Sci-Fi Shows You Should Watch After Finishing Loki
Our glorious purpose is coming to an end. "Loki" recently finished up its run on Disney+, placing the erstwhile antagonist in a new status quo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Time travel, nexus events, and the Sacred Timeline; "Loki" picked up from the time heist of "Avengers: Endgame" and left the MCU in the right spot for both "Spider-Man: Far from Home," "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania," and the aptly-titled "Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness," all of which look like they'll be building on the foundation that "Loki" established.
Bereft of our weekly dose of Loki, Mobius, and the rest, where are we supposed to feed our entertainment hunger? Let's do a little time traveling of our own and look towards the past. For more on parallel dimensions, super-powered adventurers, and mind-bending sci-fi concepts, here's a list of science fiction shows you should watch once you're done with "Loki."
Doctor Who
What's more "Doctor Who" than hopping around through time and space with an English accent? Someone described "Loki" to me as "Doctor Who" if the show followed the Doctor's nemesis, the Master, rather than the kind and heroic Doctor. That explanation rings true.
Doctor Who is a long-running television show that has aired on the BBC since 1963, covering 26 seasons and numerous spin-offs. It follows the immortal Doctor, an alien who spends his time visiting various eras and planets in his time-warping police box, the TARDIS. The series has featured 13 actors in the title role, and in some cases, multiple versions of the character have worked together, not unlike Loki and his various incarnations in the Disney+ series.
The third episode of "Loki," which takes place on the doomed planet of Lamentis, absolutely has the same vibe as the BBC's classic sci-fi romp. While "Loki" has a noticeably bigger budget than "Doctor Who," the latter series has a scope that puts "Loki" to shame. Across its 26 seasons, "Doctor Who" has gone from the end of time to 1940s India, 1800s London, prehistory, and beyond. Ironically, with a mere six episodes, "Loki" simply didn't have the time to match the variety and imagination shown during "Doctor Who" and its historic run.
The modern seasons of "Doctor Who" are all available on HBO Max.
Legends of Tomorrow
"Legends of Tomorrow" is the show that was "Loki" before "Loki," complete with villains looking for redemption and time cops trying to keep reality in one piece. If you're a comics fan, "Legends of Tomorrow" hails from Marvel's main competitor, DC Comics. In fact, it was the fourth show in CW's massive, interconnected TV universe, known by fans as the Arrowverse.
"Legends of Tomorrow" follows the adventures of the crew of the Waverider, a ship that can travel through time. The first season saw Time Master Rip Hunter gathering a cadre of forgotten heroes and villains to take down the immortal dictator, Vandal Savage. Since the second season, the team has been tasked with protecting the timeline from anachronisms. Further seasons even add the Time Bureau, an organization similar to the TVA that keeps track of timeline aberrations and attempts to quietly contain them.
The CW series tends to have a fairly comedic vibe, and it's not afraid to play around with different genres. The show has done episodes riffing on other popular sci-fi shows, westerns, musicals, and more, all while featuring a wonderful cast of underrated DC Comics characters, including the Atom, Firestorm, Heat Wave, John Constantine, and Steel. If you don't mind the goofy, hopeful tone, "Legends of Tomorrow" is a real treat.
"Legends of Tomorrow" is available to stream on Netflix.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The cavalcade of quirky dudes with English accents continues. "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" is another BBC series, this time based on the series of Douglas Adams novels of the same name. "Loki" posits that there's a consistent path for the Sacred Timeline, based on the will of the Time Keepers and enforced by the TVA. "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" is based around the premise that fate guides all things to their proper place. You just have to let it carry you along.
See, the eponymous Dirk Gently is a "holistic" detective, meaning that he believes that everything in the universe is connected. By giving himself over to fate and the universe, he can solve cases that would otherwise remain cold. He's joined by beleaguered everyman Todd Brotzman, the Watson to his Sherlock. Together the pair solve cases while avoiding a clandestine branch of the CIA that studies people with strange abilities.
