It's been a good year for TV finales. Out of our 10 picks for the best episodes of the year, four are finales: one series finale, one season finale, one anthology finale, and one — well, it was written to be a finale, so it is one in spirit. In fact, there are patterns all over our top 10 list; you'll also find three penultimate episodes, including our top pick, and three episodes that happened to air fourth in the season. Coincidence? Maybe. But now more than ever — as seasons grow shorter and cancellations come sooner — TV has a predictable rhythm.
That said, there was nothing predictable about the episodes themselves. This year's standout episodes delivered painful deaths and shocking revelations. They probed challenging questions. Some had us on the edge of our seats; others offered unexpected healing. This list includes dramas both devastatingly serious and wickedly funny, gentle dramedies, and comedies that packed a punch. And while many of these series made our list of the year's best shows, we're also celebrating singular installments from shows that missed the cut on that ranking (sometimes just barely). There's nothing like a great episode to raise the bar for a whole series.
These are TV Guide's picks for the 10 best TV episodes of 2024.
For more, check out our list of the 10 best shows of 2024.
10. "How to Survive a Storm," Evil
Evil gave us two finales this year: the series finale and this moody hour, which was originally meant to be the season finale before the show was canceled and granted four bonus episodes to wrap up the story. Those last four episodes were divine, but Evil was always going to have more fun starting problems than putting an end to them. "How to Survive a Storm," written by Rockne S. O'Bannon and Anju Andre-Bergmann and directed by John Dahl, stirs up all kinds of chaos: a hurricane hits Queens; the Bouchard girls outwit a demon; David (Mike Colter) contemplates the morality of murder; Leland (Michael Emerson) kills Sheryl (Christine Lahti), but not before Sheryl orchestrates Leland's arrest; and, in a laugh-out-loud last shot, a frazzled Kristen (Katja Herbers) ponders whether to raise the Antichrist. It's an apocalyptic story told intimately, as the storm forces everyone into close quarters — and, memorably, prompts a romantic confession between Kristen and David, whose love can never be fulfilled. Like the fifth season of this show, it can only exist in another timeline, at least for now. But Evil yearns with the best of them. -Kelly Connolly
9. "Double Date," Mr. & Mrs. Smith
Sometimes, all you need is a dash of Parker Posey. Case in point: "Double Date," the episode where the whole premise of Mr. & Mrs. Smith really starts to click. When John (Donald Glover) and Jane (Maya Erskine) happen to run into another pair of Smiths — played by Posey and Wagner Moura — at the farmers market and become curious about each other, they all decide to meet up for dinner. The appearance of the new couple, who do the exact same job as our central John and Jane, opens up the world of the show's spy organization more, and crucially gets John and Jane asking some questions about who, exactly, they're working for. But it also forces them to ask questions about their own relationship that they've been ignoring: Will the company ever actually allow them to simply break up and quit, as was Jane's plan? How much should a spy sever ties with their old life? How easily can one of them be swapped out with a replacement John or Jane? Mr. & Mrs. Smith works best as an intimate study of a unique marriage, which is what makes this hour, anchored by four dynamite performances from Glover, Erskine, Posey, and Moura, its finest. -Allison Picurro
8. "Funny Muslim Song," We Are Lady Parts
The first half of "Funny Muslim Song" is understated and hopeful. In the second half, discord reigns. The turning point is the arrival of Sister Squire (Meera Syal), a Muslim punk rock legend who damns Lady Parts' songs with faint praise — they're "funny" — and sends Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey) into a tailspin. At her hero's urging, Saira begins writing more serious, overtly political lyrics, stirring up conflict about the band's responsibility as Muslim women: Are they compromising their integrity if they don't speak up? Is writing about their existence political by default? Creator Nida Manzoor leaves these questions unresolved, as Lady Parts' identity crisis reflects on We Are Lady Parts' identity as a comedy. "I didn't want to give the audience the answer because I don't have it," Manzoor told Vulture. Instead, the episode ends on a note of surreal terror. As Saira, alone in the studio, tries to sing, the line "I won't mention the w—" turns to static in her mouth every time. The violence of the censorship escalates until she's thrown around the room by an unseen force. From her distorted scream, "Funny Muslim Song" cuts to the end credits, set to the song "Nbeed" by Palestinian artist Rasha Nahas. Fittingly, We Are Lady Parts lets the music do the talking. -Kelly Connolly
7. "Bulletproof," Hacks
