How Many Hours of Your Life You'd Have to Waste to Watch All of the MCU?
Once upon a time, fans of Marvel would binge every MCU movie in the anticipation of the newest film's release. Back then, Marvel Studios would release one – maybe two – films per year. It was easy and deemed necessary to keep up with the plot.
Then they started releasing standalone television shows. Agents of SHIELD, Netflix 's Defenders saga, and a few poorly received one-off series. But the main storyline of the MCU didn't mention those series, so it wasn't that important for casual fans to watch.
Suddenly, Marvel started pumping out films at a faster pace. Suddenly every calendar year had two films, then three films, now four films every year. Then they started putting limited series on Disney+. Then they connected Charlie Cox 's Daredevil to the MCU, meaning the Netflix series are officially canon and need to be watched to get the full experience.
Now there is so much content, new fans would need a few weeks free to catch up on the action.
If you're just talking about the "main" storyline of the MCU – that's all 30 of the films and just the Disney+ limited series – you'd need 108 hours. That's about 14 days of watching 8 hours a day.
If you include the Defenders saga – wanting to catch up on Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk for No Way Home, Hawkeye, and the upcoming Daredevil series – you'd add 144 hours. That's another 18 days.
Throw in Agent Carter for another 13 hours, Agents of SHIELD for a whopping 101, and another hour of one-shot shorts to combine for 115 hours – another 14 and a half days of watching.
All told, that's 367 hours of combined watching. That's 46 days of watching the MCU for 8 hours a day. If you spent an entire day watching, only stopping to sleep 7 hours a day, that's 22 days. If you left the TV running all day playing the entirety of the MCU, that's still over 15 days of Marvel content.
In fact, that's still leaving out a few titles – including the Inhumans, Cloak & Dagger, and the Runaways – that are so removed from the main storyline, they're not even included as canon.
There is so much content currently in the MCU, it'll be nearly impossible for new fans to be introduced to the full scope of the franchise.
The MCU is doing something that no film franchise has ever done before with their vast connected universe. They truly made a cinematic experience that tries to emulate its source material: comic books. There's a massive amount of content to be consumed with a wide enough variety of subgenres that fans of all types have something they can enjoy.