MCU: A Recommended Reordering — Page 2

I love that I’m not the only one who’s thought about this. Here’s my current recommended order.

Phase 1 - Avengers Assemble

• Iron Man
• Captain America
• Iron Man 2
• Thor
• Avengers
  Notes:
  No Incredible Hulk movie, actor change, film doesn’t add much. New hero introduced every movie. No Brave New World will not be in this viewing order, but I’m stealing the title for something else.

Phase 2 - Avengers Divided

• Thor 2 - The Dark World
• Captain America 2 - The Winter Soldier
• Avengers 2 - Age of Ultron (edit in iron man arc reactor)
• Iron Man 3 (edited, no Jarvis, ptsd of New York and Sakovia)
• Ant-Man
• Captain America 3 - Civil War
  Notes:
  Moved iron man 3 after Avengers 2 to fix the issue of iron man giving up his suits and his arc reactor only to then be iron man again for avengers. This way he is forced to pick it back up once civil war happens.

Phase 3 - Aliens and Insects

• Black Panther
• Spider-Man Homecoming
• Black Widow
• Ant-Man and the Wasp
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 1
  Notes:
  Moved guardians later in the watching order to have a team up movie in this new phase of solo movies. Moved Thanos after credit scene from avengers 2 to guardians after credits replacing Howard cameo scene.

Phase 4 - Infinity War

• Doctor Strange
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2
• Thor 3 - Ragnarok
• Avengers 3: Infinity War
• Avengers 4: Endgame
  Notes:
  Moved doctor strange later in the viewing order closer to where he becomes relevant

Phase 5 - Taking up the Mantle

• Thor 4 - Love and Thunder (edited)
• Captain America 4: Brave New World (falcon and winter soldier movie edit) I’m using the title of the new captain America for this edit since I think I fits better for a story dealing with the state of the world post snap.
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
• Team Hawkeye (movie edit)
• Wakanda Forever
• Thunderbolts*
  Notes:
  Re-edited falcon and winter soldier into a captain America movie. Makes flag smashers less like terrorists and tones down a lot of the over the top themes. US Agent does not get a redemption.
  Re-edited Hawkeye show into a movie focuses more on the plot.
  Re-edited Thor love and thunder to reduce over the top silliness and focus on the story.
  Thunderbolts is moved to the team up slot for this phase because we have finished setting up all the anti avengers in subsequent movies.

Phase 6 - Multiverse of Madness

• Wanda Vision
• Ms Marvel (movie edit)
• Doctor Strange 2
• Spider-Man No Way Home
• Loki: Sacred Timeline (movie edit)
  Notes: Re-edited ms marvel to focus on the plot. Re-edited Loki into a movie to focus on the plot and remove some of the romance between Loki and his variant. It also removes mentions of evil kang set up. Moved Loki to the team up slot since it has him teaming up with his variants and plunges the multiverse into chaos.

Alternatively you could move no way home to its own phase.
Phase 6b - Spiderverse (Mostly Optional)

• Spider-Man 1
• Spider-Man 2
• Spider-Man 3
• Amazing Spider-Man 1
• Amazing Spider-Man 2
• Spider-Man: No Way Home Required
  Notes:
  With the multiverse introduced we jump right into the spiderverse. Hot-take I love these films but your average marvel movie audience probably won’t feel the need to go through all these just to get the references for one movie.

Phase 7 - Universe of Mutants

• X-Men First Class
• X-Men 1
• X-Men 2
• X-Men 3
• X-Men: Days of Future Past
  Notes:
  With the multiverse introduced we jump into the mutant phase which was set up with ms. marvel. Important to view since they will be appearing in doomsday. Most of these stay the same but we just avoid some of the other fox installments

Phase 8 - Breaking the Fourth Wall

• X-Men Origins: Wolverine
• Deadpool 1
• Logan
• Deadpool 2
• Loki 2: Glorious Purpose (movie edit)
• Deadpool 3
  Notes:
  Re-edited Loki season 2 into a movie to focus on the plot and remove kang villan mentions. Most of these fox movies remain untouched. Moved Deadpool 3 to the team up slot as it is a team up movie and it features fantastic four cameo and the main timeline so we can transition back to the MCU movies.

