of the week series. Watching the trailer, it looks like if Columbo and Jessica fletcher had a daughter with a raspy voice (even more than Colombo) and blonde hair, it would be the character Natasha Lyonne is playing in this show.
Knowing Johnson’s love for changing genres and subverting them, Poker Face will probably be something unique and unexpected. The director’s Rolodex of friends will also help as incredible actors will be appearing in every episode: from Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Looper) to Adrien Brody (The Pianist), Jameela Jamil (The Good Place), Lil Rel Howery (Get Out), Stephanie Hsu (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), and Chloë Sevigny (Big Love).
Poker Face will premiere in Peacock on Jan. 26.
8) Agatha: Coven of Chaos
As her song said, It was Agatha all along. Her appearance in WandaVision as the big bad was so magnetic that she earned her own show. The character of Agatha Harkness has never had her own comic book and now is getting a TV series. That’s the power of actress Kathryn Hahn, who improves anything she’s in by 20%.
Agatha ended WandaVision being trapped in Westview, but after everything that happened to the Scarlet Witch in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, she might be free to do all the witchy evil she wants. Will her shenanigans be the reason for the X-Men or the Fantastic Four appearing in the MCU? One can only hope for it.
If Kathryn Hahn wasn’t enough, they have surrounded her with an interesting cast, one that might indicate this show is going to be a comedy. Aubrey Plaza is the biggest star they cast after her charismatic appearance in White Lotus. The rest of the actors in the series are Joe Locke (Heartstopper), Eric Andre (Man Seeking Woman), Sasheer Zamata (Saturday Night Live), and musical legend Patti LuPone (Witness).
Agatha: Coven of Chaos will premiere on Disney+ during the winter.
7) Ahsoka
Ahsoka Tano was a character first introduced in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars as one of Anakin Skywalker’s Jedi padawan and became an instant fan-favorite. Enough for people doing fan castings and clamoring for the character to appear in real live-action. Their demands were satisfied when Rosario Dawson appeared as Ahsoka in both The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
When we last saw her, Ahsoka was looking for General Thrawn, so finding him will probably be the mission of this show. This series will also be the live-action debut of other characters from The Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels shows, Ezra and Sabine. The series is being written by Dave Filoni, who always knew how to make Ahsoka an incredible, compelling character, so fans’ expectations are pretty high.
Rosario Dawson will be the star, but the cast surrounding her is also intriguing. There’s Hayden Christensen reprising his role as Anakin Skywalker, Eman Esfandi as real-life Ezra Bridger, Natasha Liu Bordizzo as non-animated Sabine, and both Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn) and Ray Stevenson (Thor) in undisclosed roles, probably as bad guys. That’s a lot of star power for one series.
Ahsoka will premiere in Disney+ during the spring.
6) Ted Lasso (Season 3)
“Football is life!” – Dani Rojas; and boy, did Ted Lasso give us life, rainbows, and laughs when it debuted back in the dark days of 2020. The character’s optimism and how it transformed AFC Richmond was an incredible sight to see, as fans hadn’t been rooting this much for a fictional team since Friday Night Lights ended.
Ted Lasso (Jason Sudeikis) started as an American football coach hired into European football to sink AFC Richmond, as divorced owner Rebecca (Hanna Waddingham) wanted to hurt his ex-husband. Since Ted’s arrival, everything changed as he won hearts and minds on the team by being compassionate, curious, and lovely (even if he still understands what an off-side is).
This new season might be its last, as Jason Sudeikis and the other writers always intended, although there hasn’t been an official confirmation. What will happen now that they’re back in the Premier League? Can Nate’s (Nick Mohamed) move to the dark side be fixed? Can Roy (Brett Goldstein) and Keeley (Juno Temple) survive their separation? Is Ted and Rebecca endgame as a couple? We can’t wait to find out.
Ted Lasso’s new season will premiere on AppleTV+ during the spring.
5) The Mandalorian (Season 3)
Djin Djarina, aka Mando (Pedro Pascal), and Grogu, aka Baby Yoda, were Disney+’s first success story and proved that episodic TV could still work, as the series was all about finding new planets and people they could help. Since then, the bond between both characters has expanded, and after seeing what happened with Grogu’s training by CGI Luke Skywalker in The Book of Bobba Fett, we know the two are reunited and looking for new adventures through the galaxy.
