Change anything you like below, then build it.
Marvel Cinematic Universe · In-Universe Order
Doomsday is not out yet, so this is a reading of what matters going in, not a ruling.
A man too small and too sick to enlist is picked for an experiment because of exactly the qualities the army had been screening out.
Opens and closes in the present day.
Post-credits scene · Captain America: The First Avenger
Steve is training in a gym, and he is not alone.
Fury tells him the world needs him for something.
Leads to The Avengers — Directly.
Stuck on a desk and talked over by every man in the room, she goes and does the job anyway.
A year after the war, the woman who won it is answering phones. Then an old contact asks her to clear his name off the books.
Los Angeles, a new lab, and a case that turns on something nobody in it has the vocabulary for yet.
A soldier in an alien war crash-lands on a planet she does not remember, with someone else's version of her own past in her head.
Mid-credits scene · Captain Marvel
Years later, the pager stops beeping, and the person who answered it is standing there.
Carol arrives at Avengers HQ.
Leads to Avengers: Endgame
A weapons manufacturer is taken hostage, builds a way out of a cave, and comes home with a very different idea about what he wants to make.
Post-credits scene · Iron Man
Someone is waiting in Tony's house with an offer.
Nick Fury introduces himself and mentions the Avenger Initiative.
Leads to The Avengers — Four years and five films away.
Going public has consequences. A government wants the armour, a rival wants the contract, and a stranger with a grudge wants the man inside it.
Post-credits scene · Iron Man 2
A car pulls up in the New Mexico desert, and someone makes a phone call about what's in the crater.
Coulson has found Mjolnir.
Leads to Thor — Picks up moments later.
A scientist on the run in South America looks for a cure for what he turns into when his pulse climbs, while the people who want to weaponize it close in.
Post-credits scene · The Incredible Hulk
A familiar face walks into a bar to talk to a general about a team.
Tony Stark tells General Ross they're putting a team together.
Leads to The Avengers — The same recruitment drive.
An arrogant prince of an alien kingdom is stripped of his power and dumped on Earth, where nobody has any reason to be impressed by him.
Post-credits scene · Thor
Fury shows a scientist a glowing cube and asks him to study it. Someone else is in the room.
Erik Selvig is being quietly influenced by Loki, and the cube is the Tesseract.
Leads to The Avengers — This is where that film starts.
A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent stops for snacks and walks into an armed robbery. Four minutes, one joke, well told.
Two agents in a diner work out how to disobey an order from above without appearing to.
A spy agency spends its last favors assembling people who do not work well together, because the alternative is losing the planet.
Mid-credits scene · The Avengers
Deep in space, someone is told what attacking Earth would mean. They smile.
Thanos turns around for the first time.
Leads to Avengers: Infinity War — Six years of setup starts here.
A broke couple find alien hardware in the wreckage of New York and use it to rob banks.
Two one-off characters who appear nowhere else. Nobody to keep track of.
After New York, the armour is a coping mechanism. Then a bombing campaign takes the fight somewhere the suit cannot follow.
Christmas.
A documentary crew interviews a jailed actor who is enjoying prison rather more than he should.
An enemy older than the realms wakes up, and the only route to stopping him runs through the one person nobody in Asgard should trust.
Mid-credits scene · Thor: The Dark World
An object is delivered for safekeeping to a man with a very strange collection.
The Collector takes the Aether, and says one down, five to go.
Leads to Guardians of the Galaxy — Same man, same collection.
A team with no powers and one very large plane runs the cases the Avengers never hear about.
The back half runs alongside The Winter Soldier and is much better for it.
A man out of his own time starts pulling at a thread inside the agency he works for, and something very good at killing is sent to stop him.
Mid-credits scene · Captain America: The Winter Soldier
In a facility somewhere in Europe, two people are being held in cells. Both can do things they should not be able to do.
Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, held by Baron von Strucker, with Loki's sceptre nearby.
Leads to Avengers: Age of Ultron — The film opens on this facility.
Rebuilding from nothing, with a rival version of the same organization and a discovery about where some people's abilities come from.
A thief steals the wrong orb and ends up in a cell with four other people who all want to kill each other slightly less than they want to get paid.
A prologue in 1988.