Like Loki, Dirk's chipper, upbeat demeanor is a mask for a broken and lonely individual. And like Mobius, Todd is there to offer something Dirk has long been missing: a friend. Across its two seasons — it was sadly canceled — the mysteries in "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" tackle secret societies, time travel, soul transfer, and even missing pets. Still, even if the series didn't get an official end, you can rest assured the show probably had a great finale in a timeline other than our own.
"Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" is available to watch on Hulu.
Legion
In between all the Variants and TemPads, "Loki" is really a search for the God of Mischief's identity. Is this iteration of Loki doomed to repeat the same mistakes his other variants made? Can he change, or is he always destined to be a villain, lost and alone?
"Legion" is another superhero-themed exploration of identity, using superpowers as a metaphor for self-discovery. David Haller is a young patient at a psychiatric hospital who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia. After an incident shines a light on David's illness, he discovers there might be more to his past than he realized. The truth? David is a mutant, one who has to balance his mental illness with his considerable power.
"Legion" is tangentially related to the X-Men universe, but the focus of the show is purely on David and his internal universe. Exploring his mental landscape allows "Legion" to take some amazing visual swings: It's one of the weirdest, imaginative, and colorful shows on this entire list. As with "Loki," the art direction is fantastic, and the cast steps offers some great performances, too. Even better, the entire story is available from beginning to end, as "Legion" is only three seasons long.
You can catch the entire series on Hulu.
Good Omens
This is the last "Doctor Who"-adjacent series on the list, promise. Once again, English accents abound in "Good Omens," a series produced by BBC Studios and based on the novel of the same name by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. "Good Omens" even sports a previous "Doctor Who" star: the tenth Doctor, David Tennant, plays the role of the demonic Crowley.
Much like the TVA and Time Keepers on "Loki", life on Earth in "Good Omens" is subject to the whims of Heaven and Hell. Aziraphale and Crowley, an angel and a demon who have become friends over the years, find themselves working together to prevent the apocalypse. See, at long last, the Antichrist has been born, and the pair have to do everything they can to foil a prophecy that will bring about Armageddon.
Along the way, the pair are stymied by agents from Heaven and Hell, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and some errant witchfinders. Given the Terry Pratchett influence, it's not surprising that "Good Omens" is a dark (and very funny) comedy. The cast is absolutely fantastic, led by Tennant and Michael Sheen as Aziraphale; the pair share some amazing chemistry. In fact, the show was so successful that it was recently renewed for a second season, which will apparently use elements from Pratchett and Gaiman's planned, but never written, sequel.
The first season of "Good Omens" is available on Amazon Prime Video.
The Good Place
We're skirting the edge of science fiction, but bear with us. In "Loki," the TVA is a darkly comedic organization that watches over humanity, despite being quite removed from it. In "The Good Place," the afterlife works the same way. As in "Good Omens," angels and demons are the focus here; in "The Good Place," an algorithm decides whether people end up in Heaven or Hell, and follows the trials of a group of human souls who are inhabiting the Good Place, a sort-of Heaven with the serial numbers filed off.
The connection with "Loki" is two-fold. First, Heaven and Hell are massive bureaucracies, full of beings who are just doing the same things day after day without questioning why. The denizens of both realms don't interrogate their actions, even though reality is hiding some ugly truths.
Second, both shows are concerned with morality. Can those labeled evil eventually become good? Do they have the capacity to really change, or will they ultimately fall back into familiar patterns? Those are questions that concern Loki, Mobius, and the rest of the "Loki" cast. Across all four seasons, "The Good Place" explores those ideas, too. It's a fantastic comedy as well, coming from Michael Schur, the creator and executive producer of "The Office," "Parks and Recreation," and "Brooklyn Nine-Nine."
All four seasons of "The Good Place" are available on Netflix.
Sliders
While many of the shows on this list are recent and fairly popular, this is one of the older, fan-favorite titles. "Sliders" started airing back in 1995, running for three seasons on Fox. Then it jumped to the Sci-Fi Channel — yes, this was before it was simply "SyFy" — for its final two seasons. Sadly, those last two seasons are terrible.
