Things are heating up big time now that we’ve hit June, and while April and May were all about prestige series thanks to imminent Emmy submission deadlines, this month is all about blowing your socks off, man!
Some blockbuster TV shows are returning this month in a big way; that includes the second new show in HBO’s Game of Thrones universe to debut this year, as well as a Superman series mere weeks before Supergirl hits theaters. We’ve also got the end of an era for Chicago’s favorite beef restaurant, and a fan favorite animated series returning to roll the dice on another season as well.
Plus, we’ve got reimaginings of classic movies, the oddest tribute to the 250th anniversary of America imaginable, and a vampire who truly rocks. So let’s get into it and break down our 9 most anticipated streaming TV shows (and one movie) of June 2026!
(Note: This list is presented in release date order.)
Critical Role’s beloved Prime Video animated series returns for a fourth season this month, and though this isn’t a fair amount of pressure to put on the series, knowing that a fifth and final season is coming next, all eyes will be on how these episodes set up that finale.
That said, it seems like business as usual based on the Season 4 trailer. The group has separated, but, per the official synopsis, when “a long-slumbering evil awakens to threaten the realm, they must reunite to take on an epic foe.”
Based on Critical Role and infused with more RPG-inspired madness than you can shake a 20-sided die at, this season includes rock-and-roll battles, ducks, and the regular cast of characters, plus voice actors Wayne Brady, Kevin Michael Richardson, and more. As they put it in the trailer: “Death cultists… Supernatural villains… Classic Vox Machs.”
Like Pennywise returning to Derry, every 30 years or so we get a new iteration of Cape Fear. The original 1957 novel, The Executioners, was first adapted into a 1962 film classic starring Gregory Peck as an attorney named Sam Bowden who is hunted and terrified by an ex-con (Robert Mitchum) who blamed Sam for putting him in prison. In 1991, we got another classic adaptation, this time with Nick Nolte taking the role of Sam and Robert De Niro jacking himself up to play rapist Max Cady.
Now, Cape Fear makes the leap to Apple TV as the streamer’s latest movie-to-TV adaptation, stretching a two-hour movie into 10 hours of television. Javier Bardem takes on the Max Cady role, while the reimagined aspect is that instead of a lawyer and his terrified wife, they’re both lawyers! The renamed Anna and Tom Bowden are played by Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson, with both of them having tag-teamed Max Cady’s trial and now find themselves directly in his maniacal crosshairs.
Apple’s pattern of stretching out movies has been a mixed bag so far, with a tepid critical response to the two-season Justin Theroux starrer, The Mosquito Coast (which, to be fair, used both the movie and original novel as inspiration), as well as a mixed response to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Presumed Innocent… though the latter garnered four Emmy nominations and seemed to be a hit by Apple standards.
When it comes to Cape Fear, there’s a reason this harrowing story keeps being told; the question is whether there’s enough story to be told at over five times the length.
Are you ready to rock? The transcendent AMC series, Interview with the Vampire, has morphed into a “new” series, The Vampire Lestat. While it has a new title, showrunner Rolin Jones and company have created yet another stunning, jaw-dropping season of TV (seriously) that both faithfully adapts the Anne Rice novels of the same name while completely reinventing and reanalyzing them through a modern context.
The story here is that after the release of Daniel Molloy’s (Eric Bogosian) Interview with the Vampire, the titular Lestat (Sam Reid) has embarked on a nationwide tour telling his own story through song. The previous two seasons were all through the lens of Molloy interviewing Lestat’s immortal lover/jilted ex-boyfriend Louis (Jacob Anderson), so now it’s the chaotic vamp’s turn. And it is utter chaos, featuring a revamped (no pun intended) look for the series, original songs and covers, and all the violence, sex, and disturbing personal revelations one might expect from Lestat’s side of the story.
Alongside the main trio, Jennifer Ehle joins the cast as Lestat’s mother, Gabriella, and if you’re a fan of the books, you know that relationship is twisted to say the least. Get ready for another season of TV that defies expectations from one of the best TV shows of the past decade. And if you missed the first two seasons, then seriously – go catch up now, unless you want to suck.
After wrapping up his time on the dark superhero series, The Boys, Jack Quaid is now turning to the sunny side of supes with the return of the animated Adult Swim/HBO Max series, My Adventures with Superman.
The anime-inspired show deftly balances the romance between Clark Kent/Superman (Quaid) and Lois Lane (Alice Lee) alongside some big mythology changes like new powers for Superman, a reimagined Supergirl (Kiana Madeira), and much more. This season looks to do it again with a loose adaptation of “Reign of the Supermen,” featuring Cyborg Superman and a curiously different Superboy (Darren Criss), which has sent fan speculation about the character’s identity soaring up, up, and away. Adding to the intrigue, this season will also introduce Green Lantern Jessica Cruz, who is being spun off into her own series, My Adventures with Green Lantern.
While the release schedule continues to be bizarre – why release a family-friendly Superman show in Adult Swim’s midnight Toonami block? – My Adventures with Superman will hopefully continue to be as fun, funny, romantic, and action forward as the first two seasons.
The first season of Apple TV’s neo-noir, Sugar, was a bit of a trick. Anchored by Colin Farrell as John Sugar, a private investigator working in Los Angeles, it had all the hallmarks of a classic noir thriller, though something strange and off-putting was running throughout the season.
The reason for that? There was a massive, nearly unguessable twist that dropped late in the game and recontextualized everything you thought was going on in the series. The issue with this sort of thing is that since the whole first season was built around that twist, the show seemed to be biding its time and dragging out the mysteries for no reason. The eventual reveal certainly changed things; we won’t say what it is here – like The Matrix, you have to experience the Sugar twist for yourself – but it might have been too little too late.