Still barely a team, still barely paid, and now being chased by a fleet they stole from — until someone turns up claiming to know where Peter came from.
Post-credits scene · Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
A gold woman stands over a cocoon and names what is growing inside it.
Ayesha calls him Adam.
Leads to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 — Six years later.
An attempt to build something that would let everyone go home works exactly as well as that has ever worked.
Mid-credits scene · Avengers: Age of Ultron
Someone has run out of patience with people doing his errands, and picks up a gauntlet.
Thanos: fine, I'll do it myself.
Leads to Avengers: Infinity War — And he does.
A blind lawyer works Hell's Kitchen by day and does something less legal about it at night.
A private investigator who would rather not be anything else is forced to deal with a man she got away from once.
Two people arrive in the neighborhood with methods Matt cannot live with, and one of them he used to love.
A man with unbreakable skin who wanted a quiet job in Harlem is pulled into what the neighborhood is actually run by.
A man declared dead fifteen years ago walks back into his family's company barefoot.
Four people who all work alone are pushed into the same room by the same conspiracy.
A man everyone believes is dead goes looking for the truth about the operation that killed his family.
Jessica finally looks into the accident that changed her, and would rather not find what she finds.
Harlem has a new problem, and Luke has become something the neighborhood expects things from.
A shorter, sharper season about what the fist is actually for.
Matt is presumed dead, which is convenient for the man being released from prison.
A road trip, a girl who needs protecting, and a man who cannot leave anything alone.
The last season, and the most personal antagonist the show ever gave her.
The team is now in the business of finding people before a government does, and something came back through a doorway with them.
A burglar fresh out of prison is handed a suit that shrinks him, by an old man who needs a theft done and cannot do it himself.
Post-credits scene · Ant-Man
Two Avengers have a friend in a bad situation and cannot call anyone official about it.
Steve and Sam have Bucky trapped, and Sam says he knows a guy.
Leads to Captain America: Civil War — That guy is Scott.
In-universe news bulletins covering the Avengers the way a rolling news channel would.
After one operation too many goes wrong in public, the world asks the Avengers to sign something, and they do not agree about it.
Mid-credits scene · Captain America: Civil War
Somebody is put safely on ice in a country that has been keeping its abilities quiet.
Bucky goes under in Wakanda, with T'Challa's protection.
Leads to Black Panther — He is still there.
The same newsroom covering the fallout from Lagos, in the run-up to the Accords.
The flatshare continues. Thor tries to get a job and does not understand money.
Three stories in one season: a spirit of vengeance, an artificial intelligence, and a world that is not the world.
Six five-minute episodes following one agent on a job the series only mentions.
A royal family hiding on the moon is deposed and scattered across Hawaii.
The team wakes up somewhere with no sky, and has to work out what went wrong and when.
A year on, with someone missing and someone wearing a familiar face.
From here the show runs on its own track; see the canon note.
The last season is a tour through the last century, fixing what somebody else is trying to break.
On the run and off the books, Natasha goes back to the people she was raised with, which is not the same thing as family.
A prologue in 1995.
Post-credits scene · Black Widow
At a graveside, a woman with a clipboard hands out a new assignment.
Valentina points Yelena at Clint Barton.
A new king inherits a country that has spent centuries hiding what it can do, and a challenger arrives who thinks that was a crime.
A fifteen-year-old with an internship he cannot explain wants to be taken seriously, and picks a fight with people salvaging things they should not have.
A brilliant, unbearable surgeon loses the use of his hands and chases a cure to a place that offers him something else entirely.
Mid-credits scene · Doctor Strange
A visitor arrives at the Sanctum asking for help finding a missing person.
Thor, looking for Odin.
Leads to Thor: Ragnarok — The scene is replayed there.
Asgard is promised an ending. Thor is stranded on the far side of the galaxy with a collar around his neck and no hammer to reach for.
Mid-credits scene · Thor: Ragnarok
The refugee ship is stopped by something enormous.
Thanos's ship, the Sanctuary II.
Leads to Avengers: Infinity War — That film opens seconds later.
