This But Not That

With the release of Daredevil: Born Again, Marvel has made the continuity of the Marvel Cinematic UniverseWhen it first began in 2008 with a little film called Iron Man no one suspected the empire that would follow. Superhero movies in the past, especially those not featuring either Batman or Superman, were usually terrible. And yet, Iron Man would lead to a long series of successful films, launching the most successful cinema brand in history: the Marvel Cinematic Universe. far more complex (needlessly so) than it ever was before. Sure we’ve had one or two characters from other works wander into the MCU in some form, from Edwin Jarvis (as played by James D'Arcy), who originated in Agent Carter, appearing in Avengers: Endgame, to Matt Murdock, of Netflix’s own Daredevil, then showing up in Spider-man: No Way Home. But these kinds of cameos weren’t meant to join prior continuities to the main MCU. Just because an alternate universe version of Charles Xavier (as played, once again, by Patrick Stewart) appears in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness that doesn’t mean that all the Fox X-MenLaunched in 1963 and written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the X-Men featured heroes distinctly different from those featured in the pages of DC Comics. Mutants who didn't ask for their powers (and very often didn't want them), these heroes, who constantly fought against humans who didn't want "muties" around, served as metaphors for oppression and racism. Their powerful stories would form this group into one of the most recognizable superhero teams in comics (and a successful series of movies as well). films are now part of the MCU.

Daredevil: Born Again is different, though. It very clearly wants to build on the Netflix show that preceded it, bringing back many of the character’s of that show (Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Franklin "Foggy" Nelson, Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk, Wilson Bethel as Dex Poindexter) to make the new MCU series feel more like a fourth season of Daredevil and not just it’s own, new thing. Because of that, though, it raises the question of what, exactly, is the continuity of the MCU now? What fits in and what doesn’t in this universe, especially now that we’re adding in multiverses and everything else?

Well, let’s look at everything we know about the MCU to see if we can answer that question, at least in some form:

Official Continuity

The most official of all continuity are the direct works of the MCU. That would be each and every movie released in the cinematic universe from Iron Man on, along with all of the television shows and specials that have come from Marvel Studios as well. Okay, that’s an easy answer, and an obvious one, but there are a few quirks that we absolutely have to point out.

First of all, there were a couple of films that, at one point, we could have considered non-canon. The first was The Incredible Hulk, which felt like it had been all but rebooted away once Mark Ruffalo stepped into the role of Bruce Banner for The Avengers. What If…?, though, played with a version of that film for an episode, and then Captain America: Brave New World made it explicit that The Incredible Hulk was still, very much, in continuity for the film franchise.

Interestingly, What If…? and Captain America: Brave New World also brought the other questionable film into the fold: Eternals. That film, as per Marvel, is never getting a sequel, and we doubt most of its characters will ever be back. Hell, for a couple of years it was a running gag that the Celestial that emerged in the Indian Ocean wasn’t even commented on in the films. But then What If…? did include one Eternal for a funny episode, and then we saw the Celestial Island in Captain America: Brave New World, and so Eternals is in as well.

Hell, the only film we could consider at all outside of continuity is Deadpool & Wolverine, but the TVA from the main continuity appear in the film, and Deadpool himself comments on all the characters from the main continuity, so while it’s adjacent to the MCU, it’s about as in continuity as a non-continuity film can get. It’s Deadpool, so it’s weird, as you’d expect.

With that said, the main continuity doesn’t include every show Marvel has made under their brand, especially not the shows made as part of the Marvel Animation brand. Both What If…? and Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man are MCU-adjacent at best, featuring stories that relate to the main continuity but which clearly sit outside of the MCU. These are considered official MCU works, mind you, but they don’t tie into the continuity. And then there’s X-Men ‘97, a show meant to continue a completely different continuity, and which also sits far removed from the MCU, despite being a Marvel Animation production.

So that leaves us with about 40-ish works, give or take, that are clearly tied in directly, and a few “official” works that aren’t quite official, but basically are. Already it’s getting confusing and we’ve barely started yet.

Questionably Official

Once we move past what Marvel Studios and Marvel Animation have made, we then get into the tricky business of parsing what Marvel Television and Netflix wrought. We’ll get to Netflix in a second, as it’s an even larger can of worms, but we should really start with Marvel Television. This group wasn’t headed by Kevin Feige, instead getting overseen by Ike Pearlmutter, and the shows under his “care” were essentially left to do their own thing. They could reference the main continuity, even comment on it and try to build their events around it (see: Agents of SHIELD, season one for example, which tried to build to Captain America: The Winter Soldier), but the main movies were never going to acknowledge what happened on the TV shows.

