#TheLIST: 2015 in Pop Culture

Though Drake released "Hotline Bling" as as a single in July, it didn't officially take off until October, when a colorful video—featuring the rapper dad-dancing in a now-iconic oversized gray sweater—dropped. The instantly GIF-able clip immediately went viral, prompting hundreds of parodies, from Seinfeld''s Elaine to Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.

FOX used the momentum of a new year to its advantage in 2015, debuting the powerhouse Empire on January 7. The Lee Daniels drama, about the family behind a wildly successful record label, spawned an instant cultural phenomenon, complete with record-breaking viewership, a killer original soundtrack, a successful second season and one fiercely stylish Cookie Lyon.

In a year rife with reformation for women in Hollywood, comedian Amy Schumer led the crusade with in-your-face humor aimed at taking down the patriarchy. Though Season 3 of Inside Amy Schumer offered too many viral sketches to count ("Girl You Don't Need Makeup" and "Last F*ckable Day" are highlights), Schumer's turn as writer and star of Trainwreck took her from Comedy Central signature to household name. The year also saw the comedian star in her own HBO special, host Saturday Night Live, pose topless for Annie Liebovitz for the 2016 Pirelli calendar and land spots on TIME's 100 Most Influential People list (the gala at which she spectacularly photobombed Kanye West and Kim Kardashian) and Barbara Walter's Most Fascinating People list. With an $8 million book deal and a Jennifer Lawrence collaboration (beyond vacationing and partying on Billy Joel's piano) in the works, this is only the beginning for Schumer.

Not counting the Star Wars mania (we'll get to that in a minute), two films dominated pop culture this year. Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fanfic-turned-bestseller responsible for turning BDSM into a topic of mainstream conversation, received its blockbuster movie event in early 2015, complete with a Valentine's Day release date and loads of licensed merchandise (a handcuff-toting teddy bear, anyone?). When the dust settled in time for summer movie season, Mad Max: Fury Road arrived in theaters with guns blazing—literally. A reboot of the Mel Gibson-led Mad Max franchise of the '70s and '80s, Fury Road successfully subverted the stereotypical macho action flick with a distinctly feminist theme and a bad-ass group of female stars including Charlize Theron, Zoë Kravitz, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Riley Keough.

Taylor Swift secured "Bad Blood"'s status as the song of summer with a carefully-orchestrated video debut at the MTV VMAs in May, followed by a continent-hopping parade with her "squad" during The 1989 World Tour. Swift performed with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Selena Gomez, John Legend, Mick Jagger and even Lisa Kudrow (yep, "Smelly Cat") and took the stage with her "Bad Blood" crew, including Cara Delevingne, Gigi Hadid, Lena Dunham and Mariska Hargitay. Other guests included Kendall Jenner, Serena Williams and the entire U.S. Women's Soccer Team. "I feel like this tour and this album and this phase of my life have been about inclusivity," she revealed in a documentary about the tour. "Doing it on my own, but doing it with friends."

How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a Scotsman become the hottest-selling ticket on Broadway? By way of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony Award-winning creator of In the Heights, who wrote a musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton after reading Ron Chernow's biography about the late Founding Father. If you think you couldn't be less interested, you couldn't be more wrong; with a Grammy-nominated hip-hop soundtrack chock-full of odes to rap's greatest, a diverse cast ("we're telling the stories of old, dead white men but we're using actors of color, and that makes the story more immediate and more accessible to a contemporary audience," Miranda told The Hollywood Reporter), a nearly sold-out run (good luck finding resale tickets for less than $300) and a massive social media following, Hamilton is the furthest thing from history class. Consider getting onboard before the show sweeps the 2016 Tonys.

After eight years and seven seasons, AMC finally closed the doors on Sterling Cooper & Partners, tying up loose ends and giving Don Draper the ending he deserved. The cherry on top of the final season? Jon Hamm finally received the Emmy for Outstanding Actor in a Lead Drama at the Emmys in September.

June 14, 2015 will live in infamy for Game of Thrones fans, who witnessed the supposed death of Jon Snow in the final moments of the Season 5 finale. The show's stars (including Kit Harington himself) swear Snow's dead and gone, but with Harington spotted on set and his character appearing in the Season 6 poster, this isn't the last we've seen of Ned Stark's bastard.

Call it the Serial effect: 2015 sparked an obsession with unsolved murders, from Robert Durst's jaw-dropping revelation on HBO's The Jinx to the infuriating saga of Stephen Avery on Netflix's Making a Murderer. Haven't watched them yet? Get binging.

Both of 2015's major book events have their predecessors to thank for their successes, though that's where the similarities end. Paula Hawkins's The Girl on the Train, dubbed "the next Gone Girl" by critics, satisfied audiences' thirst for dark, twisted thrillers with a shocking murder mystery in the vein of Gillian Flynn. Meanwhile, Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee's first published work in 55 years and the sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, sparked controversy due to the mysterious circumstances surrounding its publication and the newfound racist attitude of Mockingbird's heroic Atticus Finch.

While original content on streaming sites is nothing new, per se (House of Cards and Orange Is the New Black hit Netflix in 2013, Transparent premiered on Amazon in 2014), 2015 saw a massive surge toward online-only platforms, with Netflix nabbing a trio of critically-acclaimed, social media-friendly hits: Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's hilariously inappropriate Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt; Narcos, based on the life of Colombian cocaine kingpin Pablo Escobar; and Jessica Jones, a female superhero saga courtesy of the Marvel juggernaut. In 2016, Netflix will premiere 31 original shows—more than twice what it produced in 2015—including Fuller House, Marvel's Luke Cage and a reboot of A Series of Unfortunate Events. Keep your weekends open.

In the history of the modern fandom, Star Wars (alongside Star Trek) holds a prime position as one of the original pop culture phenomenons. The franchise has had its fair share of highs (The Empire Strikes Back) and lows (those prequels), but nothing in its history could compare to the power of social media when Disney purchased Lucasfilm and announced a new trilogy of movies in 2012. With J.J. Abrams at the helm and a cast of new characters alongside the original heroes, Star Wars: The Force Awakens premiered to much fanfare on December 17 and promptly destroyed box office records. With a sequel set for May of 2017, this is only the beginning of a new era of Star Wars.