How to Watch Every Marvel Movie and Series in Order

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is perhaps a little controversial in 2024. It’s come a long way since it began in 2008, spanning dozens of movies and TV shows and even incorporating elements from movies before its time. How’s a fan supposed to catch up?

Enter CableTV.com. We’re here to keep things in order with this complete overview of the MCU. Excelsior!

Jump to:

• Where to watch the MCU
• How to watch the MCU in order
• MCU-adjacent shows and movies
• What to watch before the next Marvel movie

Where to watch the MCU

If you’re a Marvel fan, the main streaming service you need is Disney+. Most MCU titles are available on this list. Sony still owns the film rights to Spider-Man, so those movies are split awkwardly between Disney+ and a few other services for the time being.

How to watch the MCU in order

Almost every item on this list is available for streaming on Disney+. The only exceptions are the Spider-Man movies, which are co-owned by Sony thanks to deals Marvel made prior to the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s creation. Sometimes you’ll find them on Disney+, but sometimes you’ll find them on another service like Fubo, STARZ, or Netflix.

For the purposes of this list, we’re recommending the titles in release order. We’re also including Marvel One-Shots, which are short films meant to fill in some gaps (usually in a comedic way) between movies. These aren’t required viewing, per se, but they’re worth a look if you’re a completionist.

Jump to:

• Phase One
• Phase Two
• Phase Three
• Phase Four
• Phase Five

Phase One

The Marvel Cinematic Universe started in May 2008 with Iron Man. Phase One culminated in The Avengers, the first movie to see the MCU’s main cast all starring and interacting in one movie. This was totally groundbreaking in 2012—a corporate synergy not seen since the days of House of Mouse on Toon Disney.

This is also the first phase of what is now called “The Infinity Saga,” although it wasn’t called that at the time.

1. Iron Man
2. The Incredible Hulk
3. Iron Man 2
4. Thor
5. One-Shot: The Consultant
6. Captain America: The First Avenger
7. One-Shot: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Thor’s Hammer
8. The Avengers
9. One-Shot: Item 47

Phase Two

Phase Two handles the aftermath of The Avengers. Once the core heroes were established, the movies explore the characters a bit further and start setting the scene for Thanos to make an entrance in Phase Three.

Phase Three

Phase Three covers the Infinity Saga’s climax. The years of teasing Thanos and the Infinity Stones finally paid off in Avengers: Infinity War. The impact of that movie and its direct sequel, Endgame, forever changes most of the existing MCU characters’ stories.

1. Captain America: Civil War
2. One-Shot: Team Thor Part 1
3. Doctor Strange
4. One-Shot: Team Thor Part 2
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
6. Spider-Man: Homecoming
7. Thor: Ragnarok
8. One-Shot: Team Darryl
9. Black Panther
10. Avengers: Infinity War
11. Ant-Man and the Wasp
12. Captain Marvel
13. Avengers: Endgame
14. Spider-Man: Far From Home

Phase Four

Phase Four begins the “Multiverse Saga” and is the most bloated of the existing MCU phases, but don’t let that intimidate you. Unlike previous phases, the titles on this list aren’t that closely connected. There are some common threads; for example, WandaVision, Loki, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness all deal with time travel-y multiverse stuff. However, a lot of these titles were written and filmed simultaneously, so they didn’t really have time to learn from and reference each other. You can pretty much watch Phase Four of the MCU in any order.

The best watch strategy here, if you haven’t been following along, is to focus only on the titles that interest you. If you like the Scarlet Witch, watch WandaVision. If you like Loki, watch Loki. If you’re a comics fan (like this writer), you’d probably be pretty happy with Ms. Marvel, Hawkeye, and Moon-Girl and Devil Dinosaur.

But if you want to be a total completionist? Well, good luck.

Phase Five

Phase Five is ongoing, so we don’t know exactly how it will continue the Multiverse story, or even if these release dates are 100% correct. But we’ll keep you updated as we find out!

1. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (Disney+, now streaming)
2. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Disney+, now streaming)
3. Secret Invasion (Disney+, now streaming)
4. Loki season 2 (Disney+, now streaming)
5. The Marvels (Disney+, now streaming)
6. What If…? season 2 (Disney+, now streaming)
7. Echo (Disney+, now streaming)
8. Deadpool & Wolverine (in theaters, July 26, 2024)
9. X-Men ‘97 (Disney+, 2024)
10. Ironheart (Disney+, 2024)
11. Captain America: Brave New World (in theaters, 2024)
12. Agatha: Coven of Chaos (Disney+, 2024)
13. Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+, 2024)
14. Thunderbolts (in theaters, 2024)
15. Blade (in theaters, 2025)

MCU-adjacent shows and movies

The problem with keeping a single, standard canon across dozens of shows and movies is that sometimes, your plans change. Maybe you want to incorporate elements from movies you didn’t personally make, and sometimes you declare something canon only to walk back on it a few years later.

Such is the fate of many Marvel properties prior to the creation of Disney+. These titles aren’t necessarily required to understand the full MCU, but were canon at one point or another and are really good (mostly, if you ignore Inhumans).

For the sake of this writer’s sanity and time, we’re limiting this list to titles that have actually, materially crossed over with the MCU. But if Kevin Feige wants to go ahead and reference the Runaways TV show, we’re here for it.

