You can give the appended divs a class then call them by it like this :

$movies.append('<li class="movie" id="list"><a href="">'+ movie.name +'</a></li>');

//then later

let movies = $('.movie');
console.log(movies);

but if you meant to execute this script right after the ajax request then you should call a function in the ajax success since ajax is async and the moment you execute a jquery select , the elements are still not there because ajax takes more time to retrieve the data put it in the document... you can make a getMovies() to execute there like this:

//declare this outside the ajax

let movies = []

function getMovies(){
     return $('.movie');
}

then

//ajax
success: function(){
     movies = getMovies(); //add this line
}

there you go now you have movies stocked inside the 'movies' array

It seems you are running into a race condition of sorts. You are building the list using an asynchronous ajax request to an API. Before that completes, you are then attaching the Javascript code to trigger an event.

What you need to do is add the callback inside of the ready block after the list data is retrieved and the list is created.

The attribute id should unique in a document, you can use class instead.

Try $('body').on('click', '.list a', function(event){....

Demo:

$(function() {

  let $movies = $('#showList')
  let $m = $('#show')
  $.ajax({
    method: 'GET',
    url: 'http://api.tvmaze.com/shows',
    success: function(movies) {
      $.each(movies, function(i, movie) {
        $movies.append('<li class="list"><a href="">' + movie.name + '</a></li>')
      })
    }

  })

});

$('body').on('click', '.list a', function(event) {
  console.log('here');
  event.preventDefault();//stay on the same page
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.2.4/jquery.min.js"></script>

<h1 id='bruh'>TV Shows</h1>
<ul id="showList"></ul>
<div id="show"></div>
<form id="searchForm">
  <input type="text" id="search_term">
  <label for="text">Search</label>
  <button>Submit</button>
</form>
<a id="homelink" href="#" hidden>Back to All Shows</a>