Phase 9 - A Colossal Threat

• Fantastic Four
• Shang Chi: Legend of the Ten Rings
• Avengers 5: Doomsday
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day
• Avengers 6: Secret Wars

Notes:
I moved Shang chi later on in the order as it has very little to do with the other arcs and phases. However, there is a scene at the end of the film hinting at galactus which would be a great bridge between fantastic four movie and the main timeline before the avengers doomsday film.

hinventon said:
Then phase 6 could maybe look like this:

3. Blade

Lmao, I think blade’s finally canceled so I guess we can take that one off. Now that Thunderbolts is out I think it’s the ideal choice to end phase 4. It’s the closest thing to a classic team up that we have and moves the general MCU storyline forward in a big way. This being the end of phase 4 acts as a nice finale to an “aftermath of Endgame” phase where our characters are dealing with that fallout and the absence of the classic avengers. So it could go like this:

1. Spider-Man: Far From Home
2. Falcon and the Winter Soldier
3. Loki
4. WandaVision
5. Hawkeye
6. Guardians 3
7. Spider-Man: No Way Home
8. Thunderbolts

Every movie here deals with the aftermath of Endgame in some way. Loki kicks off the multiversal storylines and Hawkeye introduces Yelena again before Thunderbolts.

We’ll need to see Doomsday and Secret Wars to know what’s really necessary to view before those films, but I’d like to condense these multiverse phases into 2 instead of 3 so you’re getting more quality products. Maybe phase 5 could go:

1. Doctor Strange MoM
2. Wakanda Forever
3. Fantastic Four
4. Shang Chi
5. Loki 2
6. Doomsday
7. Spider-Man 4
8. Secret Wars

This removes some stuff that could possibly be important like She Hulk, Thor’s kid, Cassie Lang, Brave New World/Eternals, etc. but I’m gonna hope that these can be edited around when avengers drops. If not a 6th phase could be added.

Now that I’ve seen Thunderbolts & have a better idea of how we’re getting to Doomsday/Secret War, I’d like to revisit Eddie’s last post from over a year ago to try and help rephase the post-Endgame MCU, balancing out pacing & holding off on introducing new info as soon as possible.

EddieDean said:

For PHASE FOUR: AFTERMATH then, it’s as I had it before:

• Spider-Man: Far From Home deals with our fear over the next Avengers-level threat (plus Spidey, post-Tony, and Fury).
• Falcon and Winter Soldier deals with the global political state post-Endgame (plus Sam and Bucky, post-Steve and a hint of Wakanda)
• Daredevil is necessary here for Daredevil and Kingpin
• Thor: Love and Thunder deals with Asgardian refugees post-Endgame plus (plus Thor and Valkyrie)
• Hawkeye deals with post-Avengers issues and more Kingpin (plus Yelena and new Hawkeye)
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special sets them up again
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings introduces some new shit (plus an update on Hulk and Captain Marvel)
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3 wraps them up and takes them off the board in a big, satisfying finale.

First off, “PHASE FOUR: AFTERMATH” is such a genius phrase for the phase immediately after Endgame. As for the phase itself, I’m going to really stretch the letter of the “8 entries per phase” stipulation:

PHASE FOUR: AFTERMATH

• Spider-Man: Far From Home
• Daredevil - The redheaded step-child of this thought experiment. On one hand, like Eddie said, it’s necessary for when Daredevil and Kingpin appear later on in the MCU. On the other hand, it doesn’t really add to the greater meta-narrative of the Phases. To compromise, we could always count Infinity War & Endgame as one entry for Phase 3, and FFH as the 8th entry. In lieu of a season one of Daredevil, I recommend Forbidden Marvel’s Man Without Fear edit.
• Falcon and Winter Soldier - I recommend Spence’s movie edit.
• Thor: Love and Thunder
• The MCU Holiday Extravaganza (aka, Hawkeye & The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special) - The GotG special is short enough that it feels weird giving it it’s own spot, and depending on how you watch Hawkeye, you’re already watching multiple hours of TV anyway.
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - Provides an important bit of post-Endgame fallout, dealing with the death of T’Challa/Chadwick Boseman (especially since he was supposed to be a post-Endgame tentpole), plus it give us our final look at Val, which will be important at the end…
• Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 3
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings - Gives us an update on Hulk and Captain Marvel, like Eddie said, & shows that the Avengers are pretty disorganized/non-existent at this point, which leads to…
• Thunderbolts - Directly addresses & answers the question of “Where are the Avengers,” so we don’t need to think about it going into Phase Five. Aside from having to make edits removing/altering references to entries that haven’t come up yet, it makes for a good capstone to Aftermath.

