The TV landscape was both durable and plentiful in 2021, with more people than ever continuing to rely on streaming and, well, simply staying home to get their entertainment.
The MCU landed on Disney+ for the first time as that franchise’s “Phase Four” kicked things off with WandaVision, while relatively new platforms Peacock, Apple TV+, and Paramount+ tried to do battle with the big dogs of binge. But what TV show wikis did fans flock to the most? What series did they want to know more about, whether it was a deeper dive into fantastical lore, a refresher on returning favorite characters, or just a plain old hunt for news and previews?
Here’s a year-end look at the TV Shows Fandom users sought out the most in 2021 on our wikis. A bit of Marvel, a smattering of Netflix, and some honest-to-goodness surprises for the top few. Let’s take a look!
Also, while this list is specifically for the TV show pages that were our 10 most-visited for 2021, we’ve got some more info for you below as well via infographics that gets into other specifics, such as what were the overall biggest overall TV Show communities, what TV communities were growing the most this year, and even which TV show seasons were the most visited, which both intersects and diverges from the TV show list in interesting ways.
10. Lucifer
Based on the version of the Devil first introduced by Neil Gaiman in his acclaimed comic book The Sandman — itself soon to be a Netflix series — Lucifer enjoyed three seasons on FOX before getting the axe. Then, not only was it saved by Netflix, but it proved to be such a powerhouse hit for the streaming giant that it landed three more seasons, even getting a bit of a surprise sixth season after it was expected to likely end with Season 5.
Wih the second half of the show’s fifth season, along with the entire sixth and final season, both dropping in 2021, it’s no wonder that fans flocked to the Lucifer wiki to see what was up with Tom Ellis’ Lucifer and Lauren German’s Chloe after they’d professed their love for one another in the Season 5 finale. With the pandemic pushing production back several months for this final season, fans were more eager than ever to see how the entire saga ended.
9. Loki
The MCU’s (slightly) redeemed bad boy, Loki, not only got his own Phase 4 series on Disney+, but this version of Loki, who’d escaped with the Tesseract during the 2012 portion of Avengers: Endgame, had not been flipped to “good” yet. Meaning fans could watch a brand-new delicious redemption arc for the God of Mischief, following his defeat in The Avengers, coupled with a fantastical new realm of time cops – the Time Variance Authority.
Readers were introduced to a new timey wimey-style organization – filled with tons of influences from Doctor Who to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil – along with the concept of variants (including a female Loki, Sylvie), the Sacred Timeline, the multiverse, and time conqueror himself – Kang! Needless to say, Loki found himself in a bizarre new landscape and viewers couldn’t wait to read all about it. Tom Hiddelston as Loki, Owen Wilson as Mobius, Sophia Di Martino as Sylvie, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Renslayer made things cosmically cool. And obviously Alligator Loki was just awesome.
8. Invincible
Amazon’s latest foray into the world of Rated-R superhero series – following their massive hit, The Boys – was an animated adaptation of The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s comic series Invincible, about the son of the most powerful hero on Earth, Omni-Man (voiced by J.K. Simmons), learning to become a champion crusader in his own right.
Filled with dozens of new characters (voiced by the likes of Steven Yeun as Invincible/Mark Grayson, Gillian Jacobs as Atom Eve, Zazie Beetz as Amber Bennett, and more), bloody battles, a ferocious death count, and giant jaw-dropping twists, Invincible proved to be a huge success and it gave y’all a bigger world to explore via wiki, expanding beyond the comics. Plus, when it comes to adaptations, fans will always want to know how shows and movies deviate from the source material.
7. Fate: The Winx Saga
This live-action adaptation of the Nickelodeon animated series, Winx Club, which ran for eight seasons in the 2000s, launched its first season on Netflix back at the beginning of 2021, and was quickly picked up for a second season.
Viewers tuned in to watch the Winx Club five fairies – Bloom, Stella, Aisha, Terra, and Musa – attend a magical Otherworld boarding school called Alfea College while trying to thwart the threat of ancient creatures called the Burned Ones. Winx Club came with its own built-in fanbase, ready to dig into info from the original series while also eagerly absorbing this new iteration.
