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.
- 65Total
- 0Watched
- 65Remaining
- 1Essential left
- 325 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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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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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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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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Daredevil — Season 1
A blind lawyer works Hell's Kitchen by day and does something less legal about it at night.
- Matt Murdock
- Karen Page
- Foggy Nelson
- Claire Temple
- Wilson Fisk
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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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Jessica Jones — Season 1
A private investigator who would rather not be anything else is forced to deal with a man she got away from once.
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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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Daredevil — Season 2
Two people arrive in the neighborhood with methods Matt cannot live with, and one of them he used to love.
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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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Luke Cage — Season 1
A man with unbreakable skin who wanted a quiet job in Harlem is pulled into what the neighborhood is actually run by.
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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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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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Iron Fist — Season 1
A man declared dead fifteen years ago walks back into his family's company barefoot.
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The Defenders — Season 1
Four people who all work alone are pushed into the same room by the same conspiracy.
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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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The Punisher — Season 1
A man everyone believes is dead goes looking for the truth about the operation that killed his family.
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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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Jessica Jones — Season 2
Jessica finally looks into the accident that changed her, and would rather not find what she finds.
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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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Luke Cage — Season 2
Harlem has a new problem, and Luke has become something the neighborhood expects things from.
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Iron Fist — Season 2
A shorter, sharper season about what the fist is actually for.
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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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Daredevil — Season 3
Matt is presumed dead, which is convenient for the man being released from prison.
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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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The Punisher — Season 2
A road trip, a girl who needs protecting, and a man who cannot leave anything alone.
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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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Jessica Jones — Season 3
The last season, and the most personal antagonist the show ever gave her.
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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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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 6 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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Spidey and the Avengers: Halloween Team-Up!
A Disney Junior Halloween special. Made for small children and not part of the main story at all.
A preschool special in its own continuity. The characters share names with the films and nothing else.
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VisionQuest — Season 1
Announced for October. Nothing here spoils it, because nobody has seen it.
Not out yet. A cast has been announced; until the show exists, printing one here would be repeating rumour as fact.
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Avengers: DoomsdayEssential
The one everything has been pointing at. Out in December; nothing here spoils it, because nobody has seen it.
Not out yet. Marvel has announced a cast; until the film exists, printing one here would be repeating rumour as fact — and the reveals are exactly what this site is for.