That means the second season can go in one of two directions. The first is that since the show was built around this big swing, that could be all it has going for it; a new case for John Sugar might not be enough to power new episodes, even with a great supporting cast including Tony Dalton, Shea Whigham, Laura Donnelly, and Sasha Calle. The other option is that with the twist revealed, the show is now free to continue to go fully off the rails into new territory, expanding the mythology of the series in weird and wild directions.
Which way will John Sugar go? We’ll just have to watch to find out!
The second of two new seasons of TV set in the world of HBO’s Game of Thrones released this year, House of the Dragon goes big or goes home in Season 3, hopefully dealing with some of the harsh criticism levied at the show in Season 2… by fans, as well as, er, George R.R. Martin himself. And there’s every chance that criticism – ‘what’s with all the talking?’ among others – will be dealt with immediately, as what was originally planned for the season finale of Season 2 was moved to the beginning of Season 3, so we’re about to get enormous battle scenes right out of the gate.
On the other hand, if you’re a fan of all the talking – tentatively raising my own hand here – you’ve still got all the regular Targaryen madness in store as Team Black takes on Team Green with the prize being Westeros’ sharpest throne. The full cast is back too, including Matt Smith, Emma D’Arcy, Olivia Cooke, and all the rest, plus new cast members like Dan Fogler and James Norton.
Criticisms aside, there’s no spectacle on TV like the Game of Thrones universe, and where A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms went small and funny, House of the Dragon will continue to go big and serious… and bring on the dragons. With one season left to go, as usual, all bets are off, and anyone can die.
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the beloved animated series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, suffered a mixed reception to its first season, but the streamer is barrelling ahead anyway with Season 2. Anticipation is high given that we’re getting iconic settings like Ba Sing Se, where we hear there is no war, and even better, the introduction of blind earthbender Toph Beifong (Miya Cech).
As with the animated series, Avatar will end with its third season, finishing up the epic journey Avatar Aang (Gordon Cormier) and his band of allies set off on, as they attempt to stop evil Fire Lord Ozai (Daniel Dae Kim) from conquering what free nations remain.
The big question is whether the creators of the show will be able to respond to the criticisms of the series in Season 1 and pivot to something that truly leans into the live-action of it all, versus merely repeating what worked in the animated show. Fingers crossed, because if they don’t, Toph is gonna kick their butts.
The Bear: No more! The critically acclaimed FX/Hulu series ends its five-season run this month, streaming all episodes at the same time on Hulu while debuting semi-weekly on FX. It’ll be fascinating to see how they wrap up the series, which started as a tense comedy about a high-end chef returning to his family’s beef sandwich restaurant, and continued as a moody and often esoterically presented look at how we make and consume food as well as exploring the complicated and traumatic character dynamics of the central family.
If that all sounds pretentious, well… it is. The show’s fourth season, while still featuring stand-out performances from a phenomenal cast including Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and more, got a mixed reception, particularly for the way the main character, Carmy (White), wandered aimlessly through most of the season.
But with Carmy deciding to step away from the restaurant and passing it to Syd (Edebiri), there’s every chance the renewed focus can bring the series home, particularly after an intriguing one-off special titled Gary surprise-dropped in May and teased a pretty big event that will likely play out in the final season.
Will The Bear leave us with a good taste in our mouths or just hungry for more? We’ll know once the final season premieres at the end of this month.
Quick, what’s the best way of celebrating the 250th birthday of America? If you said a sketch comedy show on HBO starring Larry David and featuring (among others) his cast from Curb Your Enthusiasm, well… weird take. Pretty, pretty, pretty weird.
But also – good news! – because that’s exactly what Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness is all about! As opposed to the sitcom-esque Curb, the seven-episode sketch comedy series presents David’s take on the history of America, from the founding of the country to now. Even weirder? It’s executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama. You remember them? Former President and First Lady of the United States of America? Yeah, those guys. And not only that, Barack Obama will also appear in the show in some capacity.
With plenty more stars stopping by, from Bill Hader and Kathryn Hahn to Vince Vaughn and Jon Hamm, this may not be the celebration America asked for… but it’s the one it got.
How about a movie for a change of pace? Not to be confused with 2024’s Little Brother, this year’s edition on Netflix stars John Cena as a real estate agent whose life is sent into flux when his estranged brother, played by Eric André, appears. You know the drill with this sort of thing: Cena’s life will get turned upside down, André’s character will likely learn a little responsibility, and ultimately they’ll learn to appreciate and respect each other as brothers. Or something close to that.
What potentially elevates this is that Cena has brought a level of intense comedic focus to all his projects, carefully choosing them one by one. André is always a rogue element, bringing off-kilter energy to everything he does. The rest of the cast is pretty great too, including Michelle Monaghan, Christopher Meloni, Sherry Cola, and more. Plus, it’s directed by Matt Spicer, whose previous feature was the well-regarded Aubrey Plaza vehicle, Ingrid Goes West.
Will this reinvent movies? Probably not. Will Cena and André end up in increasingly embarrassing and hilarious situations? Oh, you know it. Late summer streaming fare doesn’t get better than this, so jack up the AC and turn on the Little Brother! That sounded weird… sorry.
Will you be watching any of these series this month? What else are you looking forward to that we didn’t get to? Vote in our poll and let’s discuss in the comments!
You can chat with Alex Zalben on BlueSky @azalben.bsky.social, or find him regularly yapping on the Comic Book Club podcast.
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