Legacy: The Fox X-Men Saga

The Fox X-Men Saga collects the nine mainline X-Men films Fox produced between 2000 and 2019, grouped here by lineage rather than by release date. It runs in in-universe order from X-Men: First Class (set in 1962) through Dark Phoenix (set in 1992), taking in the original Bryan Singer trilogy, the two Wolverine solo films, and the First Class prequel run. Across two generations of casting it traces the same fault line — Charles Xavier's integrationist hope against Magneto's separatist survivalism — from the friendship that forms it to the tragedies that keep reopening it.

These films share characters with the MCU but belong to Fox's own continuity, which is why they sit in the Legacy section rather than the main timeline — and why they are grouped as a saga rather than interleaved. That continuity is famously self-contradictory: Days of Future Past (2014) exists specifically to rewrite the original trilogy's timeline, so watching by lineage rather than by real-world release date is the only way the arc reads coherently. The saga has renewed relevance now: Avengers: Doomsday is confirmed to feature Fox X-Men characters, with Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen and others reprising roles, and both James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender returning as the younger Xavier and Magneto. For anyone coming to Doomsday from the core MCU, this is the run that supplies the history those characters carry in. (Logan, set in 2029, is tracked separately as a Legacy: Future entry, and Deadpool's Fox films sit with Deadpool & Wolverine in the Multiverse Saga.)