EddieDean said:

So PHASE FIVE: MULTIVERSE can now become something much more focused:

• Loki 1 kicks it all off. It’s timeless, and ends up with a Multiverse (and Loki in unknown time).
• Spider-Man: No Way Home is our big, exciting, fan-favourite multiverse story, featuring three Spideys and Doctor Strange. The biggest sacrifice of this ordering is having this paced a while after Far From Home, but I think it’s far more beneficial this way. Here, we open on a flashback to just after he’s been outed by Mysterio, then we assume that his legal troubles occupied perhaps at most a year - in which the previous phase occurred. Then after Daredevil steps in and clears it all up, we’re back to the present in the timeline.
• Wandavision is here, as early as we can get it. Even if you ignore the Pietro tease, Wanda, Maria Rambeau, and Monica Rambeau will return this phase.
• Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania sits here, balanced between the two Loki seasons, and set in the middle of this phase, developing the Kang threat we’ve had since Loki 1, and giving us the update on our final group of post-Endgame characters not yet returned to.
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness now brings our 616 characters to other universes, starting the true crossover phase. Wanda, Doctor Strange, Maria Rambeau, Xavier, and even Captain Carter for the What If fans. We’re getting serious.
• Loki 2 next. Again, it’s timeless, but it serves to temporarily reduce the Kang threat (letting us forget him for a while) and it’s just great. And it leaves us clear to take a run at our final two items:
• Ms. Marvel has some further nice reflecting on the prior Avengers, and directly leads into-
• The Marvels, with a great focus on Carol, Kamala, and Monica, then that nice multiversal tease with Maria and Beast, and setting up Kamala looking to team up with young Hawkeye.

This is a very concise Phase with a solid throughline. I would just do a little rearranging so that it ends on a stronger note:

PHASE FIVE: MULTIVERSE/EXPANSION (because this is the “Multiverse Saga” so calling the phase Multiverse sounds a little redundant, and “Expansion” ties in with what I want to name Phase 6, but I could go either way)

• Loki 1
• Spider-Man: No Way Home
• Wandavision
• Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness
• Ant-Man and Wasp: Quantumania - Still in the middle of this phase, and given how Doctor Strange ends, makes it more dire that Ant-Man is the only one who can face Kang
• Ms. Marvel
• The Marvels
• Loki 2 - Makes for a stronger ending to this Phase & bookends with how it started, like an ouroboros.

Now, we’re still a ways out from Phase 6, but it’ll still be a fun exercise to draft a Phase 6 based on what we do know:

PHASE SIX: INCURSION/DOOM

• The Eternals - This is the latest The Eternals as a concept can be introduced, and the dead Tiamut plays a big part in Captain America BNO.
• She-Hulk - Admittedly, a bit of a placeholder, but it’s light-hearted, gives us follow-up on Bruce Banner, has a Tiamut reference, reintroduces the idea that people are after Hulk blood/want to make more Hulks, and it gives us the “hey, when are we getting X-Men” line, which leads to…
• Deadpool & Wolverine - Brings us back to the multiverse, brings back the TVA, and adds a new wrinkle to how different universes can be destroyed.
• Captain America: Brave New World - I, admittedly, haven’t seen this yet, but I know that part of the plot is Ross wanting Sam’s help to restart the Avengers (let’s say Sam trademarked it immediately after John Walker’s introduction offscreen), which is a pretty important plot point going into Avengers Doomsday.
• Fantastic Four: First Steps - The last big movie release for the MCU before Doomsday.
• Avengers: Doomsday
• Spider-Man: Brand New Day - Three for three on Spider-Man making an appearance in each phase. Plus, if the rumors that this movie takes place in a sort of Battleworld Reality post-Doomsday, even better.
• Avengers: Secret War - The end of the Multiverse Saga.