Hey, everyone, we did it! We made it through another year! Well, almost. Very nearly. We’re really practically there. December is dwindling down to nothing as we speak; January is doing its warm-up stretches, ready to take the baton. All we have to do is hold out for one more week and we’ll be all the way there, in 2025! 

The best way to while away this last weekend of the year is — how else? — with a good old-fashioned stream. And by “old-fashioned” we mean movies and shows that came out in 2024, which is so very close to being firmly classified as the past. So queue up a star turn from one of the year’s hottest actors, a whole series of series that launched in the last 12 months, or a few touching docs. See you back here in 2025, for a whole new year of movies and TV!   

But first, what’s new on Netflix?

The hibiscus flower, blooming again: Season 2 of Squid Game arrives on Thursday, Dec. 26, the perfect day-after-Christmas present. In the new chapter of Hwang Dong-hyuk’s wildly popular dystopian thriller series (Season 1 of which dropped in 2021) Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is back — and he’s looking for revenge. Not your game? Get some post-holiday laughs in with Your Friend, Nate Bargatze, the comedian’s third special on Netflix after 2019’s The Tennessee Kid and 2021’s The Greatest Average American. 

If you have just a night … 

Spend it with one of the year’s biggest names (as he takes on many faces). As part of his breakout 2024, Glen Powell reteamed with his Everybody Wants Some!! collaborator Richard Linklater in the comedy Hit Man, co-written by its director and star and released in May. Inspired by a wild true story, Powell plays an unassuming professor who takes a side gig posing as a hit man in police-run sting operations, adopting an elaborate new persona each time. When he begins to fall for a would-be client (Adria Arjona), however, his orderly life begins to unravel. And if you find yourself craving a second hit of Powell’s star power, make it a double feature with last year’s Anyone But You, a Shakespeare-inflected rom-com by Will Gluck, co-starring Sydney Sweeney. 

If you have a whole day … 

Feel something. Distract yourself from any end-of-year angst by filling a day with three acclaimed documentaries, all of which premiered at Sundance in January, each celebrating humankind’s capacity for connection. Josh Greenbaum’s heartfelt Will & Harper follows Will Ferrell and his old friend Harper Steele on a cross-country road trip they took soon after Harper came out as a trans woman. Then, turn to bonds that transcend space and endure after death with Benjamin Ree’s The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, which looks back on the unexpectedly adventurous life — both online and off — of a young gamer who died from a rare illness. Finally, break your heart and put it back together again with Natalie Rae and Angela Patton’s deeply affecting Daughters, which documents a father-daughter dance at a Washington, DC jail.  

If you have the entire weekend … 

Tour the year in TV. You can devote the final days of December to some of the most talked-about new series that launched in the last 12 months and will continue to dominate the conversation with forthcoming follow-up seasons. Start off with David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo’s March release 3 Body Problem: The vibrant adaptation of the internationally celebrated novel The Three-Body Problem spans centuries and revolves around a group of scientists who follow a string of strange clues to some shocking revelations. Continue in style with The Gentlemen, the crime comedy by Guy Ritchie, spun off of the filmmaker’s 2019 film of the same name and launched in March; Theo James stars as a young English aristocrat who inherits more than he ever bargained for. And close things out on a romantic note: Erin Foster’s rom-com Nobody Wants This, which exploded upon its release in September, stars Kristen Bell as an irreverent Angeleno and Adam Brody as the rabbi with whom she shares an irresistible chemistry.  

Don’t forget, you have one last chance … 

To crack the case. Andy Breckman’s procedural dramedy Monk stars Tony Shalhoub as an obsessive-compulsive and variously phobic private detective in San Francisco. It ran for eight seasons, from 2002–2009, so start your marathon of it now! There’s nothing to fear — except its departure from streaming, in two weeks. 

Find Your Next Netflix Obsession on TudumWhatever you love to stream, we’ve got tips on the latest releases, true crime, book adaptations, stand-up comedy, award-winning films and more.