Andor was incredible, but sometimes a more simple show full of aliens, imagination, and an adorable Baby Yoda is all you need for the soul. The Mandalorian’s new season might be about (In Carl Weathers’s voice) Mando! taking the throne of Mandalore while also instructing Grogu in the ways of his people. Pedro Pascal, Giancarlo Esposito, Katee Sackhoff, Carl Weathers, and Amy Sedaris all return to tell new adventures of Djin Djarin and Grogu.
The Mandalorian’s new season will premiere on Disney+ on Mar. 1.
4) Loki (Season 2)
Loki’s first season was all about multiverses and doppelgängers as Loki (Tom Hiddleston) even fell in love with one of his own variants: Sylvie (Sophia Di Martino). The last episode also introduced us to the new big bad of Phase Five, He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors in an incredibly charismatic performance), also known as Kang the Conqueror.
The first season told how the God of Mischief ended up at the Time Variance Authority, where they regulate the Sacred Timeline. From there, Loki tried to sometimes help, sometimes beat the TVA for his own interests.
The final episode’s cliffhanger left us with no words, and the show will happen after Kang has appeared in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, so there are thousands of places season two could go. We only ask for one thing: that Mobius (Owen Wilson) can have his loved jet skis.
Loki’s new season will premiere on Disney+ during the summer.
3) Succession (Season 4)
Succession was a surprise when it debuted, giving audiences all the backstabbing office maneuvers with incredibly imaginative insults they didn’t know they needed. The Roy family has been fighting for power with each other for three seasons, as Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Roman (Kieran Culkin), all wanted the crown. After years of failing upwards, their father, Logan (Brian Cox), is tired of their games to decide who should inherit the company.
After three seasons of the kids fighting between them to take WayStar Roy Co. from each other, in the last episode of the season, they finally understood that together they were much stronger and tried to do a coup against their father. Unfortunately, Shiv’s husband Tom (Matthew Macfayden) alerted Logan, and now the kids are in the outside looking in, shown with a spectacular last shot of the season that was an homage to The Godfather.
What will happen in this season 4? We don’t know, although we find it refreshing that the kids are all on the same team for once. Their mischievous (if a little incompetent) moves are all we’re waiting for. Well, that, and more interactions between Tom and Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun): the not-so-secret hilarious duo of the show.
Succession’s new season will premiere on HBO during the spring.
2) Yellowjackets (Season 2)
Yellowjackets’ first season was a surprise hit. The show mixed dark humor, phantasmagorically mysteries in the woods, 90s nostalgia, and the intricacies of female friendships perfectly. The creators did all this while balancing incredibly well the past and present timelines and giving more questions than answers with every new episode.
The first season told the story of the Yellowjackets soccer team, who, in 1996, after a plane crash, got stranded in the woods with no way of getting out. There, strange things started to happen, and they might’ve been cannibalism involved. There’s also a story set in the present with the survivors and how they’ve been coping with all the trauma of whatever happened in the woods.
The performances of the cast were one of the best things on Yellowjackets, and all of them are returning for the new season: Melanie Lynskey, Cristina Ricci, Juliette Lewis, Tawny Cypress, and also their younger counterparts Sophie Nelisse, Samantha Hanratty, Sophie Thatcher, and Jasmin Savoy Brown. In this new season will also meet adult Van and adult Lottie.
Yellowjackets’ new season will premiere on Showtime on Mar. 24.
1) The Last of Us
The Last of Us is an adaptation of the video game of the same name, led by Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Elle (Bella Ramsey), as he tries to protect the 14-year-old while traveling through a post-apocalyptic United States. Elle is immune to the infection that has ravaged the world, and Joel is taking her to a lab so they can try to do a vaccine from her blood.
The video game was already told more as an episodic miniseries than a movie-sized story, so the series structure might fit it perfectly. There are big expectations put on this show, as the video game was a phenomenon. There’s quite the pedigree in front and behind the camera as The Last of Us is created by Chernobyl’s Craig Mazin and the video game writer Neil Druckmann, and Pascal and Ramsey will be surrounded by incredible actors like Nick Offerman (Parks and Rec), Gabriel Luna (Terminator: Dark Fate), Anna Torv (Fringe), and Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets).
This TV series might be the video game adaptation that will finally break the curse of the medium adaptations and satisfy all its gamer fans. We can only hope for it.
The Last of Us will premiere on HBO Max on Jan. 15.
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