What's New

In story order, The Incredible Hulk now comes after Iron Man 2, as it does in Marvel's own timeline.

• Changed The Incredible Hulk now comes after Iron Man 2 in story order. The two films, and Thor, happen in the same week, and The Incredible Hulk ends with Tony Stark, so it reads better once you have seen Iron Man 2. Two readers asked for this. Nothing joins or leaves any list, and anything you have ticked is kept.

Two fixes: Iron Man 3 and Inhumans had swapped write-ups, and the on-track line on a schedule now says when your prep finishes.

• Fixed The Iron Man 3 and Inhumans pages each showed the other's "Why It Matters in the MCU" paragraph. Each page now has its own.
• Fixed When a schedule builds up to a new film, the on-track line now says when your prep finishes and how many days that is before the film comes out. It used to give the film's own release day as your finish, and in the Americas it showed the target date one day early.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seasons 1 to 3 are now split around the films they cross over with, so neither gives the other away.

• Changed In story order, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seasons 1, 2 and 3 now appear in two parts. Season 1 episodes 1 to 16 come before Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and episodes 17 to 22 after it. Season 2 episodes 1 to 19 come before Avengers: Age of Ultron, and 20 to 22 after it. Season 3 episodes 1 to 19 come before Captain America: Civil War, and 20 to 22 after it. Each part has its own tick, new schedules follow the same order, and anything you had already ticked is kept.

I'm New to Marvel now grades every title by one clear rule: every MCU film is Essential, plus the series and specials that later titles build on.

• Changed I'm New to Marvel now grades every title by one rule. Every MCU film is Essential. An MCU series or special is Essential when a later MCU title builds on it. Other MCU series, and titles outside the MCU that it builds on, are Recommended. Everything else is Optional.
• Changed 28 titles changed grade. Eternals, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Echo, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and All Hail the King are now Essential. Daredevil: Born Again is now Recommended. The Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield Spider-Man films, and most of the Fox X-Men films, moved up from Optional to Recommended. No title was added to the list, and none was taken off.
• Changed Every page that grades a title for the MCU now uses the same grade as the list, so a film page, a phase page and I'm New to Marvel can no longer disagree. Recommended titles now say "Recommended for the MCU", because some of them, like the X-Men films, are not part of the MCU.
• Fixed The counts above the list now count titles only. Credit scenes and Avengers: Endgame Encore stay in the list but no longer count as extra titles, so I'm New to Marvel shows 157 titles, not 165.
• Changed Your saved plan has not changed. If you want it to use the new grades, open it and generate it again.

Avengers: Endgame Encore now has the same grade as Avengers: Endgame on every list it appears on.

• Changed Avengers: Endgame Encore is Avengers: Endgame, shown again in cinemas. Until now most lists marked it optional, even where Avengers: Endgame is essential. It now has the same grade as Avengers: Endgame on every list it is on. It moved up on 20 lists. No title was added to a list, and none was taken off one.
• Changed On the Spider-Man: Brand New Day list it is now essential. The Avengers: Doomsday list has not changed, because it already marked the Encore essential.
• Changed Your saved plan has not changed. If you want it to use the new grades, open it and generate it again.

Fewer titles are marked essential. A title is now essential only if you would be lost without it — not just because it comes earlier in the story.

• Changed Before, a title was usually marked essential simply because it comes earlier in the story. We have gone through the connections between titles one by one and written down what each one actually gives you. A title is now essential only if you would be lost without it. About 400 grades changed across the site, and they all moved down. No title was added to a list, and none was taken off one.
• Changed The biggest changes are on Daredevil: Born Again season 2, where 34 of its 42 titles moved, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day, where 18 of 47 moved. The Avengers: Doomsday list barely changed — 4 titles, all of them from recommended to optional.
• Changed Your saved plan has not changed. If you want it to use the new grades, open it and generate it again.

Four character pages counted a title in which the character is another universe's version of them. Those counts are now right, and the title has a section of its own.

• Fixed The pages for Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, Red Guardian and Spider-Man each had one title on them in which the character is another universe's version of them. It was counted in the number of appearances and in the total running time. Those figures are now correct: Doctor Strange has 7 appearances instead of 8, Scarlet Witch 8 instead of 9, Red Guardian 3 instead of 4, and Spider-Man 8 instead of 9. The title is still on the page, in a section of its own, with a line saying who is really in it. Your saved list is not affected.

Two lists have lost a few optional titles that were there by mistake, and you can now see exactly what changed in every version of a list.