"Sliders" tells the story of Quinn Mallory, a young man who develops technology that opens wormholes to parallel universes. The first real test of the device sends Quinn, his mentor, his best friend, and a bystander into another reality. Unfortunately, an accident causes the timer device that controls "slides" to malfunction, leaving the quartet to moving from dimension to dimension with no control over their destinations.
The magic of the show really comes from the way it plays with different realities. Every episode takes place in an alternate timeline, but remains within the confines of the city of San Francisco. That allows "Sliders" to experiment with different concepts, like a reality where the Soviet Union conquered the United States, one where the Summer of Love never ended, or another where the city is a nature preserve for dinosaurs, while still maintaining the familiarity of an episodic TV show. The crew also meet their alternate-reality doubles on a regular basis.
"Sliders" is available on NBCUniversal's Peacock streaming service.
Homecoming
One big revelation in the latter part of "Loki" is that the agents of the TVA are all variants who have had their memories removed. If we're talking memory wipes and secret organizations, then "Homecoming," which is based on a scripted podcast and adapted by "Mr. Robot" creator Sam Esmail, must go on this list.
The first season of "Homecoming" revolves around Heidi Bergman, a former social worker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center for returning soldiers. Four years later, Heidi works as a waitress, but when she tries to remember her time at Homecoming, she can't. A government worker questions her about her time at the facility, and it sends them both on a hunt for the truth. The second season follows a different character, Jacqueline, as she wakes up in a rowboat with no memory of her past.
Both seasons focus on the idea that memory is the bedrock of our identity. "Loki" has a similar thesis: Thanks to the TVA, Loki has seen the life he was supposed to live, but does that knowledge have any impact on his current self? Do those memories simply show off his potential, or do they make up the cornerstone of his identity? Similarly, "Homecoming" has protagonists who feel and act a certain way, but they don't know why, lacking the memories that drive their motivations.
Both seasons of "Homecoming" are available on Amazon Prime Video.
12 Monkeys
While "12 Monkeys" is the title of a popular 1995 film starring Bruce Willis, this is about the TV adaptation. "12 Monkeys" began airing in 2015, and ran for a total of four seasons. Like the film, it's inspired by "La Jetée," a French short film that premiered in 1962.
"12 Monkeys" tells the story of James Cole, a wanderer from 2043 who travels back in time to 2015. Once there, Cole needs the help of virologist Dr. Cassie Railly in order to prevent the secretive Army of the 12 Monkeys from releasing a virus that kills most of humanity. The show takes place in two primary timelines, 2015 and 2043, but also jumps to other eras, like Tokyo in 1987.
The TV series revolves around the characters' ability to change the past and affect the future. While the film is a closed loop, the show presents a timeline that can be changed, although doing so is very difficult. It's a dark show, one that asks its characters make sacrifices for the larger cause. It's as trippy as you'd hope, too, with characters who die, coming back, get wiped from history, and change over the course of the four-season arc.
"12 Monkeys" is currently available on Hulu.
Dark
We end with the "Dark"-est show of them all. If you want to get in the weeds about timelines, paradoxes, and forbidden relationships, this German sci-fi show is absolutely a great choice (some call it a German "Stranger Things".) And yes, the original audio track for "Dark" is in German, meaning you'll have to deal with subtitles (there is an English dub, but it's hit or miss, depending on the voice actor).
When a child disappears from the town of Winden, four families are drawn a web of time travel shenanigans. "Dark" is a generational show, following the same families in 2019, 1986, and 1953 as the characters work across decades to prevent an apocalyptic event stemming from a secret at the town's nuclear plant.
"Dark" can be a complicated show to watch. Relationships twist around the eras, bending entire family trees into ugly pretzels, especially as the show heads towards its finale. Multiple actors play the same characters, and it can be hard to keep track of all the pieces on the board. And make no mistake, "Dark" is indeed a chess board, a vast game being played between opposing factions. If you stay on the ride until the end, however, "Dark" is one of the most satisfying time travel stories ever told.
The entirety of "Dark" is available on Netflix.