Two teenagers in New Orleans wake up with powers that only work when they are near each other.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
The pair go after a trafficking ring, and find out what their powers cost other people.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
Six teenagers discover their parents have been doing something monstrous together for years.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
On the run and living rough, with a dinosaur.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
The last run, and the only Marvel Television show to cross over with another.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
The flatmate gets a new roommate: an exiled ruler with no money and expensive taste.
Under house arrest and two days from freedom, Scott is pulled back into a rescue that has been thirty years in the planning.
Mid-credits scene · Ant-Man and the Wasp
A routine trip into the quantum realm goes wrong, because something has happened topside.
Everyone but Scott is dusted, leaving him stranded.
Leads to Avengers: Endgame — This is why he is missing.
Everything that has been building for ten years arrives at once, and it is not remotely enough.
Post-credits scene · Avengers: Infinity War
As everything falls apart, someone sends one last message on a very old device.
Fury pages Captain Marvel.
Leads to Captain Marvel — The film exists to answer this.
What is left of the team works out what to do next. Do not watch this one first.
Spans five years.
A sitcom that is not a sitcom, in a town that should not exist.
Set three weeks after Endgame.
Two people who both knew the same man are made to work together and to decide what a shield is for.
A man parking cars in San Francisco under a name that is not his is found by the organization he ran away from.
Mid-credits scene · Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Two Avengers join a call about the rings, and nobody can explain what they are.
Wong brings Shang-Chi and Katy to meet Banner and Carol Danvers.
Four minutes of errands before a school trip, done at speed and mostly badly.
A school trip across Europe, an adult who wants a favour, and a kid who would very much like one summer off.
Mid-credits scene · Spider-Man: Far From Home
A news broadcast makes two announcements, and the second one ruins Peter's life.
J. Jonah Jameson airs doctored footage and names Spider-Man as Peter Parker.
Leads to Spider-Man: No Way Home — The whole film is the fallout.
One-minute in-universe news segments, shouted. Made to run alongside the Spider-Man films.
A brother and sister hunt the worst thing their family ever produced. Cancelled after one season.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
Beings who have been on Earth for seven thousand years, forbidden to interfere, are forced to decide what that rule was ever for.
Reaches back to 5000 BC.
With his name public and his life falling apart, Peter asks for a spell to make everyone forget, which goes about as well as you would expect.
Clint wants to be home for Christmas. A young archer with his old suit makes that difficult.
A girl who can punch holes between universes is being hunted, and the safest place for her is next to a man who keeps having the same dream.
A museum gift-shop worker with blackouts discovers what has been using them.
A teenager in Jersey City who writes fan fiction about the Avengers finds she can do something herself.
A lawyer who now has the same problem as her cousin would like to keep practicing law, thank you.
Thor is trying to work out who he is with nothing left to avenge, which is when something starts killing gods.
A country in mourning is pushed by the rest of the world, and by a kingdom under the sea that has stayed hidden even longer than it did.
Fury comes back to Earth for a problem that has been quietly building since the nineties.
The whole family is pulled into the world under reality, where somebody has been waiting a very long time for a way out.
Maya Lopez goes home to Oklahoma, and the man she ran from follows.
To save one of their own the Guardians have to go back to where he was made, and find out who made him.
Three people with light-based powers start swapping places every time they use them, which is a serious problem in a fight.
A witch with nothing left walks a road that grants a wish to whoever finishes it.
Matt Murdock has given up the other job. The man running for mayor has not given up anything.
The mayor's grip tightens and the lawyer stops pretending the law is going to be enough.
Riri Williams is back in Chicago building something she cannot afford, and someone offers to fund it.
An actor auditions for a superhero part in a Hollywood that already has real ones.
A washed-up mercenary is recruited by an organization that manages timelines, and immediately makes everything much worse.
Placement is loose on purpose; the film treats its own chronology as a joke.
A new Captain America walks into an international incident at the centre of government and cannot tell who arranged it.
A group of people who have all done unforgivable things are put in a room together, and it is not a rescue.
Four explorers come back from a trip changed, in a bright retro-futurist world that has already decided they are heroes.
Set in its own universe, not on the main timeline.
Working the city alone, with nobody left who remembers who he is.
Told outside the main story. Nothing here is needed to follow it.
How Logan got the metal, told at length.
