You'll Need 42 Hours To Complete The Recommended Avengers: Doomsday Homework
Turns out that cleaning up the canon requires you to take a trip through the past first.
For almost as long as the MCU has been in existence, one of the most frequent criticisms of the franchise has been the ballooning investment costs incurred by its increasingly convoluted mythos. As widely beloved as Infinity War and Endgame are, they're also absolute gobbledegook to anyone who wasn't invested in all of, or at least specific corners of, the universe – and that was 18 movies and 17 television shows ago. It’s deeply ironic to think that a problem which emerged in Marvel Comics over the course of three or four decades has now reached critical mass for Marvel Studios in half the time, and a big part of their intimidating canon troubles is undoubtedly the current Multiverse Saga’s tendency to resurrect even older Marvel properties predating the MCU.
But fret not – as per the words of Kevin Feige, the status quo that will emerge in the aftermath of the upcoming Avengers: Doomsday and Secret Wars will be a “streamlined, simplified, single universe that’s easier for audiences to follow.” It’s a strategy lifted wholesale from the same 2015 Secret Wars storyline the two-part conclusion is based on, an event which saw Victor Von Doom steal the reality-warping powers of a 4th-dimensional race named the Beyonders and rewrite existence in his image to prevent the collapse of the Multiverse. Just like the last climax of a saga in the franchise, this one is the culmination of a lot of disparate elements, but a curated playlist on Disney+ seems to suggest that the required homework is a lot shorter than initially assumed.
Not only will Doom be responsible for saving the Multiverse in his own twisted way, he might also end up saving the MCU with a clean slate after the upcoming two-part epic.
The Countdown to Doomsday, in hours
The official Countdown to Avengers: Doomsday watchlist has dropped on Disney+, and surprisingly it consists of only 14 movies and one TV show. Here’s the complete list:
The Fox canon films
- X-Men (2000)
- X2 (2003)
MCU movies
- Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)
- The Avengers (2012)
- Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
- Avengers: Endgame (2019)
- Loki season 1 and 2 (2021, 2023)
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
- Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)
- Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
- Deadpool and Wolverine (2024)
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
- Thunderbolts (2025)
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025)
This is all certainly still a significant undertaking, but it’s thankfully only a fraction of the 38 films and 17 TV shows that make up the entire MCU franchise. With Doomsday and the end of the Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it arriving in December, the one thing on everybody’s mind right now is time, and it helps to know exactly how much time is required to catch up on the official watchlist – and the answer is 41.65 hours altogether, with 1888 minutes (31.46 hours) coming from just the movies and another 611 minutes (10.18 hours) coming from both seasons of Loki.
What makes each Doomsday home-work film so important?
At first glance, there are some obvious standouts in this list in terms of relevancy for the upcoming event film. The first two X-Men movies are a perfect crash course on the Fox X-Men, who have popped up in different places throughout the Multiverse Saga. Captain America: The First Avenger and the Avengers movies obviously set the stage for Chris Evans' return as Steve Rogers, but also remind us that our heroes were forced to meddle with time to reverse the Snap.
It’s funny looking back in hindsight knowing just how much danger the Avengers have put everything in by simply saving the world.
Wakanda Forever, Shang-Chi, Brave New World, and First Steps introduce us to the major players of this multiversal conflict, including the members of both teams of Avengers (one led by Sam Wilson’s Captain America and the other sanctioned by the state), but it’s arguably Multiverse of Madness, No Way Home, Deadpool and Wolverine, and Loki that are the most important projects here in terms of pure lore and worldbuilding. Three of the four revolve entirely around setting up the rules and stakes of the Multiverse (with Doctor Strange in particular giving us our first glimpse at the world-ending universal collisions called “Incursions”), and Loki not only gives birth to the Multiverse in its first season but also establishes the former God of Mischief as the new keeper of time, a status Victor Von Doom is certain to steal for himself in Doomsday.
With all the promises of a revitalized, digestible, cohesive universe after Doomsday and Secret Wars, it’s nice to be able to take one last bittersweet (and truncated) trip down memory lane and be reminded of the messy, foundational canon that got the MCU all the way here.
