showingnext releasetap a bar to jump
Every Marvel Studios film, series and special — plus the Netflix Defenders saga — organized into one interactive watch order. Sort, filter, track your progress, and never lose your place.
—
Six other Marvel continuities exist. Most have nothing to do with the run above — but a couple do brush against it, so here is exactly which, and how much it matters.
Twenty years of mutants made before Disney bought Fox. Deadpool & Wolverine treats this as a real, dying universe — Earth-10005 — so a little Logan helps there. Nothing else does.
Marvel comics licensed to different studios before Marvel Studios existed. Tobey Maguire's and Andrew Garfield's Spider-Men return in No Way Home — that cameo is the only link.
Sony's villain-led films. Touched the MCU through the multiverse in No Way Home, but otherwise separate — Tom Holland's Spider-Man never appears.
Made by Marvel Television rather than Marvel Studios. They nod to the films freely, the films never nod back, and none of it is required.
Animated, Miles Morales, entirely its own continuity. Widely reckoned the best Spider-Man on screen — just nothing to do with the list above.
Fully replaced by First Steps, which is set on Earth-828. Nothing carries over.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one continuous story told across films and shows since 2008. Separate heroes are introduced in their own films, their paths keep crossing, and eventually they collide in the big team-up films. Because later stories assume you have seen the earlier ones, the order you watch it in genuinely matters — which is what this list is for.
There are two main ways. Release order — starting with Iron Man (2008) and following the order films and series came out — is how most fans recommend watching the MCU, because reveals and cameos land as intended. Timeline order follows the story chronologically, starting with Captain America: The First Avenger, set in WWII. Use the sort control above to switch between release order, timeline order and latest first.
This page covers every Marvel Studios film, Disney+ series and special released so far plus everything announced, along with the Netflix Defenders saga (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Punisher and The Defenders), which is now canon. The counters at the top show the current total, and the list is updated as Marvel announces more.
Watching the full Marvel Cinematic Universe takes hundreds of hours. The counters at the top of this page calculate the exact total runtime for whatever you filter to, and show how many nights that works out to at roughly two hours a night.
If you want the main storyline without watching everything, use the Essentials only filter. It narrows the list to the films and series carrying the central plot — the Infinity Saga arc and the key Multiverse Saga entries — and skips the side stories.
The Netflix Defenders saga is now canon, is included here, and matters if you're following Daredevil: Born Again. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Inhumans, Runaways, Cloak & Dagger and Helstrom were made by Marvel Television, sit outside official canon, and are not required.
Every card shows a Set in line — the year the story happens, which is often nothing like the release year. Captain Marvel is set in 1995, The Fantastic Four: First Steps in 1964, and Avengers: Endgame ends in 2023 after its five-year jump. Placements come from The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline (Marvel Studios / DK, 2023) for Phases One to Four, and from the Disney+ timeline and on-screen dates after that. Loki and What If…? sit outside time altogether, and where Marvel's own sources disagree the card says so.
Earth-616 is the main MCU — the Sacred Timeline the Avengers films take place on. It was named out loud in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Any other number means a separate universe: Earth-838 is the Illuminati's world in that same film, Earth-828 is The Fantastic Four: First Steps — a nod to Jack Kirby, born 28 August — and Earth-10005 is the Fox X-Men universe where most of Deadpool & Wolverine happens. Each card shows its designation beside the Set in date, but only where Marvel has actually stated one. What If…?, X-Men '97, Marvel Zombies and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man have no official number, and Loki sits at the Time Variance Authority, outside the timelines altogether — so those are left blank rather than guessed.
Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. It grew out of the wartime SSR and collapsed once HYDRA was found growing inside it. The glossary on this page also covers T.V.A., S.W.O.R.D., A.I.M. and the rest of the alphabet soup.
The in-universe name for the five years after Thanos erased half of all life, and for the moment everyone came back. Those who vanished returned exactly as they were, not a day older, while the world had moved on five years without them.
A deviation from the Sacred Timeline big enough to split a whole new branch off it. The Time Variance Authority existed to spot those moments and prune the branch before it could grow — which is what Loki is about.
No. Sony's Venom and Morbius films, the animated Spider-Verse films, the Fox X-Men films and the older Fantastic Four films are separate continuities. They share characters or comics with the MCU but aren't needed to follow the story — they're listed above so you know what you're skipping and why.
Infinity Stones, the TVA, the Blip, what S.H.I.E.L.D. actually stands for — the shorthand every Marvel conversation assumes you already know.
Opens full screen, works offline, and your ticked titles stay with you.