• Fixed Marvel Zombies and What If...? season 1 have been removed from the Avengers: Doomsday list, and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man from the Spider-Man: Brand New Day list. All three were there because someone in them shares a name with someone in the film. They are not the same people. The Spider-Man in that series is a Peter Parker from another universe, and the same is true of the characters that put the other two on a list. All three were marked optional, so nothing you were asked to watch has gone, and if you already saved a schedule they are still in it.
• Changed What If...? season 1 and Marvel Zombies now say that nothing needs watching first. Both are collections of alternate versions of characters, so no film prepares you for them. Before this they listed dozens of titles as optional, which read as homework that was never really there.
• New When you browse older versions of a list, each one now tells you what changed: how many titles came in, how many left and which ones, and how many changed grade. It covers every version we have on record, not only new ones. Where an old version was saved without grades, it says so instead of guessing.

The eight X-Men films have been removed from the Spider-Man: Brand New Day list. The Jean Grey in that film is a different person with the same name, not the one from the X-Men films.

• Fixed In August we added eight X-Men films to the Spider-Man: Brand New Day list and told you Sadie Sink was playing Jean Grey "crossing over from the X-Men films". That was wrong. Brand New Day has its own Jean Grey — a teenage telepath with a sister the film is about, no X-Men and no Phoenix — who happens to share the name. Watching Dark Phoenix tells you nothing about her, so the eight films have been removed. If you already added them to a schedule they are still there; nothing has been taken out of a plan you saved.

A film only connected by a different version of a character is now marked Optional rather than Essential — starting with Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, whose Peter Parker is not the one in Brand New Day.

• Changed Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is now Optional on the Spider-Man: Brand New Day list instead of Essential. The series has its own Peter Parker — a different young man in a separate continuity, not the one Tom Holland plays — and the list had been treating the two as the same person. The series is still shown, because the link is real and worth knowing about. It is simply no longer something you need to watch first. Nothing has been removed from your list.

Wolverine is reported for Avengers: Doomsday but not announced — so his origin film now appears on that list, marked Unconfirmed.

• New X-Men Origins: Wolverine has been added to the Avengers: Doomsday list and marked Unconfirmed. Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds appeared at D23 in August suggesting Wolverine and Deadpool are in the film, but Marvel has not announced them and the trade coverage disagrees about what was meant. Unconfirmed is exactly that: we think it connects and we cannot prove it. If Marvel announces them, the grade will change on its own.
• Changed Marvel Zombies has moved from Unconfirmed to Optional on the Avengers: Doomsday list. The series shows alternate-universe versions of these characters rather than the people in the film, so it is worth watching on its own terms and is not preparation for Doomsday.

Avengers: Endgame Encore's 2026 re-release now appears on your Doomsday and Brand New Day watchlists.

• New Avengers: Endgame Encore — the 2026 theatrical re-release of Avengers: Endgame — has been added to the Avengers: Doomsday and Spider-Man: Brand New Day watchlists, marked essential: it shares the same cast, including several returning Doomsday characters and both Hulk and Spider-Man from Brand New Day. If you've already seen Endgame, you don't need to watch it again.

Brand New Day's secret Jean Grey twist added her X-Men films to that watchlist, as optional.

• New Spider-Man: Brand New Day's Jean Grey is confirmed — Sadie Sink plays her. Her seven earlier X-Men films have been added to the Brand New Day watchlist, marked optional: the film tells you what you need to know about her on its own.

Two lists that were secretly one: what a newcomer needs, and what is worth rewatching, are now graded separately.

• New The site is now available in Russian, our sixth language. A reader asked for it and offered to help, and the film and series descriptions are translated too, not just the buttons. Thank you for asking.
• Changed Rewatch the Essentials is now a list of things worth watching again, and only that. It is still 60 titles and it is a different 60. Daredevil seasons 1 to 3 are in, along with Guardians Vol. 3 and Werewolf by Night. Out go the What If seasons, Ironheart and VisionQuest. Every film series is kept whole, so the weaker Thor and Iron Man films stay, because nobody wants a gap in the middle of a rewatch.
• New Daredevil seasons 1, 2 and 3, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Werewolf by Night have joined Rewatch the Essentials. None of them is needed to follow the main story, and all of them are worth going back to. That is the whole point of the change.
• New I'm New to Marvel now has a Recommended level, not just Essential and Optional. Seventeen titles sit there. It means you can skip it and still follow the story, but you will miss something.
• Changed Deadpool, Deadpool 2 and Logan are no longer marked Essential for someone new to Marvel. They are Recommended instead. You do not need them to follow the story, and they are still on the rewatch list, because they are worth your time.
• Fixed Badges now say which list they are talking about. A film can be Essential to the MCU and only Recommended for Doomsday at the same time, and until now both just said "Essential", which several of you wrote in about. Thank you, you were right.
• New We have started recording the supporting characters properly, beginning with Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Heimdall, Ned Leeds, Karen Page, Kingpin and Kate Bishop. That fills in where those characters came from, so a few lists gained titles. If you follow Daredevil: Born Again, The Punisher is now on your list, because Karen Page is in both.
• Fixed This page is now in your language too. Until now the update notice was translated and the page it linked to was English. Older entries further down are still in English, and we say so where that starts.
• Changed The three paths now say who they are for instead of how long they are. Just the Essentials is called Rewatch the Essentials, because that is who it was always for.