With two words, Hacks drops the mic on its best season yet: "Wouldn't you?" In the thrilling final minute of "Bulletproof" — directed by Lucia Aniello and written by Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky — Ava (Hannah Einbinder) steals back her dream job as Deborah's (Jean Smart) head writer by blackmailing her, arguing that no one should understand a ruthless power play better than Deborah Vance. In order to become her mentor, Ava has to betray her. Set against a funny, unexpectedly sweet B-plot that ends with Jimmy (Downs) and Kayla (Megan Stalter) getting mistaken for a couple, Ava's calculated career move doubles down on Hacks' blurred lines: Work is an all-consuming relationship. As always, there's an industry angle; look how Hollywood changes people more than they change it. But the story, elevated by Einbinder and Smart's terrific performances, is electric because of the personal fallout. It's a breakup and an arranged marriage at once. -Kelly Connolly
6. "Episode 4," Baby Reindeer
Richard Gadd's breakout series may be only partially true when it comes to specifics and timelines, but shortly after Baby Reindeer experienced meteoric success, Gadd — who based Baby Reindeer's story of stalking and sexual abuse closely on things that happened to him in real life — told Variety that everything in the show was "emotionally 100% true." That's why the limited series' fourth episode — a devastating chapter detailing male-on-male grooming and sexual abuse, and its long-lasting effects — is its best episode, one of the best of the year, and one of the most vulnerable TV episodes of all time. The flashback episode follows Donny (Gadd) as he gains the attention of a successful TV writer and is promised help breaking into television, only to end up bingeing drugs with him and being half-conscious during repeated bouts of sexual assault. That Gadd relived those moments on camera makes it all the more powerful. But it's the aftereffects of the crime that unlock so much of what made Baby Reindeer compelling: how victims blame themselves, how these assaults go unreported, how the perpetrators get away, how the victim's sexuality becomes altered, and how the victim's future relationships are all distorted. Baby Reindeer was good before "Episode 4," but it became meaningful after it. -Tim Surette
5. "White Mischief," Industry
In a series teeming with people who have no clue what constitutes appropriate workplace behavior, Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia) has been Industry's greatest offender. Since he crash-landed on Pierpoint's trading floor in Season 2, he's largely existed at the edges of the action, a lovably brash side character more often heard than seen, whose colorfully offensive background quips have created the best argument for watching the show with subtitles on. "White Mischief," a spiritual successor to Uncut Gems and a standalone highlight in an already excellent season, gives us our first in-depth look at "the ghost of Margaret Thatcher in a handsome Asian man." After his wedding to the posh Diana (Emily Barber) at the end of the second season, Rishi has bought property in the English countryside, placing him among the very white elite who have concerns about how he plans on preserving the local cricket hall when he renovates it. The episode cleverly weaves together Rishi's struggle to assimilate into his new life as a country-dwelling family man, his debt to a persistent loan shark, his gambling addiction, and a host of problems that crop up at work, from the huge, ill-advised bet he's placed on the British pound to the HR investigation into those crude comments we've been listening to for a season and a half. As the hour progresses, Rishi never stops behaving as atrociously as usual, and while Industry makes him pay for it, what's most impressive is how deeply the marvelous Radia makes you feel for him throughout it all. -Allison Picurro
4. "AGG," Somebody Somewhere
Somebody Somewhere has a remarkable capacity for subtlety. It's because of that delicate touch — because the HBO dramedy has spent three seasons teasing apart emotions that are tangled and inexpressible — that the series finale is able to speak so clearly from the heart. The show has earned it. "AGG," directed by Lennon Parham and written by creators Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen and star Bridget Everett, is packed full of gorgeous, vulnerable conversations about grief, family, and friendship. Joel (Jeff Hiller) lets go of his shame; Sam (Everett) finally embraces her ability to lift up the people around her. And, crucially, Somebody Somewhere never lets these big feelings get too lofty. Its bawdy, silly sense of humor helps, of course, but what really keeps this episode grounded is the show's knack for capturing the way life goes on: the daily existence that comes after a life-altering tragedy or a happy milestone. In the words of both Sam and Miley Cyrus, it's the climb. All anyone can ask for is what Sam has found when she gathers her friends at the bar to serenade them with that joyful performance. "I feel really good," she says. "And I thought that that was a good enough reason to ask all my favorite people to be here with me today." What a beautiful thing to celebrate. -Kelly Connolly
3. "Part 6," True Detective: Night Country
