Netflix has more action shows than any reasonable person could sort through. Of course, a lot of them are the kind of thing you put on while folding laundry. And is that really what we want from the genre we count on to trick our fitness watch into thinking we’re actually exercising? No, no it is not.
The shows on this list earn the rise in blood pressure. They’re consistently thrilling, filled with explosions, and they manage to match their physical exchanges with quick-hitting plot twists. These picks span feudal Korea, Viking England, the 1850s American frontier, and at least four accidentally destroyed timelines, so whatever you’re in the mood for, something here will deliver.
‘The Night Agent’ (2023–Present)
Aidan looking at Peter as they walk together down the street in The Night Agent.Image via Netflix
Shawn Ryan, who built The Shield on the idea that the people inside the system are the ones you should really worry about, brought that same paranoid energy to The Night Agent. Gabriel Basso plays Peter Sutherland, a low-level FBI agent parked in the White House basement monitoring a phone line that almost never rings. When the call finally comes, it drags him into a government conspiracy that keeps escalating across three seasons.
Basso’s Peter is a fundamentally decent person in a genre that usually demands antiheroes, and that decency ends up defining the show. Every season puts him through the wringer for doing the right thing, and you keep watching because you want to see him survive it. Netflix renewed The Night Agent for a fourth and final season in 2026, so there’s still time to catch up before it all ends.
‘The Last Kingdom’ (2015–2022)
Alexander Dreymon in a still from The Last KingdomImage via Netflix
Five seasons is a long time to watch one man try to get his house back, but Alexander Dreymon makes every episode of that quest worth it in The Last Kingdom. His Uhtred of Bebbanburg is Saxon by birth, Viking by upbringing, and a headache for every king who tries to give him orders. Based on Bernard Cornwell‘s Saxon Stories novels and developed by Stephen Butchard, the show started on BBC Two, moved to Netflix for its final three seasons, and peaked late.
The battle sequences are physical and grounded, with shield walls that actually make you flinch, and the show earns its five-season run by letting Uhtred age through decades of warfare without ever fast-forwarding through the messy parts. With 46 episodes and the feature-length closer Seven Kings Must Die wrapping things up properly, The Last Kingdom is probably the most satisfying completed series on the platform.
‘Kingdom’ (2019–2021)
Ju Ji-Hoon as Prince Lee Chang firing an arrow in Kingdom.Image via Netflix
A zombie plague in feudal Korea sounds like a pitch someone made as a joke that accidentally got greenlit. But Kingdom is proof that the joke was on everyone who dismissed it. Written by Kim Eun-hee, the series drops a mysterious resurrection plague into the Joseon dynasty and weaves it into a political power struggle already in progress. Crown Prince Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) is trying to investigate his father’s illness while a corrupt minister (Ryu Seung-ryong) grabs power behind the scenes, and then the dead start rising.
The zombies in Kingdom don’t shuffle. They sprint, they swarm, and they’re only active at night, which means every episode turns into a countdown once the sun starts setting. The action sequences use that rule to build real tension, because the characters have to plan around it and the plans keep falling apart. Bae Doona‘sphysician Seo-bi is the one figuring out how the plague works while everyone else is swinging swords, and she gives the show a brain to go with all the carnage.
‘The Witcher’ (2019–Present)
Henry Cavill‘s version of Geralt of Rivia is a guy who would rather fight a swamp monster than have a conversation, and the fun of The Witcher is watching the world keep forcing him to do both. Based on Andrzej Sapkowski‘s novels and created by showrunner Lauren Schmidt Hissrich, the show follows a mutated monster hunter, a powerful sorceress (Anya Chalotra‘s Yennefer), and a princess whose survival depends on both of them (Freya Allan‘s Ciri) as a continent tears itself apart. The first season jumps between timelines and the action only scales up from there.
The sword fights are the headliner, and the show knows it. Cavill’s combat scenes in the early seasons set a bar that the series kept clearing, with choreography that treats each encounter differently depending on what Geralt is up against. Chalotra’s Yennefer brings a different kind of firepower, with her magic and fury, and Allan’s Ciri goes from running away from fights to holding her own in them over the course of the series. Even with Liam Hemsworth replacing Cavill in Season 4, Geralt keeps that same brutality as he has from the beginning. Across four seasons, The Witcher never phones in an action sequence, and there are enough of them to keep even the lore-heavy episodes moving.
Collider Exclusive · Action Hero Quiz Which Action Hero Would Be Your Perfect Partner? Rambo · James Bond · Indiana Jones · John McClane · Ethan Hunt
Five legends. Five completely different ways of getting out alive — with style, with muscle, with charm, with luck, or with a plan so intricate it probably shouldn’t work. Ten questions will reveal which action hero was built to have your back.
🎖️Rambo
🍸James Bond
🏺Indiana Jones
🔧John McClane
🎭Ethan Hunt
01
You’re dropped into a dangerous situation with no warning. What do you need most from a partner? The first few seconds tell you everything about who belongs beside you.
02
You have to get somewhere dangerous, fast. How do you travel? How you get there is half the mission.
03
You’re pinned down and outnumbered. What does your ideal partner do? This is when you find out what someone is really made of.
04
The mission is paused. You have one evening to decompress. What does your partner suggest? Who someone is when the pressure drops is who they actually are.
05
How do you prefer your partner to communicate mid-mission? Good communication is the difference between partners and a liability.
06
Your enemy is powerful, well-resourced, and has the upper hand. How should your partner approach them? The approach to the enemy defines the partnership.
07
Things go badly wrong and you’re captured. What do you trust your partner to do? Who someone is when you need them most is the only thing that matters.
08
What does your ideal partner bring to the table that you couldn’t replace? A great partner fills the gap you didn’t know you had.
