The Bear’s Final Season, Avatar TLA S2, and 529 New Oscar Voters: Your June 25 TV Roundup

If you cleared your schedule for today, you made the right call. June 25, 2026 is one of those rare days where two of the year’s most anticipated streaming releases land at the same time — plus the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences just invited a fresh batch of stars to become Oscar voters. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, the shows.

The Bear Final Season: Can Carmy Close the Kitchen?

Five seasons. Three years of shouting, sweating, and the most stressful restaurant scenes ever committed to television. The Bear drops its final episodes today on FX and Hulu, and if you’ve been following Carmy Berzatto’s journey from fine-dining prodigy to Chicago sandwich-shop owner, this is the moment you’ve been both dreading and anticipating.

The show that taught a generation of viewers what “Yes, chef” really means, that turned a messy Italian beef joint into a character in its own right, and that somehow made us care about restaurant hierarchy and tomato sauce recipes — it’s all coming to an end. Creator Christopher Storer has kept details of the final season remarkably quiet, but the throughline has always been clear: can Carmy build something sustainable without destroying himself in the process?

What made The Bear special from the start wasn’t just the performances — though Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have all delivered career-defining work. It was the show’s willingness to sit in uncomfortable moments. The seven-minute single-take kitchen meltdowns. The silent stares across a dining room. The way it treated cooking not as a metaphor for life but as life itself — messy, collaborative, and never quite finished.

If the final season sticks the landing, The Bear goes down as one of the defining shows of the 2020s. If it fumbles — well, we’ve seen plenty of great series stumble at the finish line. But given the track record, I’m betting on the former.

Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 — Netflix’s Redemption Arc Continues

Also landing today: the second season of Netflix’s live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender, and this is the season that has to prove the whole thing wasn’t a one-season wonder.

Season 1 of the live-action adaptation had a rocky road — fans of the original animated series were skeptical, and the first few episodes were uneven. But it found its footing by the finale, and the ratings were strong enough to justify going deeper into the Earth Kingdom arc. Season 2 covers the “Book Two: Earth” material — which means Toph Beifong.

Toph’s introduction is a make-or-break moment for this adaptation. In the animated series, she’s one of the most beloved characters — a blind earthbender who invents metalbending and delivers some of the show’s best dialogue. The casting of a young actress in the role (Netflix has kept the full cast reveal surprisingly tight) is going to be scrutinized by one of the most passionate fanbases in all of television. No pressure.

If they get Toph right, Avatar solidifies itself as Netflix’s answer to the big-budget fantasy series that every streamer wants. If they don’t — well, the internet will have opinions. Lots of them.

What Else Is Dominating the Conversation

While The Bear and Avatar are today’s headliners, several other shows are keeping the TV conversation humming this week.

House of the Dragon Season 3 is in full swing on HBO and Max, with episode 2 airing Sunday. The Dance of the Dragons is escalating — Rhaenyra’s position is getting more precarious by the episode, and the Greens are circling. The ratings have held strong, and the critical reception suggests the show has fully recovered from the pacing complaints that dogged Season 2. If you bounced off halfway through the last season, now’s the time to catch up.

The Traitors continues to dominate the reality conversation — the celebrity edition wrapped its Peacock run strong, and with NBC’s civilian version premiering September 17 (full schedule breakdown here), the franchise is having its biggest moment yet. The show’s blend of social strategy, genuine suspense, and Alan Cumming’s increasingly unhinged wardrobe choices has turned it into appointment viewing in an era where nothing is appointment viewing anymore.

FROM on MGM+ remains one of the most in-demand shows on television, Spider-Noir is still the number-one trending new series, and Widow’s Bay on Apple TV+ has quietly built one of the most passionate fanbases of the summer. It’s a packed moment in TV, and we haven’t even hit the fall premiere avalanche yet.

529 New Oscar Voters Walk Into a Room…

Shifting from what’s on screen to who gets to vote on it: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced Wednesday that it’s inviting 529 new members to join its ranks — and the list is stacked with names that TV audiences will recognize immediately.

The headline invitees include Jenna Ortega (Wednesday, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice), Jacob Elordi (Euphoria, Saltburn), Teyana Taylor (an Oscar nominee this year for One Battle After Another), Josh O’Connor (The Crown, Challengers), and Simu Liu (Shang-Chi, Barbie). Also on the list: Bill Skarsgård, Mia Goth, Anthony Ramos, Jon Bernthal, and Jemaine Clement.

Behind the camera, the Safdie brothers (Josh and Benny) got their invites, as did Weapons director Zach Cregger and Sirât filmmaker Oliver Laxe. And in a notable corporate crossover, new Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro was also invited — park executives don’t usually make the cut, but the Academy’s embrace of theme-park-adjacent entertainment is clearly broadening.

If everyone accepts, the Academy’s membership will reach 11,319 people, with 10,338 eligible to vote on the Oscars. That’s nearly double the size the organization was a decade ago, when it hovered around 6,000 members. The expansion — which accelerated after the #OscarsSoWhite controversy in 2015 — has significantly diversified the voting body. The new class is 42% women, 56% from underrepresented communities, and 53% from outside the United States.

Why This Class Matters

The Academy’s membership shape directly affects what gets nominated and what wins. A decade ago, the voter base was 75% male and 92% white — and the nominees reflected that. Today, with international voters making up 22% of the total and each new class tilting younger and more diverse, the Oscars have become a genuinely different institution.

This year’s class is heavy on performers who work across both film and television — Ortega, Elordi, O’Connor, and Liu all have major TV credits alongside their movie work. That blurring of the film-TV line mirrors the broader industry trend, where the most interesting work increasingly lives somewhere between the two formats. An Academy that understands both worlds is an Academy better equipped to judge them.

The 99th Academy Awards will be held March 14, 2027, with Conan O’Brien returning for his third consecutive year as host. The new voters will have their first say then — and given the caliber of this class, their influence will be felt immediately.

So What Should You Actually Watch Today?

If you’ve only got time for one thing: The Bear. It’s the final season, the episodes are tight (most under 40 minutes), and you’re going to want to be part of the conversation while it’s happening. The internet does not wait for late viewers on this show.

If you need something lighter, Avatar: The Last Airbender Season 2 is a binge-friendly alternative — the Earth Kingdom arc is widely considered the best stretch of the original animated story, and seeing it in live-action with a proper budget is worth the time.

And if you’re just here for the drama of who gets to wear a tuxedo and hand out golden statues, start tracking the new Academy members. Somewhere in that list of 529 names is the person who’ll cast the deciding vote in a major category 18 months from now.

TV in 2026 doesn’t do slow weeks. Today might be the busiest one yet.