6. Shadow and Bone
Another big YA fantasy property in 2021 was Netflix’s Shadow and Bone, based on the acclaimed book series by Leigh Bardugo. Starring Jessie Mei Li and Ben Barns, Shadow and Bone swept fans up in the world of the Grishaverse, featuring a war-torn world in which a cartographer, Alina Starkhov (Mei Li), resides. After a sudden turn of events, Alina realizes she has extraordinary powers that could be the key to setting her homeland free from a dark entity called The Fold filled with monstrous creatures called Volcra.
It’s a complex realm filled with deep lore that book fans wanted a refresher on and first-timers needed clarification for. New faces, world-building, magical rules – the Shadow and Bone Wiki was off the charts in 2021. Okay, ON the charts, technically.
5. The Falcon and
the Winter Soldier
Of all the MCU Disney+ shows in 2021, none had a more popular wiki page than The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. The continuing adventures of Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes, in the aftermath of Steve Rogers’ retirement, led readers down a rabbit hole of mysteries and possibilities.
With Captain America: Civil War’s Helmut Zemo and Sharon Carter in the mix, as well as brand new Cap, John Walker, this was a series, unlike the trippier WandaVision that preceded it, that gave us a hard glimpse of the post-Blip world and the new problems people now faced. Flag Smashers, Power Brokers, dancing Zemos, a Seinfeld alum popping up as a shady super spy – the show had it all. Most of all though, it transformed Sam from a sidekick into a leader, finally taking on the mantle that was rightfully his.
4. Rupaul’s Drag Race
The long-running, groundbreaking reality competition series Rupaul’s Drag Race aired its 13th season over the first four months of 2021, featuring a new Covid-conscious socially distanced stage and werkroom design along with Gottmik, the show’s first ever openly transgender male as one of the contestants. A mid-season special, “Corona Can’t Keep a Good Queen Down,” was released, detailing the season’s production amid the pandemic, including strict protocols and isolation and testing of contestants, judges, and crew.
After more than a decade, the series was at its peak, in ratings and among Fandom readers, with the Season 13 premiere becoming the most-watched episode in the franchise’s history.
3. Grey’s Anatomy
As you’ll see, most of our Top 5 here are shows that have been running for ages, and still come with a deep, devoted fanbase. Viewers who are still ready to engage with a series after years and years while also checking in on the wikis for more information about their favorite characters and storylines. Closing in on 400 episodes, Grey’s Anatomy rolled out its 17th season at the end of 2020, with the bulk of the season’s episodes running in 2021, from January through June. So half the year.
One huge draw, despite the pandemic shortening the season to only 17 episodes, was the return of former series regulars (and deceased characters) Patrick Dempsey as Derek Shepherd, T.R. Knight as George O’Malley, Chyler Leigh as Lexie Grey, and Eric Dane as Mark Sloan to the show. So that definitely spiked interest on the wikis among die-hard Grey’s fans.
2. The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead may feel like a shadow of its former cultural juggernaut self, in both buzz and ratings, but it still has a rabid-enough core to seriously move the needle on wikis when it comes to the start of the show’s eleventh and final season. The first eight Season 11 episodes, out of 24 episodes overall, aired in 2021 as Lauren Cohan fully returned to the fold as Maggie, forced to deal with Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan now being an integrated part of the Alexandria crew years after he brutally killed her husband, Glenn.
That dynamic, plus the possible return of more old characters, the introduction of the Commonwealth, and just the fact that it’s the final run for this series, pulled a huge number of eyeballs over to The Walking Dead Wiki.
1. Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug
and Cat Noir
This French animated kids series, running since 2015 (with almost a hundred episodes under its belt) is a bonafide global hit. Originally airing in the States on Nick, and then Disney Channel, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir tells the tale of two Parisian teenagers, Marinette Dupain-Cheng and Adrien Agreste, who transform into the superheroes Ladybug and Cat Noir, respectively, to protect the city from supervillains.
Not only did the show’s fourth season air in 2021, two years after Season 3, but it was revealed that a feature film, Ladybug & Cat Noir Awakening, would be coming during the first half of 2022. So that definitely would have gotten fans from all over the world to check out Fandom’s Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir Wiki, as a lot of new content both arrived and was promised for the future.
Click on the links below to explore Fandom’s 10 most searched movies and games of 2021!