The best part of True Detective's Season 4 finale comes near the end, as Chief Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) and Trooper Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) visit a group of mostly Indigenous women, some of whom were employed at the same research station as the scientists who were frozen into a groupsicle. The women's leader, Bee (L'Xeis Diane Benson), sorta kinda confesses to their role in the scientists' deaths, while flashbacks show the women breaking into the facility to round up the men at gunpoint and drive them into the tundra, as a response to the men's murder of Annie K (Nivi Pedersen), who threatened to expose their criminal research. Bee tells the cops, "It's always the same story with the same ending. Nothing ever happens. So we told ourselves a different story, with a different ending." Bee — and Season 4 showrunner Issa López, by proxy — may as well have looked directly into the camera at True Detective creator Nic Pizzolatto and the fan-bros who would rather True Detective be only about tough guys smoking cigarettes and spouting flat-circle pseudo-philosophy. Bee's declaration underlined the fact that True Detective Season 4 was about two badass women surviving in one of the most hostile environments on the planet and women standing together to defend themselves when the rest of the world would not, and it broke some brains of closed-minded fans. I'll be honest: While I loved what happened on the screen in Season 4, I equally appreciated the discourse that happened off screen, especially after the finale revealed that the supernatural terror was actually just a group of women who weren't going to take it anymore and, in Navarro's case, disappeared into the mystery of Alaska. Kudos to López for telling such a brave story in enemy territory. As Bee would say, "I guess she ate their f---ing dreams from the inside out and spit their frozen bones. But it's just a story." -Tim Surette
2. "Crimson Sky," Shōgun
"Crimson Sky" belongs to Anna Sawai. In Shōgun's Emmy-winning penultimate episode, the fate of Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and his vision for a greater Japan hinges on the actions of Sawai's Lady Toda Mariko. And she more than rises to the occasion, demonstrating how the most important battles are often not won by weapons. Yes, the character does pick up a naginata sword in a desperate effort to fight her way out of Osaka Castle. But it's the aftermath of her failed attempt that vastly shifts the political landscape. Mariko announces that she will die by the ritual of seppuku, which forces Japan's most powerful rulers to confront a dichotomy at the center of this series: Will they serve their Catholic God or their political lord? It's an aching contradiction that lies within Mariko herself. Though she previously said she has "more than one heart" when asked about her dual loyalty, in this episode it becomes clear that fulfilling her duty to one lord means accepting eternal damnation under another. Boldly probing at the theme of life and death while packed with political strategy and action sequences, "Crimson Sky" is Shōgun at its best. -Kat Moon
1. "I Could Not Prevent It," Interview with the Vampire
It's a testament to Interview with the Vampire's exceptional second season that just about any episode could be singled out for this list, but nothing brought the house down quite like its penultimate hour, "I Could Not Prevent It." The episode takes one of the most memorable, if underutilized, sequences from Anne Rice's first novel — the vampiric trial — and turns it into an elaborate night of theater, where Louis (Jacob Anderson), Claudia (Delainey Hayles), and Madeleine (Roxane Duran) are used as props in front of a rowdy, unsuspecting audience as they're tried for Louis and Claudia's near-murder of Lestat (Sam Reid) in Season 1. Director Emma Freeman and writers Kevin Hanna and Rolin Jones play up the macabre spectacle of the evening (that stage, those costumes, those hand-drawn animations!), all while maintaining the show's signature attention to detail, from the bloody slashes on the backs of Louis', Claudia's, and Madeleine's heels that prevent them from standing to the choice to outfit Lestat — back from the dead and acting as the would-be prosecution's star witness — in pinstripes that evoke prison bars.
The trial is as nightmarish as it is mesmerizing, answering one of the show's most longstanding questions — what became of Claudia? — while raising new ones — was Armand (Assad Zaman) really as helpless during those proceedings as he claimed? Interview with the Vampire has always leaned into the thorny unreliability of memory, but that theme reaches its absolute climax during the trial, which Lestat uses as an opportunity to retell two important scenes from Season 1 from his perspective, both of which show Louis behaving differently than he originally recalled. "That's not how it happened," a disoriented Louis shouts, before a cut to present-day Dubai, where Louis mournfully admits to Daniel (Eric Bogosian), "That is how it happened."
But, in the end, "I Could Not Prevent It" belongs to Claudia. Until now, her tragic fate has been a mystery, but, as Lestat warned in that first flashback, there was never a future for her — an adult in a child's body — in this world. While Louis' life is spared (through trickery that becomes the crux of the finale), Claudia and Madeleine are sentenced to death. In a beam of sunlight, the women cling to each other, their love story cut short as they're burned alive, with Claudia using her last breaths to sing one final rendition of "I Don't Like Windows When They're Closed," the song that the coven had taunted and infantilized her with. She turns her head toward Lestat as her body blows away: a child looking to her father in a moment of need. All that's left of her is her yellow dress, which is swept up by Santiago (Ben Daniels) as the episode fades to black in silence, a rare moment when this lyrical series knows no words could suffice. -Allison Picurro
Honorable mentions: "Ireland," Conan O'Brien Must Go; "The Void," Fantasmas; "Chapter Sixteen," Pachinko; "Cent'Anni," The Penguin; "Do No Harm," Say Nothing
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