Data story · TV Shows
The best TV seasons of all time, episode by episode.
The four highest-rated seasons in Huezle are separated by less than a tenth of a point. Drawn one band per episode, they look alike from a distance and quite different up close, and many great seasons save their best hour for the end.
Every strip on this page is a real TV Shows strip from the Huezle app, drawn by the app’s own code. More about TV Shows.
How to read the strips
Each strip is one season of a TV show. Each band is one episode, in air order, from the premiere on the left to the finale on the right. The colour is the episode’s IMDb user rating: red is low rated, yellow is average and green is high rated.
The scale is set against famous television, not television in general. Yellow sits at 8.4, the middle of the 1,881 episodes in the data, and the green is at full strength by 9.4. That is why the seasons below are almost entirely green.
The top of the table is a photo finish
Ranked by the plain average of their episodes’ IMDb user ratings, Attack on Titan’s third season leads at 9.30 across 22 episodes, then Arcane’s second at 9.28, Game of Thrones’s fourth at 9.25 and True Detective’s first at 9.24. An average hides the shape, though, and the shapes are where these seasons differ.
- Attack on Titan, season 3
- Game of Thrones, season 4
- True Detective, season 1
- Low rated
- Average
- High rated
Attack on Titan’s is the longest strip at the top and the most even: from its thirteenth episode to its eighteenth it runs 9.6, 9.6, 9.6, 9.8, 9.8, 9.8, the only run of six episodes rated 9.6 or higher anywhere in the data. Game of Thrones’s fourth is more of a pulse, with five episodes at 9.6 or higher between dips to 8.6. True Detective’s first is only eight episodes and never drops below 8.8.
Finales that spiked
A finale is the most likely place for a season’s best rating. In 120 of the 140 seasons, the last episode rated above the average of the episodes before it, and in 58 the finale is the highest-rated episode of the season, or tied for it. The biggest spikes read best as strips: a run of yellow and orange that turns deep green at the right-hand end.
- Low rated
- Average
- High rated
- Low rated
- Average
- High rated
- Low rated
- Average
- High rated
The single highest rating among all 1,881 episodes is 9.9, and two episodes share it. One is a finale; the other is a ninth episode of ten, which shows the other way to peak: one episode early, with a paler last band after it. For the other end of the scale, see the lowest-rated final seasons.
What “of all time” means here
These are the best seasons among the 140 in Huezle, not every season ever made. The data comes from IMDb’s user ratings for 51 of the most-voted shows on IMDb, and keeps at most three seasons of each show: the first three with a usable rating for every episode. So for a show like Breaking Bad, only the first three of its five seasons are here. Every rating reflects the people who chose to vote.
Even so, a strip tells you something a single average cannot: whether a season was great all the way through, or built to one great night. The TV Shows page has more, and directors’ careers get the same treatment in how great directors’ careers rise and fall.
In Huezle you get the strip and four shows. Can you tell which season built to its finale?
Download on the App StoreFree on iPhoneQuestions
What is the highest-rated TV season by IMDb episode ratings in Huezle?
Attack on Titan’s third season, at an average of 9.30 across 22 episodes, just ahead of Arcane’s second season at 9.28 and Game of Thrones’s fourth at 9.25.
Are season finales usually the best-rated episode?
Often. In 120 of the 140 seasons in Huezle the finale rated above the season’s other episodes on average, and in 58 it is the highest-rated episode of the season or tied for it.
Why does Huezle only have three seasons of each show?
To keep the set broad: it holds 140 seasons from 51 shows, at most three each, taking the first three seasons that have a usable IMDb rating for every episode.
More guides
- The lowest-rated final seasons, episode by episode.Final seasons and late-season slumps drawn episode by episode from IMDb user ratings: Squid Game’s last season, The Witcher’s third, The Last of Us’s second.
- How to read a century of presidential elections in colour.US presidential elections since 1900 drawn as strips of colour, one band per state from west to east. Learn to read the eras from four real strips.
- When did the South flip from Democrat to Republican?The Solid South in colour: how Southern states went from voting Democratic by 90 points to reliably Republican, told in four election strips from 1920 to 2024.
- The biggest presidential landslides, drawn in colour.Three of the most lopsided US presidential elections drawn as strips of colour, one band per state, and why each landslide holds out in a different place.
Now try naming one yourself.
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