With all the streaming services (and a few actual networks and cable channels) duking it out for your precious eye-time, 2022 was a banner year for TV. Sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and superheroes were, as expected, big players genre-wise, but drama and kids’ programming also had their day. These popular TV Wikis run the full gamut of categories, proving that there is indeed something for everyone.
Game of Thrones roared in with a killer prequel series while Star Trek hit us with both sequels and prequels (and a nice slice of animated silliness). Stranger Things continued to be a pop-culture juggernaut while previous juggernaut The Walking Dead drew to a close (well, as far as the original mothership show was concerned) after 11 seasons. But that’s not all. Check out this Top 10 rundown of Fandom’s Most Popular TV Wikis for the entire year to see what fans were reading up on and digging into the most.
10. The Vampire Diaries
The Vampire Diaries series itself finished years ago, in 2017, but Legacies, the third show in the durable franchise, concluded this year, marking the end of a vampiric era for longtime fans, with no other spinoff currently in the works. The Vampire Diaries lore contains multitudes, as not only are there the books to explore, but The Vampire Diaries itself ran for eight seasons and its two spinoffs – The Originals and the aforementioned Legacies – went for five and four seasons, respectively.
In terms of sheer volume, The Vampire Diaries-verse contains within it more content than any other live-action vampire saga. So the final 10 episodes of Legacies, which were oddly/frustratingly spread out over five months, were almost designed to keep the TVD wiki fires burning, with the Legacies finale featuring a bit of a full circle moment for fans, via the long-awaited return of original Vampire Diaries cast member Candice King as Caroline Forbes. Will there ever be more to this story? We shall see…
9. Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug
and Cat Noir
Last year’s top-searched show out of all of Fandom’s wikis, Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, fell a few spots this year, though it still made the Top 10. To be fair, 2021 contained the long-awaited fourth season of this massive global hit while 2022 only started airing Season 5 episodes back in October, but this French animated series still has a reach like few others.
Running since 2015 (now with over a hundred episodes under its belt) Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir follows 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. Expect this one to probably crack next year’s Top 10 too as half of Season 5 episodes will air in 2023.
8. The Boys
New(ish) kid on the block, The Boys, which is one of Amazon’s biggest streaming hits, shocked and delighted fans with its sinister, subversive third season that featured Supernatural alum Jensen Ackles (in a reunion with Boys/Supernatural creator Eric Kripke) as Soldier Boy, a terrifying funhouse mirror version of Steve Rogers. The Boys wiki, which also encompasses Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson’s original comic series, saw a huge uptick in readers thanks to these new episodes and a proactive push to expand this franchise fast and furiously.
As a growing shared universe, Boys animated anthology series, Diabolical, also premiered in 2022 and the trailer for the second live-action television series, Gen V, debuted a few weeks ago. Yes, it would appear Homelander and his squad of toadies have us all in their tyrannical clutches.
7. Grey’s Anatomy
Grey’s Anatomy is a perennial powerhouse for ABC, having aired over 400 episodes, wrapping up its eighteenth season in 2022 and also kicking off Season 19 in the fall. Why just last year, in 2021, it was number three on this list.
Even as just a medical drama, Grey’s now has a depth of history, one spanning almost 20 years at this point, and the news that series lead Ellen Pompeo will be leaving as a full time cast member next year – though she will continue to narrate the series and has promised to make return appearances – more than certainly had fans flocking to the Grey’s Anatomy wiki to recap and revisit all they have loved about Grey Sloan Memorial’s Chief of Surgery, Meredith Grey.
6. SpongeBob SquarePants
There were no new SpongeBob projects in 2022, to wholly explain the popularity of the SpongeBob Squarepants wiki, though back in February it was announced that Paramount+ was developing three SpongeBob spinoff films focusing on different Bikini Bottom characters, with the first debuting in 2023. That, plus news of a fourth SpongeBob theatrical film on the way, and two recent shows – The Patrick Star Show and Kamp Koral – having debuted in 2021 means there certainly isn’t a SpongeBob drought.
Of course, it’s also easy to overlook the obvious here (if one was looking for specific reason for the wiki’s success) which is that SpongeBob has been a massively popular property for the past two decades, with reruns that air constantly and a steady stream of memes circulating at all times.
5. Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul
Amongst the hoopla of heroes and horror is, quite frankly, one of the best TV dramas of all time. One that had an uphill climb, even, as the prequel series to, well…one of the best TV dramas of all time. But Better Call Saul, which aired its split final season over the course of 2022, garnered some of the best reviews of the entire Breaking Bad-verse’s existence, as well as entering the limited, elite pantheon of shows that were seen by the majority of the fanbase as having nailed their endings.