Jump to:

• The Spider-verse
• The S.H.I.E.L.D.-verse
• The Defenders Saga
• The X-Men movies

The Spider-verse

With the popularity of the Spider-Verse comics and movies, Marvel Studios and Sony are finally coming around to reluctantly acknowledging each other’s movies. The most obvious example of this is Spider-Man: No Way Home, an MCU movie that brought in characters and actors from both Tobey Maguire’s and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Man movies, which are both fully owned by Sony. (In contrast, Sony and Disney share the Tom Holland movies).

The S.H.I.E.L.D.-verse

This one really hurts. When ABC first aired Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in 2013, it was supposed to be a canon extension of the story from The Avengers. It starred Clark Gregg, whose character Phil Coulson was extremely important throughout Phase One of the MCU, and who even came back for the flashback-movie Captain Marvel in Phase Three.

However, despite the series running for seven years, Marvel axed it in 2020 and unofficially declared its events noncanon. Maybe this is because the show dealt with time travel before the rest of the MCU was ready for it—although honestly, the MCU has yet to stick to its own time travel rules, so S.H.I.E.LD. might as well be canon, as far as we’re concerned. Also, it’s really good, and way underappreciated by the general public.

S.H.I.E.L.D. saw two spinoffs of its own. The first was Agent Carter, which continued Peggy Carter’s story after the events of Captain America: The First Avenger, and even crossed over with Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. in its later seasons.

The second was Inhumans, which was hypothetically supposed to continue the inhuman storylines from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Unfortunately, it didn’t do that at all, and it was really bad on top of that. Maybe that part of the MCU is better off forgotten.

1. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
2. Agent Carter*
3. Inhumans

*you should watch Agent Carter any point before the final season of S.H.I.E.L.D. Trust us!

The Defenders Saga, a.k.a. the Netflix shows

The Netflix Marvel shows are floating in a very murky purgatory right now. Like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., they were produced before Disney+ and were originally made to be MCU canon. Unfortunately, the movies refused to acknowledge any of the TV shows, even though they supposedly shared a universe.

This saga is now technically a “legacy” story, although you see certain characters pop up in the MCU at times; both Matt Murdock/Daredevil and Wilson Fisk/Kingpin have appeared in a few of the MCU’s recent projects, and there’s a new Daredevil show, Born Again, coming down the line.

Unfortunately for die-hard fans, though, none of these recent projects recognize the Defenders Saga as canon, and we’ve yet to see Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, or even Foggy Nelson again. We miss them dearly.

1. Daredevil
2. Jessica Jones
3. Luke Cage
4. Iron Fist
5. The Defenders
6. Punisher
7. Spider-Man: No Way Home*
8. Hawkeye*
9. She-Hulk: Attorney at Law*
10. Echo*

*MCU canon, cameos only

Fox’s X-Men movies

For years, 20th Century Fox owned the rights to all of Marvel’s mutant characters (a.k.a The X-Men), and Marvel Studios handled almost everything else. The Fox X-Men movies actually predate the existence of the MCU, and a lot of people credit X-Men (2000) as the start of the modern superhero craze.

Since they were made by different studios, the X-Men movies existed in a different cinematic universe from the MCU. But now Disney that owns both Marvel Studios and Fox, they’re ready to cross the streams.

It’s unclear how exactly the two multiverses will merge, but it seems like it’s all going down in Deadpool & Wolverine, coming to theaters in July 2024.

What to watch before the next Marvel movie

What to watch before The Marvels

The Marvels is now streaming on Disney+. Ironically, the “Marvel” side of the MCU is less developed than other parts, so there are really only three titles you need to watch before the new movie. Each one introduces one of the movie’s three main characters: Carol Danvers, Monica Rambeau, and Kamala Khan.

Luckily for you, these are also three of Marvel’s best MCU installments.

1. Captain Marvel
2. WandaVision
3. Ms. Marvel

What to watch before Loki season 2

Perhaps this one is obvious: you should probably watch Loki‘s first season before watching the second one on Disney+. But Loki has been around since Phase One, and there’s been a lot of movies between then and now. Here’s a list of entries that are important to this Loki variant’s storyline:

1. Thor
2. The Avengers
3. Thor 2: The Dark World
4. Thor: Ragnarok*
5. Avengers: Infinity War
6. Avengers: Endgame
7. Loki season 1
8. Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantummania**

*Actually, this one didn’t happen to the Loki we see in this series. But it’s still a fun watch if you’re a Loki fan.

**Loki isn’t in this one, but you’ll still see a familiar face.

You might think, based on the title, that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would be on this list, along with its prequel, WandaVision. However, these were all made during a weird period of time for Marvel when the company was churning out more content than it could handle. Because of this, all of these titles were made at the same time, and generally the writers didn’t read each others’ work. So the multiverse works differently in Doctor Strange and Loki, and even WandaVision and Quantummania feel like they’re telling entirely different stories.

We can only hope that the recent successes of the WGA Writers’ Strike will give Marvel writers a little more breathing room, and time to make the MCU feel more like the same universe again.

What to watch before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3

What to watch before Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania is now streaming on Disney+. If you’re behind on MCU films, don’t worry; you don’t have to watch all 900 Marvel movies to keep up. Here’s every Ant-Man-adjacent title you should watch if you haven’t already:

1. Ant-Man
2. Captain America: Civil War*
3. Ant-Man and the Wasp
4. Avengers: Endgame*
5. Loki**

*Optional, as Scott Lang is only a supporting character
**Okay, Ant-Man’s not in this one, but it’s still crucial to understand Quantumania