Reaches back to the 1840s.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
Before any of it, two young men find each other and try to stop a war nobody else can see.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
The future has gone as badly as possible, so someone is sent back far enough to stop it starting.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
Something very old wakes up under Cairo and starts recruiting.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
A rescue in orbit goes wrong and one of the team comes back holding far more than she can carry.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
Animated. Wakandan agents recovering stolen artifacts across history.
An anthology spanning centuries, with a different cast each time.
Two men who agree about what is coming and about nothing else run rival schools for people born different.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
A military scientist convinces a president that the problem needs solving, and old enemies have to work together.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
A company announces a cure, which is one word for it, and the question splits everyone.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
Five young people are held in a facility for their own safety, which is not what is happening.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
A man in a psychiatric hospital is told he is not ill. The show refuses to confirm anything.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
Still refusing to confirm anything, now with a full year of dance sequences.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
The last one, and the one that finally says what it has been about.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
A suburban family goes on the run when the children turn out to be mutants.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
The underground splits over how hard to fight back.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
Logan is summoned to Japan by a man he saved a long time ago who wants to return the favor.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
A mercenary takes an experimental cure, comes out unkillable and disfigured, and goes looking for the man responsible.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
Wade assembles a team, badly, to protect a boy from a soldier who has come a long way to kill him.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
A version of Loki who escaped is arrested by an organization that polices the timeline itself.
The consequences of the first season's last shot, and someone having to hold the whole thing together.
An old man, a dying mentor, and a girl who needs driving across a country that has no use for any of them.
A separate universe from the main line. Deadpool & Wolverine made that connection explicit rather than tidy, so this order is a reading of it, not a ruling.
Animated. Familiar stories with one thing changed, and then followed honestly to the end.
Alternate universes, so it does not sit on the main timeline.
An alternate universe, so it does not sit on the main timeline. Placed at the end.
An anthology. Every episode has a different cast, so a single list would be a lie.
More of the same idea, and rather more confident with it.
Alternate universes, so it does not sit on the main timeline.
An alternate universe, so it does not sit on the main timeline. Placed at the end.
An anthology. Every episode has a different cast, so a single list would be a lie.
Animated, and a direct continuation of the nineties series.
Its own universe, not the main timeline.
An alternate universe, so it does not sit on the main timeline. Placed at the end.
A continuation of the nineties series with its own large ensemble, not yet listed.
The animated series continues, still picking up exactly where 1997 left off.
The 1990s animated continuity. Same names as the films, different people.
The last run of the animated series.
Alternate universes, so it does not sit on the main timeline.
An alternate universe, so it does not sit on the main timeline. Placed at the end.
An anthology. Every episode has a different cast, so a single list would be a lie.
Animated. A different first year for Peter Parker.
Its own universe, not the main timeline.
An alternate universe, so it does not sit on the main timeline. Placed at the end.
Its own universe with its own versions of familiar people, not yet listed.
Animated, and not for children.
An alternate universe, not the main timeline.
An alternate universe, so it does not sit on the main timeline. Placed at the end.
An anthology in its own universe, with a rotating cast.
Its own continuity. Two of these are the reason No Way Home lands the way it does.
The one that started all of this. A teenager gets bitten and learns what it costs.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
Still the high-water mark. A man who cannot afford to be a hero and does it anyway.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
Three villains, a black suit and a dance number. Beloved now for reasons it did not intend.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
A reboot five years later, with a lighter lead and a much better romance.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
Overstuffed and building to a sequel that never came, but the ending is the reason to watch it.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
Animated, and the best thing anyone has done with this character on screen.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
A journalist and the thing living in him argue their way through San Francisco.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
Ninety-seven minutes, one red monster, and a mid-credits scene that mattered more than the film.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
A doctor cures himself into something worse. Famous mostly for how it was received.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
The middle chapter, and it ends mid-sentence on purpose.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
A paramedic starts seeing a few seconds ahead. It does not go anywhere.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
The last of the three, and it says so in the title.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
The last film Sony made in this vein before stopping.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
A private detective in a black coat, in black and white, in the Depression.
A separate continuity with its own version of these characters. Listing them beside the MCU's would merge two people who share a name and nothing else.