Better Call Saul drew a ton of readers to the Breaking Bad wiki not just because it was an exceptional prequel series full of nods, call outs, and harbingers but because, in the end, it jumped us all ahead and ended things as a full sequel story, showing us Jimmy McGill’s full fate following the events of Breaking Bad, with the final few episodes all primarily taking place in the “Cinnabon Gene” era and leaving the prequel aspects behind.
4. The Walking Dead
Coming in second place last year, The Walking Dead may have limped across the finish line, ratings-wise (and, arguably, creative-wise), but just because the long-running once-”most popular show on all of TV” ended its run after 11 seasons, there’s still plenty of Walking Dead out there for loyal fans. Fear the Walking Dead is still on the air, with the second half of its seventh season airing in 2022, while a new anthology show, Tales of the Walking Dead, premiered this summer.
Fear will be back for Season 8 in 2023, as well as a trio of new spinoff shows from the original series in the works featuring the likes of Daryl Dixon, Maggie & Negan (The Walking Dead: Dead City) and Rick & Michonne. Two of those new series are confirmed to be six-episodes, so if they wind up all being one-and-done miniseries, as the Rick & Michonne one is said to be, and Fear comes to an end anytime soon, then there’s definitely a world in which The Walking Dead, as a full time TV entity, comes to more of a firm conclusion in a year’s time. On the other hand, if everything still does well enough and some of it renewed for more than this all gets to keep going.
In fact, some of the biggest buzz The Walking Dead got in 2022 was the surprise appearance of stars Andrew Lincoln and Danai Gurira at the Walking Dead’s final SDCC panel, ahead of their return in the series finale, so fans still hold a lot of love for those characters. Love that found its way to the Walking Dead wiki, for sure.
3. Star Trek
The Trek-verse was running on full thrusters in 2022, delivering more content than ever, as the second season of Picard, the third season of Lower Decks, the second half of Discovery’s fourth season, and the majority of Prodigy‘s first season (which kicked on at the end of 2021) were joined by the debut of the especially well received Strange New Worlds. It was a Federation fan’s dream come true, so it’s no surprise at all that the Star Trek wiki went all warp speed.
On top of all the new readily available TV series, early in the year there was renewed development on a fourth Star Trek film centered on the Kelvin timeline cast led by Chris Pine – with a release date of December 22, 2023 announced – though with director Matt Shakman leaving the project in August to make Fantastic Four that movie’s once again in limbo and off the schedule. All this, plus Trek’s increased presence at huge conventions like San Diego Comic-Con — where an attention-getting crossover between the animated Lower Decks and live-action Strange New Worlds was announced — helped this franchise’s vast and deep wiki and its decades of info and lore (and Lore!) pull big numbers.
2. Stranger Things
Stranger Things’ fourth season was split into two parts, separated by a month. This helped extend the conversation about the show like never before, where chatter would begin to dwindle after the first week a new season debuted, due to the binge nature of Netflix. Season 4 remained in the conversation for many more weeks this time, and that helped the Stranger Things wiki pop in a notable way, even as the series remains Netflix’s biggest hit and heads towards its final season.
Season 4 also had some major breakout aspects – most notably the use of Kate Bush’s 1985 bop “Running Up that Hill,” the popular addition of Joseph Quinn‘s beloved Eddie Munson, and the final reveal involving the villainous and vile Vecna – driving a ton of traffic to the Stranger Things wiki, which helped the show’s fans gain more insight into all the new intel about Eleven and her time at the Hawkins Lab.
1. Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon dazzled fans with a whole new era of Westerosian intrigue and violence, driving massive amounts of traffic to the Game of Thrones wiki. Often its wiki would run neck and neck with the Lord of the Rings wiki, since House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power aired almost parallel to each other for their first seasons, but the LOTR Wiki doesn’t fully count as a TV-centered Wiki, and on that front, GoT clearly won the Iron Throne.
As the Targaryens of Kings Landing took center stage, in a story that took place a couple of centuries before Daenerys began her formative journey toward the Iron Throne, readers researched these new characters and their Fire and Blood-presented histories, noting both where the show remained faithful and how it changed things up for the sake of televisual drama. Plus, the first season involved many time jumps and actor changes so it was imperative that viewers keep things straight. As much as people bemoaned Game of Thrones’ final season, ratings were huge for House of the Dragon, as it debuted to the best numbers HBO had seen in years and then grew through the season.