The Doomsday list is the same length and nine hours longer. Agent Carter is in, and three titles we had wrong are out.

• Changed The Doomsday list still has 69 titles, but it is about 153 hours instead of 144. Three titles came off and three went on, and the ones that went on are longer.
• New Hayley Atwell is confirmed to return as Peggy Carter, so the Agent Carter one shot and both seasons are now on the Doomsday list. If you already made a plan, the site will offer to add them. Nothing is taken out of a plan you already have.
• Fixed Thor is not in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, and he is not in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. We had him recorded in both. That was wrong, so those two have left the Doomsday list.
• Fixed The Gambit in Doomsday is Channing Tatum, the one from Deadpool & Wolverine, not the version in X-Men Origins: Wolverine. That film has left the list.
• Changed Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Marvels are now Recommended for Doomsday instead of Essential. In both, the character who connects to Doomsday only turns up briefly. You can follow Doomsday without them and miss nothing you need.
• Fixed Doctor Strange is no longer on the Doomsday cast list. Marvel has never announced him, and the actor has said both that he is out and that he got that wrong. We only list people once Marvel announces them. No watchlist changed because of this.
• New Peggy Carter, Cassie Lang and Namora have been added to the Doomsday cast page.
• New Eternals now appears on the Captain America: Brave New World list as Recommended. It is where the creature in the ocean came from. Until now Eternals was on no list anywhere on the site, which a reader spotted and told us about.
• Fixed The Consultant now comes after Iron Man 2. Tony is working for SHIELD in that short, and taking that job is what happens at the end of Iron Man 2. A reader pointed this out. It means the numbers after it have shifted by one.

The whole Doomsday watchlist has been worked through again — 101 titles down to 69.

• Changed We have carefully evaluated the entire Doomsday watchlist against the many suggestions and reports you sent in. It is now 69 titles instead of 101, and about 144 hours instead of 329. Hopefully no more changes before D-Day.
• New Recommended is back, and it means something specific this time: characters who turn up in Doomsday whose story belongs to another continuity. All nine Fox X-Men films and Logan sit here. Skip them and you will still follow Doomsday — but you will not know who Professor X, Magneto, Cyclops, Beast, Nightcrawler, Mystique or Gambit are when they walk on.
• Changed The Sony Spider-Man films, the Venom trilogy and the whole Netflix run have left the Doomsday list. A reader asked why Venom was essential for a film Venom is not in, and he was right. They were reached through crossovers recorded as if they were story continuations. Every one of those has been checked.
• Fixed Captain Marvel was missing entirely. Endgame opens on Carol answering Fury's pager, and that link had never been written down, so her film and its post-credit scene sat outside the list. Both are essential now.
• Fixed Peggy Carter had no entry at all, so both Agent Carter seasons were connected to nothing and appeared in no list. She founded S.H.I.E.L.D.; that has been fixed.
• Changed Your saved plan has not been touched. Nothing has been removed from a schedule you already generated, and everything you have ticked off stays ticked. If you want the shorter list, regenerate it — and if you would rather keep the plan you are working through, keep it.

Flexible mode no longer jumps ahead in a series you are part way through.

• Fixed In flexible mode, marking the first episode of a series as watched and then recalculating could push the rest of that season months down your plan and start a different series instead. It could even schedule season 2 before the end of season 1. Your next episode is now the next episode.
• Fixed Flexible mode could put Blade: The Series before all three Blade films, even though the page for it says to watch it after them. Where a page states an order, the planner now knows about it, and the site checks that the two agree.
• Fixed Three more things were landing in the wrong place for the same reason. The Ant-Man and the Wasp credits scene, which is the snap happening in real time, was scheduled just before Infinity War instead of just after it. Eyes of Wakanda came long before Black Panther. The Black Widow scene that sets up Hawkeye came hundreds of titles before Hawkeye.
• Fixed Iron Man 3 was marked essential for Doomsday while Iron Man and Iron Man 2 were only optional. The link from The Avengers back to the films it follows was never written down. It is now, so Iron Man, Iron Man 2, Thor and The Incredible Hulk are essential wherever the story runs through them.
• Fixed A credit scene was sometimes graded lower than the film it belongs to. A credit scene is part of its film, so it now always carries the same grade.
• Changed The Recommended level is gone from the main list too. It went from film watchlists last week, but thirty-two titles kept the label here. Each one is now either Essential or Optional. Nothing left any list.
• New Both Venom films are now part of any list that runs through Spider-Man: No Way Home, because Venom: Let There Be Carnage leads directly into it. Peter’s To-Do List joins them, in its place just before Far From Home.
• Fixed When something in your plan lands after your target date only because it is not out yet, the site says so instead of telling you to watch more per week. On the Doomsday plan that title was Doomsday itself.

