With about four months left before Avengers: Doomsday hits cinemas on 18 December this year, Disney Plus has put out an official “essential viewing” watchlist to get fans caught up. It is not the whole Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and it does not need to be, but it is worth noting what got left off. Both Captain Marvel and The Marvels are missing entirely, which is a strange call considering set photos and merchandise from this year’s Comic-Con reportedly showed Doctor Doom’s armour etched with a Captain Marvel emblem on one shoulder. If that detail means anything, Carol Danvers is walking into this film somehow, official watchlist or not.
Anticipation for this one is already at a fever pitch, and a lot of that comes down to one name. Robert Downey Jr. is walking back onto a Marvel set, except this time he is not suiting up as the hero who built the whole universe. He is playing Victor von Doom, the man who might tear it apart. That alone is enough to make this rewatch worth doing properly.
So if you only have time for the essentials, here is what you should watch:
X-Men
This one is on the list for a simple reason: the original Fox X-Men cast is showing up in Doomsday, Patrick Stewart’s Professor X and Ian McKellen’s Magneto included. Their MCU appearance only lands if you remember who these characters were before Disney owned them. This film is where that story starts.
X2
Widely considered the high point of the Fox X-Men run, X2 is where Xavier and Magneto set aside their rivalry to fight a bigger threat together. That exact dynamic of old enemies forced to cooperate is likely going to define how the X-Men slot into an Avengers-sized team in December.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Steve Rogers’ origin story earns its spot for obvious reasons, but there is a more direct pay-off here, too. Chris Evans is confirmed to return to the role for Doomsday, already teased in the trailers wielding Thor’s hammer, and going back to where Cap started makes that return land harder.
The Avengers
The blueprint. Every “team of heroes forced to work together” story the MCU has told since owes something to The Avengers, and Doomsday is shaping up to be the biggest version of that formula yet.
Avengers: Infinity War
Thanos proved the MCU was willing to let a villain actually win. Doom needs to feel like that same level of threat, so this is the film that sets the bar for what a top-tier MCU antagonist looks like.
Avengers: Endgame
Beyond wrapping up the Infinity Saga, Endgame is the film that introduces time travel and branching timelines to the MCU. That single plot device is the reason a multiverse exists and is what makes a film like Doomsday possible at all.
Loki
Across both seasons, Loki is where the sacred timeline, the TVA (the Time Variance Authority, the bureaucratic outfit that polices the multiverse) and the concept of timeline variants get explained properly. It’s also where the MCU’s original Kang the Conqueror arc unravels, ending with the character’s death and the multiverse thrown into chaos, right around when Marvel quietly began pivoting away from Kang and toward Doom instead. Understanding that pivot makes this required viewing for grasping how the multiverse threat in Doomsday actually took shape.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
On the surface this looks like a standalone origin story, but it plants seeds for the mystical side of the MCU and keeps Wong in the mix. Given how much magic and multiversal mechanics are likely to matter in Doomsday, that connective thread counts.
Spider-Man: No Way Home
Spider-Man: No Way Home marked the first time the MCU pulled actors from entirely separate franchises into one film. This is the direct precedent for what Doomsday is doing on a much larger scale by bringing the Fox X-Men cast into the fold. Watch this to get a taste of the trickery before the bigger version of it plays out.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Namor and the underwater nation of Talokan get introduced here, with Tenoch Huerta Mejía confirmed to reprise the role in Doomsday. Worth knowing, too: this film is also where Toussaint, T’Challa’s son, first appears as a child in the post-credits scene. Marvel has just confirmed at Comic-Con that he is grown up and taking over as the new Black Panther in a solo film down the line, so this is technically where that entire future starts.
Captain America: Brave New World
Sam Wilson takes over the shield fully here, and Thaddeus Ross becomes Red Hulk, dragging government and military politics into the picture. That kind of institutional backdrop tends to matter when a story escalates to the scale Doomsday is aiming for.
Deadpool & Wolverine
This is the film that officially folded the old Fox-verse into MCU canon, using Wolverine’s death and a parade of variant cameos to do it. More importantly, it introduces the idea that a universe can decay and eventually be erased once its ‘anchor being’ dies, and that the TVA is the body responsible for managing that. It’s a different flavour of multiversal stakes than ‘incursions,’ but it’s the film that first puts a universe’s survival on the clock, something Doomsday‘s plot is very likely drawing from, too.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
Incursions get explained here in plain terms: two universes touching means one of them dies. That is not a throwaway concept. It might be the entire premise Doomsday is built on, which explains why Disney tucked this film later in the list instead of where it falls chronologically.
Thunderbolts*
A team of morally grey antiheroes gets forced into functioning as a new Avengers line-up, and the film introduces the Sentry and the Void as genuine cosmic-level threats. Expect this roster to show up as part of the larger team assembled to face Doom.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Marvel’s first family finally arrives in the MCU proper, and comic book readers already know why that matters. Reed Richards and Victor von Doom have one of the longest rivalries in Marvel history, going back decades in the source material. Bringing the Fantastic Four in right before Doomsday is not a coincidence, it is a set-up.
