Though HBO’s Game of Thrones is often cited as the greatest fantasy television show of all time, Rotten Tomatoes has officially crowned a different series as the genre’s most acclaimed. It’s hard to overstate how important Game of Thrones is to the fantasy genre. Not only is it one of the best fantasy shows ever made, it also kickstarted the genre’s recent resurgence in the 2010s and 2020s, introduced dark fantasy to more mature audiences, and legitimized fantasy as a whole as something that even adults can enjoy.
Game of Thrones was massively influential, but it was also massively successful. The original show lasted eight seasons, and though there was a noticeable drop in quality for the last two, it managed to spawn two very successful spinoff shows, House of the Dragon and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. There are even confirmed upcoming Game of Thrones spinoffs, like Aegon’s Conquest and future seasons of existing shows.
For all its accolades, however, Game of Thrones is not the best fantasy show ever made according to Rotten Tomatoes, which averages out critic and audience review scores into a percentage of approval. In fact, Game of Thrones only has 89% approval from critics and 85% from audiences on average, though those numbers are dragged down by season 8. Still, there’s another, more surprising, fantasy series that beats it: Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Avatar: The Last Airbender Is The Highest-Scoring Fantasy Series On Rotten Tomatoes
Though it may come as a surprise, the original animated Avatar: The Last Airbender is the highest-scoring fantasy show on Rotten Tomatoes. All three seasons of The Last Airbender have 100% approval from critics, while the show also has an average score of 98% from audiences. While other fantasy shows have achieved 100% averages with critics, like Arcane and Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, their audience scores can’t compare with The Last Airbender.
For viewers who have seen Avatar: The Last Airbender, those scores likely aren’t surprising. The Last Airbender is almost universally considered a masterpiece and one of the best animated shows ever made. While made for children, The Last Airbender also has some surprisingly mature and complex themes and explorations of things like war, genocide, and the weight of responsibility.
Most importantly, The Last Airbender is also rife with fantasy elements. From the magic-like elemental bending system that allows its characters to command fire, water, earth, and air to animal hybrids and a medieval-style society and setting based on Asian influence, The Last Airbender boasts one of the most nuanced and well-developed fantasy worlds on television. It’s a beautiful fantasy story that’s quite nearly perfect from start to finish.
As an added bonus, Avatar: The Last Airbender even became a franchise to rival Game of Thrones. The franchise has The Last Airbender‘s three seasons, four seasons of the sequel series The Legend of Korra, a sequel movie in Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender, and two live-action adaptations, along with upcoming The Last Airbender projects like Avatar: Seven Havens. So, Avatar: The Last Airbender is a nearly-perfect fantasy show that spawned a great fantasy franchise of its own; it’s not hard to see why it has Game of Thrones beat, at least on Rotten Tomatoes.
Why The Biggest Live-Action Fantasy Shows Don’t Score As Highly
There is one big caveat to Avatar: The Last Airbender outperforming Game of Thrones on Rotten Tomatoes, however. Live-action fantasy shows generally don’t score as highly as animated fantasy series do, as a rule of thumb. The difference in medium and in tone accounts for a lot of the contrast in Game of Thrones and The Last Airbender‘s respective scores. That’s not to say that The Last Airbender doesn’t deserve its praise, but it is a factor in its Rotten Tomatoes score.
There are a few reasons live-action fantasy shows get overlooked in comparison to their animated peers. Most obviously, live-action shows, especially big-budget HBO productions like Game of Thrones, tend to draw in more critics and viewers, which means there are more chances for its average score to drop. Game of Thrones season 1 had 215 critic reviews, while The Last Airbender season 1 only had 12 reviews. It’s a lot easier to please 12 critics than it is to reach 100% consensus among 215 critics.
Live-action shows in general also have a hard time of maintaining consistency across seasons. Actors age, budgets and creative teams change over the years, and a lot of factors are out of live-action shows’ control. In Game of Thrones‘ case, the show developed faster than the books it’s based on, which left seasons 7 and 8 to flounder without a clear creative vision. Animated shows, like The Last Airbender, typically return quicker, don’t have to worry about actors aging or leaving, and usually have a stronger creative vision from the start.
On top of it all, animated fantasy shows are typically aimed at a younger audience than live-action ones do, which gives them a lot more leeway. Game of Thrones and its spinoffs are billed as prestige television, and they’re judged on the same rubric as some of the best TV shows of all time, like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad. Avatar: The Last Airbender, however, is made for kids, and critics and audiences keep that in mind while reviewing it. All of that contributed to Avatar: The Last Airbender being crowned Rotten Tomatoes’ king of fantasy.
