Disney+ has truly been a gift to Marvel fans. Not only can we now find all our favorite MCU movies in one place, instead of cobbling together our collections between DVDs and Netflix, but many of Marvel’s beloved supporting characters now take center stage in their own series. Like the rest of the MCU, Marvel’s Disney+ limited series all take place in the same universe, with events in one series or movie affecting the events in all the others. The good news, though, is that despite this interconnection, you don’t have to watch every series, or watch them in order, to understand what’s going on. Plus, Disney+ has a whole collection of shorts and animated shows that are unconnected to the MCU. Here’s a list of all the Marvel shows currently on Disney+ so you can choose where you want to start!
WandaVision
It’s WandaVision, a quirky new sitcom about Wanda and her doting husband Vision! Wanda has the power to change reality at will and Vision is a superpowered android, but they can’t let the neighbors know. After all, they’re trying to fit into their cozy suburban neighborhood so that they can live normal, humdrum lives. The show is set in the 1950s… I mean, the 1960s? The 70s? 80s? Wait a minute, something weird is going on here.
Why are Wanda and Vision seemingly trapped in a false sitcom reality? Who are those voices trying to reach them through the neighbor’s radio? And isn’t Vision dead? WandaVision kicks off Marvel’s run of Disney+ limited series with a high concept homage to American sitcoms that ends up being a poignant meditation on love and grief.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
Captain America is gone forever, having chosen to live out his days in the past with his lost love Peggy Carter. Left to deal with the fallout are Sam Wilson, known as the Falcon, and Bucky Barnes, the formerly brainwashed but recovering Winter Soldier. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier follows Sam and Bucky as they struggle to heal and define themselves without Steve acting as their center of gravity. Sam decides to decline Steve’s offer to take on the mantle of Captain America, instead donating the shield to a museum exhibit, and is horrified to find out that the US government has given it to a new Captain America instead. Meanwhile, Bucky deals with the emotional trauma of having killed innocent people as the Winter Soldier.
Dealing with issues of racism, PTSD, and refugees, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has a more somber, realistic feel than the other Marvel series—but still plenty of super-powered heroism.
Loki Season 1
In The Avengers: Endgame, Loki grabs the tesseract when Tony bungles the time heist and disappears. For years, fans were left wondering where exactly he ended up, but Loki picks up where the movie left off. After escaping to the Gobi Desert, Loki finds himself apprehended by the Time Variance Authority. His crime? Creating a branch reality by stealing the tesseract instead of going to Asgard with Thor. Agent Mobius of the TVA has an offer, though: Loki can stave off being erased from reality if he helps the TVA catch a violent criminal who’s hopping through time, murdering TVA agents.
Easily Marvel’s most popular series, Loki follows the God of Mischief as he comes to terms with his murderous past, meets various alternate versions of himself, and decides to try his hand at being a hero instead of a villain.
What If…? Season 1
Once Loki blew open the multiverse, Marvel decided to see just how weird they could get with their new cosmic sandbox, exploring all manner of alternate realities and character variants. What if Peggy Carter took the super serum instead of Steve Rogers? What if T’Challah was taken to space instead of Peter Quill? What if Thor was an only child and took over Las Vegas in a weeklong drunken bender?
On the surface, What If…? is an anthology series, with each episode exploring one new reality. As the season progresses, though, it starts to reveal an underlying connection between the realities, as the series’s narrator Uatu starts to get more involved in the multiverse than he planned to.
Hawkeye
After Endgame, Clint Barton, known as Hawkeye, is one of the three remaining original Avengers. After losing his hearing from years of fighting earth-shaking calamities, Clint just wants to retire from superhero life and reconnect with his family, all of whom disappeared for five years during the Blip. But while Clint is trying to enjoy the days leading up to Christmas, things go sideways at an underground auction selling his salvaged Ronin suit, and Clint is sucked into a conflict with the Tracksuit Mafia.
Although all of the Disney+ Marvel series are setting future phases of the MCU, Hawkeye is the show that most clearly passes the torch to a younger generation of heroes and anti-heroes. Hawkeye introduces Kate Bishop, Clint’s headstrong mentee, and Maya Lopez (AKA Echo), a skilled fighter trying to avenge the death of her father.
Moon Knight
Steven Grant is a mild-mannered museum gift shop employee who suffers from blackouts and a sleep disorder. He loves studying ancient Egypt, but his coworkers at the museum see him as so odd that there’s no hope of him ever getting to pursue his passion. Then Steven discovers that he shares a body with an American mercenary named Marc Spector who serves as avatar to Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon. Together, Marc and Steven, along with Marc’s wife Layla, must stop cult leader Arthur Harrow from awakening the Egyptian goddess Ammit, who wants to execute billions of people for crimes they may commit at some point in the future.
Moon Knight is Marvel’s most intimate and self-contained show, containing almost no references to the wider MCU. It’s also one of the most moving of the Marvel Disney+ series, exploring childhood trauma and dissociative identity disorder. It also introduces us to the Ennead, the pantheon of Egyptian gods who have been watching over humanity for untold millennia.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Runaways, Inhumans, and Agent Carter
Over the years, Marvel licensed many of its characters and properties out to various other networks and platforms, and they’re gradually landing on Disney+. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. chronicles the adventures of Phil Coulson and the rest of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they investigate aliens, magic, and other oddities that pop up when you live in a superpowered world. Runaways, based on the comic series of the same name, follows a group of teenagers as they discover their superpowers and use them to fight for good. Inhumans focuses on a group of humans whose DNA contains traces of ancient Kree Empire experimentation, and Agent Carter follows the beloved Peggy Carter in her work as a secret agent in the 1940’s.
Assembled, Legends, One-Shots, and Other Specials
In addition to their limited series, Marvel has various extra features on Disney+. Assembled is a series of behind-the-scenes looks at MCU movies and series featuring cast and crew interviews, insights into the writing and production process, and outtakes. Legends is a series of shorts that highlight the character arcs of individual heroes and villains throughout the MCU, and the One-Shots are MCU-adjacent shorts that put familiar characters in new situations (like Thor rooming with a mild-mannered Australian office worker named Darryl).
Legacy Animation
Finally, Marvel has included over 40 animated series in the “legacy animation” section of its Disney+ page. These series feature Marvel characters, but aren’t canonically part of the MCU. If the movies and limited series have failed to slake your thirst for Marvel heroics, then dive into the wonderful rabbit hole of Spidey and his Amazing Friends, Spider-Woman, Marvel Funko, The Fantastic Four, and more. One of the highlights of the legacy section is Marvel Rising, which focuses on Miss Marvel, Shuri, America Chavez, Squirrel Girl, and other young heroines of the sprawling Marvel universe.
(image: Marvel)
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