The 28 essentials to watch before Avengers: Secret Wars, in story order: about 70 hours. All 103 titles take about 369 hours.
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tap a title for its synopsisEssential needed for Secret WarsOptional extra contextMID during the creditsEND after all creditsEND must seeEND optionalEND skip itMID → #58 must see, but after that titleNo scene leave at the credits
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How this order worksUpdated through Avengers: Doomsday
Fox X-Men · Earth-10005
How the X-Men order works
The Fox films run on two timelines. Days of Future Past is the hinge: in 2023, Logan’s mind is sent back to 1973 and rewrites history. Films before it in this list are the original timeline. The films after it, from Apocalypse on, are the revised timeline.
Sorting the X-Men films by year alone would put Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix and the Deadpool films ahead of Days of Future Past’s 2023 frame, as if they were part of the original story. They aren’t: they happen in the rewritten history, so they come after it.
Deadpool & Wolverine goes last. Its story picks up after the events of Logan (2029).
Method
How this list is built
Essential or optional.For now, the essentials are Road to Doomsday’s, plus Avengers: Doomsday itself. They’ll be revised once Doomsday is out and its links to Secret Wars are clear. Essentials only is on when you first visit; turn it off for every title.
Story time, not release date.Each title sits where its story happens. Years are in-universe, and many are approximate.
Marvel’s own MCU order.MCU titles follow Marvel’s official Disney+ timeline, which also slots in the Netflix shows. Three changes for strict story dates: Iron Man 3 moves ahead of Thor: The Dark World, The Fantastic Four: First Steps sits at 1964, and Deadpool & Wolverine follows Logan.
Other universes keep their own calendars.Fox’s X-Men and Fantastic Four films, the Raimi and Garfield Spider-Man films and Sony’s Venom films are slotted by the years they’re set in, alongside the MCU.
Spoiler-safe credits.Three credits scenes happen later than their films and would spoil Infinity War or Endgame. They’re marked with an arrow (like MID → #58) so you can come back for them.
Runtimes.Films use their official running times, credits included. Series show the total of all their episodes.
Secret Wars pace.Your pace line spreads the runtime evenly from the day you watch your first title to the night before your Secret Wars date. Change the date if your tickets are for a later showing.
Not on this road.Marvel TV shows outside Marvel’s timeline (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, Inhumans, Runaways, Cloak & Dagger, Helstrom), separate continuities (X-Men ’97, Legion, The Gifted, The New Mutants), Sony’s other spin-offs (Morbius, Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter, Spider-Noir), the Spider-Verse films, and older one-offs like Blade and Ghost Rider. They’re all in Literally Everything.
Still to come
Coming up
Theaters · 2027Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse
The end of Miles Morales’s trilogy, after Across the Spider-Verse.