Best Time Travel Movies TV Shows
In a post-Harry Potter world, it seems like every franchise is in the sci-fi realm — bring on the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and dystopian dramas, please! But if you’ve been associating sci-fi purely with tales of magic, fantasy, and galaxies far, far away, you’ve been missing out on one very special, often romantic corner of the genre: stories about time travel.
From Starz’s steamy, alluring Outlander to heartfelt dramas like About Time or The Time Traveler’s Wife, movies and TV shows that take you across time are period dramas, tales of heartbreak, and ruminations on the meaning of home all in one. But time travel movies and TV shows aren’t just dramatic, tear-jerking watches either. Take Totally Killer, Groundhog Day, or Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, for instance, there’s no greater proof that time travel can be all kinds of funny too!
Read on for our favorite time travel movies and TV shows to share with your family next time it’s sci-fi night — if you’re in the mood for something a little more The Notebook and a little less The Hobbit, you’ll find it on this list.
A version of this article was originally published in October 2021.
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Needle in a Timestack
Needle in a Timestack sees Orlando Bloom and Leslie Odom Jr. facing off for Cynthia Erivo’s love as the timelines of all of their lives become rewritten.
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Outlander
If you love feminism, love, a little bit of bigamy, and time traveling through a rock to Scotland in the 1700s, then follow Claire Fraser (Caitríona Balfe) back into the past. She rocks the 1700s all the way back to the 1960s and has a husband in each time.
The real love story in Outlander is between Jamie and Claire Fraser, but it’s not an easy happy tale of romance and kilts. It’s got action, drama, sex, and trauma but most of all an aspirational love story at the heart.
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Doctor Who
BBC’s Doctor Who series follows a brilliant and curious Time Lord in adventures across space and time with a faithful human companion in the TARDIS, a time-travel machine that appears from the outside like a blue police phone box.
The Doctor has been played by Matt Smith, David Tennant, Peter Capaldi, and — most recently — Ncuti Gatwa.
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Pleasantville
Bickering siblings David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are taken back to the black-and-white world of David’s favorite 1950s TV show Pleasantville in this quirky family comedy that quickly becomes a commentary on the limits and dark sides of the dated small-town culture they’re now living in.
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The Time Traveler’s Wife
What is it about Rachel McAdams that goes so well with romance? Librarian Henry De Tamble (Eric Bana) is a time-traveler who can’t control when and how long he’ll travel for. When he falls in love with Claire (Rachel McAdams), his condition threatens to tear their life apart.
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Looper
Set in a future society where time travel can be purchased for a price, Looper tells the story of Joe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), an assassin who sends his victims back in time to kill them without a trace. When he’s assigned to end his own loop by killing an older version of himself (Bruce Willis), he sets off on a path to try and evade his fate.
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Edge of Tomorrow
Edge of Tomorrow sees Tom Cruise sucked into a time loop on a military mission fighting an extraterrestrial attack on Earth — every time he dies in the mission, he wakes up and lives it all over again. Emily Blunt, trapped in the same loop, joins him on a mission to find their way out.
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Arrival
Amy Adams stars in Arrival as a linguistics professor helping lead communications with extra-terrestrials who have landed their spaceships on Earth. It’s up to their team to find out whether these beings are peaceful before one of the affected nations calls for war — and how does time travel factor into it? You’ll have to watch to find out.
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About Time
About Time is a romantic story of Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) learning that he has the ability to time-travel from his father and trying to use the skill to magically make his life better — winning over the woman he loves, trying to keep his friends and family safe from harm. But Tim soon learns that the rules of time travel are more complicated than they appear.
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Back to the Future
We could talk about time travel movies without Back to the Future, right? This classic time-travel film tells the story of teen Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), who gets into friend Doc Brown’s (Christopher Lloyd) DeLorean machine and accidentally travels back to the ’50s, where he’s tasked with making sure he doesn’t interfere in his mother and father meeting and deciding to marry — otherwise, he’ll never have been born at all.
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The Way Home
Hallmark’s channel time-traveling show, The Way Home, has fans at the edge of their seats in almost every episode. The show follows the Landry family as their youngest, Alice, discovers that the pond near her house transports back in time to 1999.
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Totally Killer
Starring Kiernan Shipka, Totally Killer tells the story of a teen who magically travels back in time to 1987 just in time to stop a serial killer from murdering all of her mom’s best friends.
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Time Cut
In another teen time-travel movie, Time Cut follows a teen in 2024 named Lucy (Madison Bailey) who travels back in time to 2003 – the year her own sister (Antonia Gentry) was murdered by a notorious serial killer.
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Groundhog Day
While there’s not necessarily a time machine involved, Groundhog Day‘s Phil (Bill Murray) travels back in time 24 hours and has to live the same day over and over again in this comedy classic.
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‘Palm Springs’
Speaking of an endless time loop, Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg find themselves in a time travel scenario of their own in Palm Springs when they have to relive the same day over and over again after a chance encounter at a wedding.
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Happy Death Day
Time loop meets an unexpected serial killer plot yet again in 2017’s Happy Death Day. In the movie, a serial killer murders snarky sorority sister Tree Gelbman – then she lives the day over and over again in an attempt to solve her own demise.
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Source Code
In 2011’s Source Code, Jake Gyllenhaal’s character Colter shows how time travel could be used for good. In the movie, he’s part of a top-secret military operation that enables him to experience the last few minutes of someone else’s life right before a major bomber attack. His mission is simple: find the person who did it.
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‘Safety Not Guaranteed’
While the characters aren’t actively time-traveling for most of this movie, Safety Not Guaranteed is all about the stigma and common misconceptions about time travel itself. The movie follows three journalists who see an unusual time travel classified ad and set on an adventure to find out if the guy is the real deal.
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‘The Lake House’
Starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves, The Lake House follows an architect who moves into a new lake home only to start corresponding with the former resident, Reeves’ character Alex, through their mailbox. But will their timelines ever align?
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‘Kate & Leopold’
In this rom-com time travel movie, Kate & Leopold, Hugh Jackman plays a Duke from the 1800s who finds himself in modern-day New York City with only a busy executive (Meg Ryan) to show him the ropes.
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‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’
In this 1989 comedy classic, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure follows Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves’ characters as they travel back in time to major historical milestones just to make sure they pass their history exam.
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‘The Terminator’
Speaking of classics, The Terminator is as a classic time travel movie as they come. The movie franchise follows a cyborg assassin from the future (Arnold Schwarzenegger) as he travels back in time to protect a young woman.
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