The Best Marvel TV Shows Ranked According To Rotten Tomatoes

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has distinguished itself by making each film part of a larger storyline, there's really no such thing as a unified Marvel TV Universe. Instead, there have been fiefdoms, merely informed by the events of the movies. Marvel's Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D debuted in 2013 on ABC and is set to end in 2020. The street-level Netflix shows — Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and all the rest – wrapped up in 2019. Soon there will be a new wave of shows directly connected to the MCU on the Disney+ streaming service.

Of course, there have been Marvel-related TV shows for over five decades, dating back to the Fantastic Four and The Marvel Super Heroes animated series of the 1960s. There were live-action shows featuring Spider-Man and The Hulk in the 1970s. The 1980s and 1990s saw a number of Marvel cartoons debut. How did all of these series stack up with critics?

Looking at the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, we have assembled a list of the 12 highest-rated Marvel television shows of all time. Some are animated. Some are live action. Some take place in the modern day. Some are set in the 1940s. They are all, however, Marvel stories, and they're the best the studio has to offer for fans of the small screen.

Airing on Netflix for three seasons from 2015 to 2019, Marvel's Jessica Jones delves deeply into the dark side of being a superhero. Based on the comic series Alias, it stars Jessica Jones, an alcoholic private detective who gains super strength and endurance in a teenage car accident. Other key players include Trish, Jessica's adopted sister, Malcolm Ducasse, a neighbor and later professional partner of Jessica, and high-powered lawyer Jeri Hogarth.

The series' relatively low rating stems from its critical reception getting frostier with each successive season. The first season landed well, with Amanda Greever of the Daily Times saying the show "walks a fine line in engaging me on dramatic, emotional, and thematic levels while not making me feel overwhelmed by the constant assault on my senses." It helps that the first season has David Tennant as Kilgrave, a villain whose voice can command anyone to obey him. Jessica dealing with the trauma of learning he is still alive and then reaching a catharsis gives the season a powerful conclusion. 

The second and third seasons did not manage to impress the critics to the same degree. The show gets murkier, and as Ben Travers of IndieWire noted, it "gets off on the wrong foot in season three and stays there until the lackluster end."   

Starring Hayley Atwell as Peggy Carter, Agent Carter picks up shortly after the apparent death of Steve Rogers in Captain America: The First Avenger. Stuck as a secretary in the Strategic Scientific Reserve, Peggy gets the chance to do more when Howard Stark recruits her to clear his name when he's accused of treason. Peggy, along with Stark's loyal butler Jarvis, embarks upon a double life as a secretary and spy. With a strong lead and a fun supporting cast, this show plays both as a stylish period piece and a lighthearted spy romp.

Running just two seasons from 2015 to 2016, Agent Carter was a critical favorite but ended up canceled by ABC for low ratings. Critics like Britt Hayes enjoyed the relaxed pacing of the show, as she wrote in ScreenCrush: "Agent Carter has never leaned too heavily on action; that's just not what makes it exciting. The show follows its own rhythm, one that's a little more laid back than the Marvel films." Andy Greenwald of Grantland compared it favorably to Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D., saying "It actually feels like a TV show, with a clear sense of purpose and a savvy sense of style. Rather than biding time between blockbusters, like the dot-connecting drudgery of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter travels back in it." It is that genre-breaking attitude that made fans love Agent Carter in the first place, and what makes it so highly regarded to this day.

Created by Bill Mantlo and Ed Hannigan in the pages of The Spectacular Spider-Man, Cloak and Dagger split the difference between Marvel's street-level do-gooders and more traditional costumed heroes. In the comic, Tyrone Johnson is a smart but poor teen with a stutter. He runs away from home when he fears he's going to be accused of a crime he didn't commit. Tandy Bowen comes from a rich background, but her emotionally frigid home sees her run away as well. The two wind up being tricked into being experimented upon with drugs, giving them fantastic powers. They decide to get revenge on drug-runners as Cloak and Dagger, a super-powered duo. Cloak's Darkforce energy allows him to engulf others, while Dagger Lightforce energy can be formed into weapons. Her light can also help Cloak with the constant urge he feels to absorb others.

Cloak and Dagger aired from 2018 to 2019 on the Freeform network. The show makes a few changes from the original comic, as here Tyrone is a prep student and Tandy is a street thief. The story of the show is the story of their romance, which shifts and warps when they both gain powers. Of the show's mixed tone, Glen Weldon of NPR said: "Importantly, crucially, we get believable and well-earned reasons — rooted in information revealed in those early, talkier episodes — for them to adopt the superheroic lifestyle, and devote themselves to justice, instead of revenge." 

Legion aired for three seasons on the FX network, from 2017 to 2019. It's by far the weirdest and most psychedelic of Marvel's shows, with its fractured narrative being closer to a David Lynch project than a traditional superhero story. Legion doubles down on the weirdness of the original comics, centering much of the first season around a single question: Are the things that David Haller experiences the result of mental illness or the fact that he is the most powerful mutant on Earth?

Haller is busted out of his institution by other mutants, notably his future love interest Syd Barrett, all under the supervision of Dr. Melanie Bird. The breakout character of that sequence is Lenny, Haller's best friend, who gives him increasingly suspicious advice until things take a truly bizarre turn. It's a bizarre carousel of a story that revels in the weirdest corners of the Marvel universe's long history, and fans loved every second.

Ben Travers of IndieWire said this of the show: "Marvel's moviemakers should be jealous: Just when they thought they were making something TV couldn't top, Legion comes along and sets the bar even higher." Kaitlyn Booth of Bleeding Cool said, "Legion is the kind of miracle television we don't see often." High praise, entirely deserved.

Debuting on ABC in 2013 and finishing its seventh and final season in 2020, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was the first spinoff show from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The titular team features butt-kicking pilot Melinda "The Cavalry" May, energetic scientists Leo Fitz and Gemma Simmons, mysterious hacker Skye, and assassin Grant Ward. The show moves very slowly at first until the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, when it's revealed that HYDRA has been corrupting S.H.I.E.L.D. for years. After that, the show moves at a breathless pace, as the team faces one menace after another. Whether their foe is HYDRA, the Inhumans, or being thrust into the future to fight against the Kree, the team always finds a way to win. The cast expands and contracts over the years, but every character has a memorable moment.

Of the third season, Merrill Barr of Forbes wrote: "In addition to being a thrilling experience that's truly laying every last card on the table, the new season of S.H.I.E.L.D. also has the largest amount of heart seen from the show to date."

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes debuted on Disney XD in 2010, two years prior to 2012's The Avengers, herald of the MCU age. The show is beloved for its stories that delve deep into comics history, bringing all sorts of classic Avengers storylines to the screen. The Kang Dynasty, the Mansion Siege of the Masters of Evil, the creation of Ultron, the Korvac saga, Secret Invasion — all those and many more epics are part of the show's rich, superheroic tapestry. It's a triumph of a cartoon, derived from the comics as much as it is from the MCU, capable of entertaining the youngest newbie and the most hardened diehard alike. 

Unfortunately, the show was canceled after two years in favor of the new Avengers Assemble! show. Matthew Turner of SFX Magazine called Earth's Mightiest Heroes "a must-see for any self-respecting Marvel fan ... the series captures the Avengers so perfectly it could even teach the MCU a thing or two."