How to watch Marvel movies and series in order

The MCU started with the release of Iron Man in 2008. Since then, there’s been a huge number of films, TV shows, web series, and one-shots. The universe has grown in characters and complexity and, even for the most ardent Marvel fans, it’s a serious challenge to watch everything and get your head around the timeline.

We’ve put together an in-universe chronological timeline of the Marvel movies, shows, and more, so you know which order to watch everything in. Alternatively, if you’d prefer to watch them in the order that they actually came out, we’ve also put together a release date order for all the shows and films. 

Marvel has issued its own official timeline for the movies in the book Marvel Studios: The First Ten Years, which does its best to give specific years for when the various films are set (up to, but not including, Captain Marvel & Avengers: Endgame):

For reference, we’re now in Phase 6, which is the final segment in the Multiverse Saga. This kicked off with The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

You can also read 5 forgotten MCU characters that need their futures resolved, and if the Avengers: Doomsday trailer doesn’t do these 3 things, I riot.

How to watch the Marvel movies and TV shows in chronological order

There are a couple of disclaimers to our list below. First up, the timeline gets more complex as it goes on, so it gets harder to order the films perfectly. For example, Doctor Strange begins just before Captain America: Civil War but takes a time jump and ends way after it, while Black Panther kicks off shortly after Civil War, but the whole story likely plays out before the bulk of Doctor Strange.

It doesn’t help that Marvel broke its own timeline. There are a few little inconsistencies dotted around the place, but the most egregious is Spider-Man: Homecoming, which claims to take place eight years after the New York attack in the first Avengers. That would set the film in 2020 – two or three years after Avengers: Infinity War, which Marvel itself claims is set in 2017 despite ample evidence that the Snap took place in the spring of 2018.

It’s a pretty minor gaffe in the scheme of things, but it’s a reminder not to take the MCU’s chronological timeline too seriously – even Marvel itself can’t keep it all straight, so as long as you watch things in roughly the right order you’ll be fine.

If you want visual reminders, Marvel has now released every single post-credit scene up to Endgame (including Captain Marvel’s) in order in one giant X thread, so you can revisit every little tease as the MCU was built up.

Marvel.com also has its own timeline order. However, we have only used this to inform the shows in the Phase Four and Phase Five sections, as parts of the list conflict with previous ones from Marvel Studios. For example, it claims that Thor: The Dark World takes place before Iron Man 3, which would set this film in 2013, and not 2012 as previous sources stated. 

Disney+ updated its list in January 2024 to include Netflix Marvel shows, and we have reordered our own list based on this.

We’ve split everything into Marvel’s ‘phases’, but there are some grey areas: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was made within Phase Three, but is set almost immediately after its predecessor; Captain Marvel was one of the final Phase Three films, but is set before most of Phase One, and some of the TV shows sit awkwardly between the different movie phases.

In addition, though Marvel claims that Spider-Man: Far From Home is the last film in Phase Three, it takes place after the first two Disney+ shows – so we’ve adjusted the order to accommodate for this. 

Without further ado, here’s our chronological ordering of the Marvel film universe as it stands right now. The films are in bold, TV shows are not. You can watch the majority of the films and shows by signing up for Disney+, except for those that are exclusively in cinemas – these are marked with an asterisk.

You can also buy box sets of all the phases from HMV and Amazon in the UK, and Walmart and Amazon in the US. 

* – not available on Disney Plus

As you may notice, there are some recent releases further up the timeline, including Marvel Zombies, The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Ironheart – allow us to explain (in as spoiler-free a way as we can).

The Fantastic Four: First Steps is set in an alternate universe, Earth-828, rather than Earth-616, so it’s in a separate timeline from the sacred one. However, taking that out of the equation, the movie is estimated to take place in a retro-futuristic version of the 60s, placing it after Captain America: The First Avenger (1943) and Agent Carter (1946), but before Captain Marvel (1995).

Marvel Zombies is hard to place in the timeline, because it follows on from an episode of What If…? which is set around Infinity War. However, both of these shows aren’t technically in the sacred timeline, so it doesn’t matter too much if you watch it out of order.

Writer of Ironheart, Chinaka Hodge, confirmed in a social video that it’s set in “the days after” Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and this was later confirmed on Marvel’s website. That sets it in Phase Four, way before other films such as Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*.

Deadpool and Wolverine is estimated to take place in 2024 in Marvel’s ‘official’ timeline, but before Spider-Man: Far From Home and The Falcon and The Winter Soldier. However, it deals with time travel and also references the film Logan, which is set in another universe in the year 2029.

So, it’s hard to put it on the official timeline – especially without the context of other films and shows.

The Marvel live-action series, Echo, is set five months after Hawkeye, which places it right before She-Hulk in the fictional timeline.

Daredevil: Born Again has a cold-open flashback, though the events after that are expected to occur just before 2027. The plot of Captain America 4 also straddles 2026 and 2027, so the two overlap rather than one taking place exactly after the other.

Thunderbolts* takes place in 2027, so it’s presumably after Captain America 4, and either runs alongside the events of Born Again, or after.

It’s worth noting that Loki takes place in its own separate branch of time. Technically, the first episode picks up during 2012 in the Battle of New York. However, seeing as the scene that Loki time-travels from is in Avengers: Endgame, the show makes a lot more sense in the context of all the other films as it deals with topics such as the Infinity Stones and Kang.

What If…? also features stories that are scattered throughout the MCU timeline. Again, the show needs the context of previous films to make sense. 

Spider-Man: No Way Home draws on other Spider-Man universe films, but we have not included these in the official MCU timeline. The same goes for other films starring Marvel characters that weren’t made by Marvel Studios such as Fox’s X-Men, the three Blade films and Ghost Rider.

We have included Agents of Shield, Inhumans, Cloak and Dagger and The Runaways in this list. Even though Disney+ does not include them on the ‘official’ timeline right now, they reference events in the sacred timeline (watch Loki season 1 for context).