With 25 films and multiple TV shows under its belt, the MCU is one of the most complex creations in media history. There are now hundreds of characters across the movies and TV shows, a load of world-changing events, and now alternative realities. Keeping track of them can be headache-inducing.
That’s made a little more difficult by the release order often not being chronological to the ongoing story. This has created some confusion over the years — but now, Disney and Marvel have given us a new MCU timeline that takes into account practically everything they’ve put out.
The list appears on Disney Plus and updates the timeline up to Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which hit the platform last week. Here’s how it shakes out:
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Captain Marvel
- Iron Man
- Iron Man 2
- Thor
- Marvel’s The Avengers
- Thor: The Dark World
- Iron Man 3
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Ant-Man
- Captain America: Civil War
- Black Panther
- Black Widow
- Doctor Strange
- Thor: Ragnarok
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Avengers: Endgame
- Loki
- Marvel’s What If…?
- WandaVision
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
It’s important to remember that this timeline only features movies and shows available to stream on Disney Plus. Notable by their absence are the Spider-Man movies and The Incredible Hulk, which have complicated streaming rights deals with Sony and Universal. Also missing are the Netflix shows, though it’s debatable whether Marvel Studios consider them canon at this point.
It’ll also be interesting to see where Eternals fits into this. This story shows us the prehistory of the MCU and then jumps forward to the ‘present’, which judging from the way the characters talk about Thanos’ Snap is around the same time as Spider-Man: Far From Home.
Whoever’s monitoring all this at Marvel Studios will likely find their job much more difficult in the coming years as they try to process the torrent of new Disney Plus shows and theatrical releases. But for us, the future of the MCU is going to be one wild ride.