Seven actors were on our Doomsday cast list who are not in the film.

• Fixed Evangeline Lilly, Don Cheadle, Jeremy Renner, Danai Gurira, Harrison Ford, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Tim Blake Nelson were listed as confirmed for Doomsday. None of them are in the announced cast or the credited cast, so they have been removed.
• Fixed Letitia Wright was listed as Black Panther. She plays Shuri, and that is who she is credited as, so her page and appearances now line up.
• Fixed Twelve people were missing from the cast page even though we had them, including all seven X-Men. The page listed them and drew none of them.
• New Shuri has her own page now, like the rest of the announced cast.

The Doomsday cast list was wrong. It is now checked against the announcement.

• Fixed Mark Ruffalo was listed as confirmed for Doomsday. He is not in Marvel’s announcement and has said he is not in the film, so he has been removed.
• New Twelve announced cast members were missing from the page, including all seven X-Men, Loki, Red Guardian and M’Baku. They are there now.
• New Sixteen more characters have their own page, including the X-Men, the Fantastic Four and Doctor Doom. Each shows every appearance in story order.
• Fixed Your filters now work as soon as you open the site. If you closed the tab with “Non-Marvel Studios” switched off, it came back switched off but the list ignored it until you clicked it twice.

We found appearances we had never recorded, and the lists grew again.

• Fixed Twenty appearances were missing from our records, so the films they were in never reached the lists. Doctor Strange in Thor: Ragnarok, Nick Fury at the end of The First Avenger, Wolverine in Origins, and more.
• Changed The Doomsday, Brand New Day and Born Again lists all grew as a result. The new titles are optional, which means the story does not depend on them.
• Fixed Shuri was listed as also being Black Panther, which made the site think she was in Captain America: Civil War. She was not.

Four X-Men films were missing from the Doomsday list. A reader spotted it.

• Fixed X-Men: Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Wolverine are now in the Doomsday list. Seven X-Men are in the announced Doomsday cast and they appear in these films, which should have put them on the list from the start.
• Changed They are marked optional. The Doomsday story does not depend on them, but the characters in it turn up there, so you may want them.

Essential now means what you would expect it to mean.

• Changed Essential now means the story runs back through a title, however far back it sits. It used to mean only the very first step, which is why the Doomsday list showed 8 essential titles. It now shows 39.
• Changed The “recommended” grade is gone. If a title is needed, it is essential. Infinity War now reads essential, alongside Endgame, which is what several of you wrote in to tell us it should be. Thank you, you were right.
• Fixed Titles we cannot confirm yet now say “unconfirmed” on the main list. They were showing as “optional”, which hid the fact that we are unsure.
• Changed Nothing was added to or removed from any list. The same titles are there, in the same order. Only the labels changed, so any schedule you have already made is untouched.

We have worked out every watch list again, and most of them grew.

• Changed Every watch list has been worked out again from how the stories actually connect, rather than from a list kept by hand. Most lists grew. Nothing was dropped from any of them.
• New Every film and series now has its own watch list. Open any title and you can see everything that leads into it, and start a plan from there.
• Changed The Prepare for Doomsday list now shows all 87 titles that connect to the film. It was showing 19 of them.
• Changed The Born Again season 2 list now shows all 50 titles that connect to it. It was showing 8.
• New Titles we believe connect but cannot confirm yet are now marked “unconfirmed” and shown. Before, they were left out entirely.
• Fixed A film’s own page, its guide page and your planner could each show a different list for the same film. They now all show the same one.
• Fixed If you set your own finish date, it stays set. Recalculating used to replace it with the film’s release date.
• Fixed Opening the site with a saved schedule showed the wrong title count and hours left until you changed something.
• Fixed A plan you started from a film’s page can now be brought up to date with Recalculate. Before, those plans could never pick up new titles.
• New Recalculate now tells you what it changed, so you can see when titles have been added to your schedule.
• New This page. When a watch list changes, you can see what moved and when. If you already made a schedule, the site tells you the lists changed and leaves your schedule alone until you ask for it to be updated.
• Fixed The update messages now appear in your language. They were showing in English on the Spanish, German, French and Turkish versions of the site.
• New If you set your own finish date, the site still tells you when the film itself comes out, so you do not lose sight of the actual release day.

Where we started counting.

• New Version numbers. From here on, every change to the site gets one, so you can see what moved and when.