Marvel Binge: How Long Does It Take to Watch Everything in the MCU?

Marvel Binge: How Long Does It Take to Watch Everything in the MCU?
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Ever since Disney+ entered the playing field, we’ve been spoiled for choice with Marvel content. The streaming service’s arrival also offers many a chance to go through an entire MCU rewatch, with nearly all the films and series conveniently in one place. If you’re considering taking on one of these rewatches yourself, you may wonder how long it will take.

We’re here to get the maths out of the way for you. Let’s figure out just how long it takes to watch every Marvel movie and series.

What is the runtime of every movie and series?

Image: Marvel Studios

Let’s start by breaking down the time needed for every Marvel movie and show that is part of the MCU. I’ve placed the titles in release order rather than chronologically and gathered their runtimes as per IMDb.

Phase 1:

  • Iron Man – 126 minutes
  • The Incredible Hulk – 112 minutes
  • Iron Man 2 – 124 minutes
  • Thor – 115 minutes
  • Captain America: The First Avenger – 124 minutes
  • The Avengers – 143 minutes

Phase 2:

  • Iron Man 3 – 130 minutes
  • Thor: The Dark World – 112 minutes
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier – 136 minutes
  • Guardians of the Galaxy – 121 minutes
  • Avengers: Age of Ultron – 141 minutes
  • Ant-Man – 117 minutes

Phase 3:

  • Captain America: Civil War – 147 minutes
  • Doctor Strange – 115 minutes
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – 136 minutes
  • Spider-Man: Homecoming – 133 minutes
  • Thor: Ragnarok – 130 minutes
  • Black Panther – 134 minutes
  • Avengers: Infinity War – 149 minutes
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp – 118 minutes
  • Captain Marvel – 123 minutes
  • Avengers: Endgame – 181 minutes
  • Spider-Man: Far From Home – 129 minutes

Phase 4:

  • WandaVision – (9 episodes) 357 minutes
  • The Falcon and the Winter Soldier – (6 episodes) 324 minutes
  • Loki – (6 episodes) 297 minutes
  • Black Widow – 134 minutes
  • What If…? – (9 episodes) 315 minutes
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – 132 minutes
  • Eternals – 157 minutes
  • Hawkeye – (6 episodes) – 294 minutes
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home – 148 minutes
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – 126 minutes
  • Moon Knight – (6 episodes) – 287 minutes
  • Thor: Love and Thunder – 119 minutes
  • Ms Marvel – (6 episodes) – 271 minutes
  • I Am Groot (5 episodes) – 25 minutes
  • She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (9 episodes) – 300 minutes
  • Werewolf By Night – 54 minutes
  • Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – 161 minutes
  • Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special – 41 minutes

Phase 5

  • Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania – 124 minutes
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 – 150 minutes
  • Secret Invasion (6 episodes) – 266 minutes
  • I Am Groot – Season 2 (5 eisodes) – 25 minutes
  • Loki – Season 2 (6 episodes) – 307 minutes
  • The Marvels -105 minutes
  • What If…? – Season 2 (9 episodes) – 289 minutes

Here are some interesting statistics out of all that, if you’re interested:

  • Longest Marvel movie: Avengers: Endgame
  • Shortest Marvel movie: The Marvels
  • Longest Marvel series: WandaVision (9 episodes)
  • Shortest Marvel series: Secret Invasion (6 episodes)

How long does it take to binge-watch all of the MCU?

Image: Marvel/Disney+

The Marvel Cinematic Universe currently stands at 45 different titles, with many more on the way. Be prepared, this is not a binge-watch to take lightly.

By my calculations, the total of all the above runtimes adds up to be: 7804 minutes. 

That’s about 130 hours of Marvel movies and TV series to watch. Watching them back to back with no breaks would take over 5 days.

That’s a whole lot of Marvel.

Dozens more projects will soon be added to this list, including Echo, Deadpool 3 and many more to come in 2023. So make sure you’re up to date before those come out!

If you need help finding where to stream all these MCU projects, we’ve got a guide that will help you. As for which movie is the best? That’s a different debate.

What about other Marvel projects?

marvel netflix series watch order
Image: Netflix/Marvel

With Disney reacquiring the rights to many of the projects under the Marvel Studios umbrella, a lot of titles are suddenly in the same realm as the MCU, although many aren’t considered “canon” just yet.

If you want to watch everything Marvel-related, we’ve broken down some more runtimes below.

Marvel One-Shots

Marvel Studios has released a bunch of one-shot shorts over the years, which are considered canon in the MCU. If you want to check them out it’s a pretty easy watch:

  • The Consultant (2011) – 3 minutes
  • A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Thor’s Hammer (2011) – 3 minutes
  • Item 47 (2012) – 11 minutes
  • Agent Carter (2013) – 15 minutes
  • All Hail The King (2014) – 13 minutes
  • Team Thor – Part 1 (2016) – 3 minutes
  • Team Thor – Part 2 (2016) – 4 minutes
  • Team Darryl (2017) – 6 minutes

In total, the one-shots will take you 58 minutes, so a nice easy watch!