09
Every partnership has a cost. Which of these can you live with? No one comes without baggage. The question is whether you can carry it together.
10
It’s the final moment. Everything is on the line. What do you need from your partner right now? The last question is the most honest one.
Your Partner Has Been Assigned Your Perfect Partner Is…
Your answers have pointed to one action hero above all others. This is the person built to have your back — for better or considerably, spectacularly worse.
Rambo
Your partner doesn’t talk much, doesn’t need to, and will have assessed every threat in your immediate environment before you’ve finished your first sentence. John Rambo is not a man of plans or politics — he is a force of nature shaped by survival, loyalty, and a capacity for endurance that goes beyond anything training can produce. He will not leave you behind. He has never left anyone behind who deserved to come home. What you get with Rambo is the most capable, most quietly ferocious partner imaginable — one who has been through things that would have broken anyone else, and who chose to keep going anyway. You’ll never need to ask if he has your back. You’ll just know.
James Bond
Your partner will arrive perfectly dressed, perfectly briefed, and with a cover story so convincing it’ll take you a moment to remember what’s actually true. James Bond is the most professionally dangerous person in any room he enters — and the most disarmingly charming, which is the point. He operates in a world of layers, where nothing is what it appears and every advantage is used without apology. You’ll never be bored. You’ll occasionally be furious. But when it matters — when the mission is genuinely on the line and the margin for error has collapsed to nothing — Bond is exactly the partner you want. He has survived things that have no business being survivable. He does it with style. That is not nothing.
Indiana Jones
Your partner will know the history, the language, the cultural context, and exactly why the thing everyone else is ignoring is actually the most important thing in the room. Indiana Jones is brilliant, reckless, and occasionally impossible — but he is also one of the most resourceful, most genuinely knowledgeable partners you could find yourself beside. He approaches every situation with a scholar’s eye and a brawler’s instinct, which is an unusual combination and a remarkably effective one. He hates snakes and gets personally attached to objects of historical significance, both of which will slow you down at least once. It doesn’t matter. What Indy brings is irreplaceable — and the adventures you’ll have together will be the kind people write books about. Assuming you survive them.
John McClane
Your partner was not supposed to be here. He does not have the right equipment, the right information, or anything approaching the right odds. He has a sarcastic remark and an absolute refusal to accept that the situation is as bad as it looks. John McClane is the greatest accidental hero in the history of action cinema — a man whose superpower is stubbornness, whose contingency plan is improvisation, and whose capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving would be alarming if it weren’t so useful. He will complain the entire time. He will make it significantly more chaotic than it needed to be. And he will absolutely, unconditionally, without question come through when it counts. Yippee-ki-yay.
Ethan Hunt
Your partner has already run seventeen scenarios by the time you’ve finished reading the briefing, and the plan he’s settled on involves at least two things that should be physically impossible. Ethan Hunt operates at the absolute edge of human capability — technically, physically, and intellectually — and he brings the same relentless precision to protecting his partners that he brings to dismantling organisations that shouldn’t exist. He is not easy to know and he will never fully tell you everything. But he will carry the weight of the mission so completely, so absolutely, that your job is simply to trust him — and the remarkable thing is that trusting him always turns out to be the right call. The mission will be impossible. He will complete it anyway.
‘The Umbrella Academy’ (2019–2024)
Justin Min in Season 4 Episode 2 of The Umbrella AcademyImage via Netflix
Every season of The Umbrella Academystarts with the Hargreeves siblings trying to prevent the apocalypse and ends with them realizing they probably caused it. Based on Gerard Way and Gabriel Bá‘scomics and developed by Steve Blackman, the show ran four seasons on Netflix and filled every one with world-ending chaos and sibling grudges to outpace every other ensemble show on the platform.
Robert Sheehan‘sKlaus alone would justify watching the whole run, a disaster of a person who somehow keeps getting funnier while the stakes keep getting higher. Aidan Gallagher plays a 58-year-old assassin trapped in a teenager’s body, and Elliot Page brings a quiet intensity to Vanya/Viktor that anchors the show whenever things threaten to spin out.
‘American Primeval’ (2025)
Joe Tippett looking serious as snow falls in American Primeval.Image via Netflix
American Primeval is six episodes of Peter Berg doing what he does best: putting a camera so close to the action that you forget you’re watching from your couch. Written by Mark L. Smith and set on the American frontier in 1857, the limited series follows Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), a man held together by… well, not much, who takes on the job of getting a woman (Betty Gilpin) and her son through a stretch of the West where settlers and Crow warriors and the Mormon militia are all at war.
Berg films the violence with a rawness that makes gunfights and hand-to-hand brawls feel like things that are happening to real people, and the frontier itself functions as a threat in every frame. Kim Coates is terrifying as Brigham Young, while Kitsch and Gilpin have an easy chemistry that anchors the show when the bloodshed gets heavy.
‘Man on Fire’ (2026)
Yahya Abdul Mateen II in ‘Man on Fire’ seriesImage via Netflix
Adapting a story Denzel Washington has already made iconic takes nerve, and this seven-episode Netflix series earns the comparison by refusing to replicate what came before.Yahya Abdul-Mateen II steps into the role of John Creasy, a former Special Forces operative dealing with severe PTSD who takes a job protecting a wealthy family’s teenage daughter (Billie Boullet) in Brazil. When violence finds the family, Creasy’s training takes over, and the show commits fully to the fallout.
Bobby Cannavale and Alice Braga round out the cast. The decision to set the show in Brazil, rather than Mexico City as in the Washington version, gives it a completely different visual texture. Not to mention, the action across its seven episodes are high-octane thrill rides that will keep you hooked from beginning to end.
