Not many shows get above 100 episodes, and of those, only a few are fantasy series; and of that even smaller list, only a few stand out. Getting to 100 episodes is no easy feat, and while you may often hear about series that go to 200 or 300 episodes, those are the exception, and once you cross the 100 threshold, that’s an open runway to keep pumping out more seasons.
There’s a little irony in the fact, though, that the most long-lived TV shows don’t tend to be the best ones. When you have over 100 episodes, it can be easy to lose the plot once in a while, and nearly all these fantasy series miss the mark from time to time. Still, in terms of quantity and quality, these seven have the most impressive combination.
Supernatural (2005-2020)
327 Episodes
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Supernatural ran for 15 seasons between 2005 and 2020, racking up 327 episodes along the way to becoming the longest-running The CW series ever and the longest-running fantasy TV show ever. The dark fantasy adventure stars Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles as Sam and Dean Winchester.
Sam and Dean are brothers and hunters, raised since they were young to kill monsters and supernatural creatures who threaten their world. Their secret war eventually grows to include angels and demons, and the apocalypse even figures in. There’s no arc too grand for Supernatural.
Despite running for so many years, Supernatural is surprisingly consistent. Along with its impressive creature effects and well-choreographed action, the series makes just enough time for some heady themes about religion, Americana, and generational trauma, while also keeping things funny with off-kilter humor and star-making performances from the leads.
Adventure Time (2010-2018)
283 Episodes
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Animated kids shows can feel like cheating when it comes to comparing their longevity to live-action shows. Each episode of Adventure Time only runs about 11 minutes, and each time block of the show contains two of these 11-minute episodes. Still, even if we counted every two episodes of Adventure Time as one, that would still be well over 100 episodes.
Adventure Time is a 10-season animated fantasy adventure that follows Finn the Human and Jake the Dog’s adventures through the magical Land of Ooo, where an assortment of absurd and strange characters reside. Primarily an adventure-of-the-week style story, a series-long plot slowly emerges.
It’s a hilarious, persistently creative fantasy show that rarely leaves you wanting. Every episode offers an insightful and colorful new detail about the Land of Ooo. Adventure Time remains one of the best animated series of all time. It’s so popular that it has spawned a franchise with several spinoff shows, including the recent soft reboot, Adventure Time: Side Quests.
Charmed (1998-2006)
178 Episodes
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Charmed is a fantasy family drama that ran from the end of the ’90s until the middle of the 2000s on The WB. The series follows a trio of sisters, Phoebe (Alyssa Milano), Prue (Shannen Doherty), and Piper Halliwell (Holly Marie Combs), who all return to their family home in San Francisco for different reasons.
While they’re there, they discover the Halliwell family Book of Shadows hidden away in the attic. Upon reading the inscription, the Halliwell sisters’ latent magical powers are awakened, and they learn they are actually the foretold “Charmed Ones”, a trio of powerful witches tasked with protecting the world from evil.
The series begins in the monster-of-the-week style but eventually evolves into a series-long story where the Charmed Ones take on “The Source of All Evil”. Between their magical encounters, the Halliwell sisters try to live normal lives, keeping their powers a secret from everyone else.
The Vampire Diaries (2009-2017)
171 Episodes
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The Vampire Diaries is based on L.J. Smith’s novel series of the same name, and it launched a massive media franchise that includes two major spinoff shows in The Originals and Legacies, along with web series, novels based on the show, comic books, and much more, all centered around many of the same characters.
The Vampire Diaries is the strongest of the shows in the franchise. Set in Mystic Falls, Virginia, The Vampire Diaries follows Elena Gilbert (Nina Dobrev), a teenager who falls in love with a 162-year-old vampire named Stefan Salvatore (Paul Wesley) after the tragic death of her parents.
Stefan’s brother, Damon (Ian Somerhalder), arrives to seek revenge on his brother, but the trio winds up in a love-triangle/alliance in order to deal with the other supernatural occurrences that happen around Mystic Falls. The character development across 171 episodes is some of the best you’ll find on network television, and rewards viewers who stick around.
The Twilight Zone (1959-1964)
156 Episodes
The Twilight Zone is as much fantasy as it is horror and science fiction, and it may owe the most to the fantasy genre with the way it bends the rules of logic in order to tell a series of thought-provoking, frightening, and moving tales. There have been several iterations of the show, but the original series is the best and the longest.
Rod Serling’s series premiered in 1959 and ran for five seasons. The list of great episodes of The Twilight Zone is a long one, and even the episodes that aren’t quite at the level of the rest of the series are still worth the watch. Each episode finds characters experiencing or exploring some kind of unusual, reality-changing event.
The morals and surprise endings of The Twilight Zone stick with you more than anything, but each episode is more than that. There are fantastic performances, set designs, and lines in each. If you think you know The Twilight Zone because you’ve heard the plot, you’ll be surprised by how much more there is to explore.
Once Upon A Time (2011-2018)
155 Episodes
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Once Upon a Time is a fantasy adventure series set in the seaside town of Storybrooke in Maine. Emma Swan (Jennifer Morrison) and her son Henry Mills (Jared S. Gilmore) discover that everyone in the town of Storybrooke is actually a character from a fairy tale, whose memories have been erased by Regina (Lana Parrilla), the Evil Queen, and the mayor of Storybrooke.
Emma and Henry work to release the citizens of Storybrooke from their curses and help them remember their identities. Once Upon a Time utilizes both public domain fairy tale characters and Disney characters to tell its story, with everyone from Snow White (Ginnifer Goodwin) to Elsa (Georgina Haig) of Frozen making an appearance.
Once Upon a Time became a bit unwieldy over the years, with some plots repeating themselves and the show leaning more and more on character cameos to keep viewers invested. It’s an ambitious fantasy series, and it feels necessary in how it catalogs the long list of popular fantasy characters we have in popular culture.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003)
144 Episodes
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Buffy the Vampire Slayer doesn’t get enough credit for how long the series ran without any noticeable drops in quality. The series changed multiple times over its run, usually whenever Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) entered a new stage of her life, such as heading off to college, but the series always felt true to what we knew as Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The series follows Buffy, a high school student when we meet her, who is a Slayer, one in a long line of female warriors, imbued with powers that make her capable of fighting all sorts of evil monsters, particularly vampires. She’s joined by a handful of loyal friends who help keep her safe and make sure she can carry on her missions.
Buffy is a monster-of-the-week type of fantasy series, but its season-long big bads and series-long character arcs make watching the show in order a highly rewarding experience. It’s one of the greatest fantasy TV shows ever, and it probably would have kept going longer had the cast and crew wanted to.
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