The Defenders Saga

  • Daredevil – (39 episodes) 2099 minutes
  • Jessica Jones – (39 episodes) 2029 minutes
  • Luke Cage – (26 episodes) 1467 minutes
  • Iron Fist – (23 episodes) 1252 minutes
  • The Defenders – (8 episodes) 400 minutes
  • The Punisher – (26 episodes) 1384 minutes

The total time to watch The Defenders saga comes out at 8631 minutes, which is roughly 144 hours. That’s more than the entire MCU!

If you need the proper watch order for these (ex) Marvel Netflix series, you can find that here.

Spider-Man movies

spider-man movies
Image: Sony

Marvel is a large brand with a lot of characters under its umbrella, which means many companies have vied for those rights over time. One of these characters is Spider-Man who remains under Sony’s jurisdiction despite their agreement for Tom Holland’s iteration to appear in the MCU.

This all came to a head in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which may have inspired you to take on a full Spider-Man rewatch. If so we’ve gathered the runtime of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s superhero movies for you below as well as the other adjacent movies in Sony’s Spider-Man universe.

  • Spider-Man – 121 minutes
  • Spider-Man 2 – 127 minutes
  • Spider-Man 3 – 139 minutes
  • The Amazing Spider-Man – 136 minutes
  • The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – 142 minutes
  • Venom – 112 minutes
  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage – 97 minutes
  • Morbius – 104 minutes
  • Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – 117 minutes
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse – 140 minutes

Overall we’re looking at 1235 minutes for Sony’s universe of Marvel movies so far, which equates to about 20 hours.

Agents of SHIELD

I can’t believe I lost so much of my life figuring this out, but here it is, the runtimes for all of Agents of SHIELD:

  • Agents of SHIELD season 1 – (22 episodes) 978 minutes
  • Agents of SHIELD season 2 – (22 episodes) 983 minutes
  • Agents of SHIELD season 3 – (22 episodes) 981 minutes
  • Agents of SHIELD season 4 – (22 episodes) 977 minutes
  • Agents of SHIELD season 5 – (22 episodes) 975 minutes
  • Agents of SHIELD season 6 – (13 episodes) 576 minutes
  • Agents of SHIELD season 7 – (13 episodes) 573 minutes

In total, that comes to 6043 minutes which is roughly 101 hours.

Agent Carter

Let’s not forget Agent Carter, featuring Hayley Atwell as her character Peggy Carter from the Captain America movies. There were only two seasons of this one which come out at:

  • Agent Carter season 1 – (8 episodes) 349 minutes
  • Agent Carter season 2 – (10 episodes) 445 minutes

The total watch time for this one is a more manageable 794 minutes or just over 13 hours.

Fox Marvel Movies

Image: Fox/Disney

Since Disney officially acquired Fox Studios and Deadpool 3 is now on the MCU slate, we can probably consider the previous Fox superhero movies somewhat essential viewing. Here’s a breakdown of those runtimes:

  • X-Men – 105 minutes
  • X2 – 134 minutes
  • X-Men: The Last Stand – 105 minutes
  • X-Men: First Class – 133 minutes
  • X-Men: Days of Future Past – 132 minutes
  • X-Men: Apocalypse – 145 minutes
  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix – 116 minutes
  • X-Men Origins: Wolverine – 108 minutes
  • The Wolverine – 127 minutes
  • Logan – 139 minutes
  • Deadpool – 110 minutes
  • Deadpool 2 – 121 minutes

In total, a rewatch of the Fox-Marvel movies comes to 1475 minutes or roughly 24.5 hours.

Other Marvel TV series

marvels runaways stranger things
Image: Disney+

Under the many Disney umbrellas including Hulu and Freeform some other MCU-adjacent YA-focused TV shows were released that adapted comic books like Runaways and Cloak & Dagger. The series are set in the same universe and even had a crossover episode.

Here are their runtimes:

Runaways

  • Season 1 (10 episodes) – 495 minutes
  • Season 2 (13 episodes) – 610 minutes
  • Season 3 (10 episodes) – 475 minutes

Cloak & Dagger

  • Season 1 (10 episodes) – 421 minutes
  • Season 2 (10 episodes) – 415 minutes

Combined, these two come out at 2416 minutes which is around 40 hours.

Unfortunately, Disney pulled Runaways from streaming as part of a cost-cutting exercise, so you’ll have a hard time finding that one to watch. Cloak & Dagger is still available to stream on Disney+ (for now).

Marvel also released its attempt at the Inhumans in a TV show, which never passed one season. However, one character does have a crossover in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, meaning you could consider the events of the show canon (in one of the universes).

Inhumans

  • Season 1 (8 episodes) – 354 minutes

The whole series comes in at just under 6 hours.


We’ll continue adding to this list as more Marvel projects are released, so keep checking for updated runtimes.

Until then, enjoy your Marvel movie and TV show binge-watch! Once you’re done there you can weigh up how long a Star Wars marathon will take you.

This article has been updated since its original release date.

Lead Image Credit: Marvel Studios/Disney+


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At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

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