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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
The whole family is pulled into the world under reality, where somebody has been waiting a very long time for a way out.
Three people with light-based powers start swapping places every time they use them, which is a serious problem in a fight.
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.
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.
