Blade
The film that proved a Marvel adaptation could work, two years before anyone else tried.
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.
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Marvel Cinematic Universe · Release Order
Doomsday is not out yet, so this is a reading of what matters going in, not a ruling.
- 90Total
- 0Watched
- 90Remaining
- 5Essential left
- 276 hoursLeft to watch
The 1990s 1 title
The 2000s 16 titles
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X-Men
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.
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Blade II
A truce with the things he hunts, against something that hunts them.
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.
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Daredevil
The first go at the blind lawyer, twelve years before the good one.
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.
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X2: X-Men United
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.
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Hulk
Ang Lee's version, cut like a comic page and much stranger than its reputation.
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.
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The Punisher
A man loses everything and works through a list. Sunnier than it sounds, which is the problem.
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.
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Blade: Trinity
The third one, with a team he did not ask for.
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.
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Elektra
A spin-off nobody asked for, out barely two years after the film it spun off.
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.
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Man-Thing
A swamp horror film that went straight to cable. Included for completeness, not enthusiasm.
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.
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Fantastic Four
The 2005 one. Bright, silly, and much less embarrassed about it than what came later.
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.
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X-Men: The Last Stand
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.
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Blade: The Series — Season 1
Twelve episodes on cable, then nothing. Very few people have seen 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.
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Ghost Rider
A stunt rider sells his soul and gets a flaming skull out of 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.
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Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
The sequel, and a chrome figure on a surfboard who is better than the film around him.
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.
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Punisher: War Zone
A reboot four years later, far nastier, and quietly the best of the three.
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.
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X-Men Origins: Wolverine
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.
The 2010s 42 titles
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X-Men: First Class
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.
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Marvel One-Shot: The Consultant
Two agents in a diner work out how to disobey an order from above without appearing to.
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Marvel One-Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor's Hammer
A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent stops for snacks and walks into an armed robbery. Four minutes, one joke, well told.
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Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance
A sequel that gives up on being a normal film about twenty minutes in.
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.
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Marvel One-Shot: Item 47
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.
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The Wolverine
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.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 1
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.
- Phil Coulson
- Melinda May
- Daisy Johnson
- Leo Fitz
- Jemma Simmons
- Grant Ward
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Marvel One-Shot: Agent Carter
Stuck on a desk and talked over by every man in the room, she goes and does the job anyway.
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Marvel One-Shot: All Hail the King
A documentary crew interviews a jailed actor who is enjoying prison rather more than he should.
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X-Men: Days of Future Past
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.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 2
Rebuilding from nothing, with a rival version of the same organization and a discovery about where some people's abilities come from.
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Agent Carter — Season 1
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.
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WHiH Newsfront — Season 1
In-universe news bulletins covering the Avengers the way a rolling news channel would.
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Fantastic Four
The grim one. Famously troubled, and it shows in every frame.
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.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 3
The team is now in the business of finding people before a government does, and something came back through a doorway with them.
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Agent Carter — Season 2
Los Angeles, a new lab, and a case that turns on something nobody in it has the vocabulary for yet.
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Deadpool
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.
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WHiH Newsfront — Season 2
The same newsroom covering the fallout from Lagos, in the run-up to the Accords.
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X-Men: Apocalypse
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.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 4
Three stories in one season: a spirit of vengeance, an artificial intelligence, and a world that is not the world.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.: Slingshot
Six five-minute episodes following one agent on a job the series only mentions.
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Legion — Season 1
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.
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Team Thor: Part 2
The flatshare continues. Thor tries to get a job and does not understand money.
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Logan
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.
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Inhumans — Season 1
A royal family hiding on the moon is deposed and scattered across Hawaii.
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The Gifted — Season 1
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.
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Runaways — Season 1
Six teenagers discover their parents have been doing something monstrous together for years.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 5
The team wakes up somewhere with no sky, and has to work out what went wrong and when.
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Team Darryl
The flatmate gets a new roommate: an exiled ruler with no money and expensive taste.
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Legion — Season 2
Still refusing to confirm anything, now with a full year of dance sequences.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
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Deadpool 2
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.
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Cloak & Dagger — Season 1
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.
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The Gifted — Season 2
The underground splits over how hard to fight back.
Fox's mutant television, in its own corner of that continuity.
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Runaways — Season 2
On the run and living rough, with a dinosaur.
A Marvel Television cast that never crosses into the films.
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Cloak & Dagger — Season 2
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.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 6
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.
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Dark Phoenix
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.
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Legion — Season 3
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.
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Peter's To-Do List
Four minutes of errands before a school trip, done at speed and mostly badly.
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The Daily Bugle
One-minute in-universe news segments, shouted. Made to run alongside the Spider-Man films.
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Runaways — Season 3
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 2020s 31 titles
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. — Season 7
The last season is a tour through the last century, fixing what somebody else is trying to break.
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The New Mutants
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.
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Helstrom — Season 1
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.
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WandaVisionEssential
A sitcom that is not a sitcom, in a town that should not exist.
Set three weeks after Endgame.
- Wanda Maximoff
- Vision
- Billy Maximoff
- Agatha Harkness
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The Falcon and the Winter SoldierEssential
Two people who both knew the same man are made to work together and to decide what a shield is for.
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Loki — Season 1Essential
A version of Loki who escaped is arrested by an organization that polices the timeline itself.
- Loki
- Mobius M. Mobius
- Ravonna Renslayer
- Sylvie Laufeydottir
- He Who Remains
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What If…? — Season 1
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.
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Hawkeye
Clint wants to be home for Christmas. A young archer with his old suit makes that difficult.
- Clint Barton
- Kate Bishop
- Maya Lopez
- Wilson Fisk
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Moon Knight
A museum gift-shop worker with blackouts discovers what has been using them.
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Ms. Marvel
A teenager in Jersey City who writes fan fiction about the Avengers finds she can do something herself.
- Kamala Khan
- Carol Danvers
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She-Hulk: Attorney at Law
A lawyer who now has the same problem as her cousin would like to keep practicing law, thank you.
- Jennifer Walters
- Bruce Banner
- Wong
- Matt Murdock
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The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special
Two Guardians go to Earth to find Peter a Christmas present and pick a very specific one.
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Secret Invasion
Fury comes back to Earth for a problem that has been quietly building since the nineties.
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Loki — Season 2Essential
The consequences of the first season's last shot, and someone having to hold the whole thing together.
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What If…? — Season 2
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.
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Echo
Maya Lopez goes home to Oklahoma, and the man she ran from follows.
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X-Men '97 — Season 1
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.
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Agatha All Along
A witch with nothing left walks a road that grants a wish to whoever finishes it.
- Agatha Harkness
- Rio Vidal
- Billy Maximoff
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What If…? — Season 3
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.
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Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man — Season 1
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.
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Daredevil: Born Again — Season 1
Matt Murdock has given up the other job. The man running for mayor has not given up anything.
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Ironheart
Riri Williams is back in Chicago building something she cannot afford, and someone offers to fund it.
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Eyes of Wakanda
Animated. Wakandan agents recovering stolen artifacts across history.
An anthology spanning centuries, with a different cast each time.
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Marvel Zombies
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.
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Wonder Man — Season 1
An actor auditions for a superhero part in a Hollywood that already has real ones.
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Daredevil: Born Again — Season 2Essential
The mayor's grip tightens and the lawyer stops pretending the law is going to be enough.
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The Punisher: One Last Kill
A man who thought he was finished is pulled back in. Under an hour, and it does not let up.
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X-Men '97 — Season 2
The animated series continues, still picking up exactly where 1997 left off.
The 1990s animated continuity. Same names as the films, different people.