This was actually fine as the two main shows to address, Agents of SHIELD and Agent Carter, were better off doing their own thing. In the case of Agents of SHIELD, after that first season there was little to tie the television show to the movies. There were a couple of cameos for less important characters in season two, and then those were dropped completely. After that season, the show worked more as a parallel “companion”, following similar themes as the films (such as doing a season focused on magic around the time of Doctor Strange) without actually featuring any characters or storylines from the movie line. Even the series itself acknowledged that at a certain point it went down its own timeline, existing in its own continuity. It made itself adjacent, outside of the MCU.

As for Agent Carter, it didn’t actually matter if the show existed in the main timeline or not. The series was set in the 1950s, long before any of the main events of the film series save one movie, Captain America: The First Avenger, from which it spun off. It featured Peggy Carter from the film on her own adventures, and it did have a few cameos of characters from the film in the main series (although none of the A-list, above the line, named actors). Since it was so far removed from the main continuity it didn’t really matter if the series existed in continuity or not, It could be its own thing regardless. Most fans consider it “in continuity”, but that’s more a choice than a requirement.

And while we’re dealing with direct MCU spin-offs, all of the Marvel One-Shot shorts from the first couple of Phases are questionably connected at best. Yes, they do what they can to tie themselves into continuity, but Marvel never actually expected anyone to watch and remember the shorts. Anything important from those shorts is then reiterated in the films, and sometimes things occur that conflict (at least a little) with the main movies. They were official productions but not, like, officially official. They can be ignored, if you want.

As for the Netflix shows, well that’s something else altogether. Because of Daredevil: Born Again, along with cKingpin showing up in Hawkeye and Echo, we have to consider that at least some of the events of the Netflix continuity actually occurred. Some parts of Daredevil must be included, and we also need to include The Punisher, since Marvel is including the same version of the character, as played by Jon Bernthal, in later episodes of Daredevil: Born Again as well as giving him his own MCU special. What’s not clear is just how much of the past continuity we have to include.

The way Daredevil: Born Again starts, we get just a few brief scenes with the old cast before we take a time jump and leap ahead to a new version of the show. It elides trying to justify everything that happened in the Netflix series while still saying, “hey, it all probably happened.” And that leaves us in this nebulous grey zone. Marvel has stated they’d love to bring back more characters from the Netflix shows, such as Krysten Ritter’s Jessica Jones, but we probably won’t see everyone return. The Netflix versions of Luke Cage and Iron Fist are likely out (especially in the case of the latter show, which really sucked) and if those are out we can probably also reject the events of The Defenders. I’d also guess Marvel wants to recast characters like Elektra and all of The Hand so they can do their own versions. People loved Daredevil and Jessica Jones and, well, not much else, so anything not involving those characters is surely gone, done and dusted.

Probably Not Continuity

And then, when we go further afield, we have other Marvel Television shows that barely connected themselves to the main films at all. For starters there was The Inhumans, which wanted to be Marvel Television’s own way of doing mutants without mutants (because Fox, at the time, owned the rights to Marvel mutants). But that series sucked, no one watched it (even with the two hour premiere getting a full release in theaters), and Marvel has been all too willing to say, “inhumans? What inhumans?” ever since.

Between Hulu and Freeform we had a mini continuity built up between Cloak and Dagger and Runaways. Personally, I liked both of these shows in their first seasons, but they each quickly dropped off in quality afterwards. And once these shows ended, no one has made any mention of them again since. I’m sure we’ll see versions of these characters in the future (a version of Nico Minoru, one of the Runaways, shows up in Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, for instance), but these shows are clearly not connected to the MCU anymore (if they were, questionably, at all).

Then you have other shows that clearly just had the “Marvel” name without any connection to the main ‘verse. Shows like Helstrom (which sucked), MODOK (which was great), and Hit Monkey (which I enjoyed, but it very much an acquired taste) never even bothered to act like MCU shows, and that likely is part of the reason why most audiences ignored them. Again, Helstrom was awful, so I doubt anyone would have watched it regardless, but fans were very much focused on what tied into continuity in the original three Phases of the MCU, and anything outside that was considered “homework” to be ignored.

So Where Does That Leave Us?

As such, if you just want to know the MCU and know what to watch to keep up, well… yes, there’s still a lot. You can skip anything that isn’t officially MCU and still have weeks of watching. You don’t have to watch Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter, or the Marvel One-Shots if you don’t want to (although I do highly recommend Agent Carter). You can skip all the other Marvel shows that popped up when everyone wanted to try and say they had a Marvel work post-The Avengers. You can ignore anything and everything that isn’t MCU. If it’s not from Marvel Studios, it isn’t continuity.

And yeah, that’s the real rule. Just look for the Marvel Studios brand. In all but one case (Deadpool & Wolverine) these are the true in-continuity works. Everything else is secondary.