Two decades of Marvel-based films, series, specials, shorts and web productions began as siloed studio continuities — Marvel Studios, Marvel Television, Fox, Sony, New Line, Madhouse — and were later stitched together mostly by multiversal contact and legacy-character returns, not by one merged timeline. This report catalogs roughly ninety deduplicated screen productions and the confirmed, multiversal and disputed links between them, built from a web-derived evidence corpus with a research cutoff of 28 August 2026.
Marvel screen adaptations in this period started highly fragmented by licensing: Marvel Studios built the MCU from Iron Man (2008) onward; Marvel Television grew ABC, Netflix, Hulu and Freeform clusters that acknowledged film continuity; Fox ran its own X-Men film timelines plus Legion and The Gifted; Sony ran successive Spider-Man lines and later its own Spider-Man Universe; and animation, anime and international productions formed further self-contained families such as Marvel Anime.
Bridges arrived in waves: film characters entering television from 2013, explicit TV crossovers (The Defenders 2017; Runaways × Cloak & Dagger 2019), a TV character entering film in 2019, then an acceleration of multiverse storytelling — Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021), Venom: Let There Be Carnage's mid-credits scene, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022), The Marvels (2023), the Spider-Verse films, and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024), which folded even New Line's Blade into the MCU through the multiverse. These bridges establish multiversal adjacency, legacy-character contact, or retroactive inclusion — not one merged timeline.
Scope: narrative Marvel-based films, television and streaming series, specials, shorts, one-shots and continuity-relevant web series first released 1 January 2005 – 28 August 2026, across all studios. Documentaries, making-of and recap shows, commercials, games, unreleased projects, rumors and deleted scenes are excluded; a small number of announced-but-unreleased titles that appear in the sources (VisionQuest, Avengers: Doomsday, Wonder Man) are discussed only as forward evidence and are not counted as releases.
Classification: confirmed requires concrete on-screen narrative evidence or an attributable authoritative statement; strongly implied covers heavy but not conclusive on-screen or official signals; ambiguous covers unresolved or contradictory evidence; non-canonical covers marketing-only or coincidental links. We distinguish same-universe direct intersections, branch/altered-timeline links, multiversal contact, retroactive canonization, continuity-neutral references, disputed claims, and false positives. A returning actor counts only where the narrative identifies the character as the same individual or a story-linked variant; Stan Lee cameos, Easter eggs, reused actors, similar props and theories do not establish continuity. On-screen and official Marvel/Disney/Sony/Fox/platform evidence is privileged over encyclopedic and entertainment coverage, which is treated as secondary corroboration. Unresolved fields are left blank rather than filled by inference.
Deduplicated productions found in the evidence pool, with blank cells where the sources do not resolve a field. Exhaustiveness is bounded by what the corpus surfaced.
| Title | Released | Format | Studio / outlet | Continuity | Source |
|---|
Marvel Studios / MCU — one shared continuity spanning films and, from 2021, the Disney+ series, with What If…? operating explicitly in the multiverse. Marvel Television (2013–2020) — ABC, Netflix, Hulu and Freeform series that directly tied into the MCU films, with intra-cluster crossovers; Helstrom released "siloed off". Fox X-Men era — film timelines split by Days of Future Past's retroactive alteration, plus Legion (parallel universe) and The Gifted (own timeline). Sony lines — the Raimi trilogy, the Amazing Spider-Man films, the Sony's Spider-Man Universe (Venom, Morbius), and the animated Spider-Verse films, each a distinct universe connected only multiversally. Legacy and other studios — New Line's Blade trilogy and its 2006 spinoff series, Fox's Fantastic Four duology. Animation, anime and international — the Madhouse Marvel Anime family, Disk Wars and Future Avengers, the Disney XD action shows, the kid-friendly Spidey/Iron Man continuity, and the '92-continuity revival X-Men '97.
2005–2012 — silos. Licensed lines run independently: Blade: The Series continues the film trilogy on Spike (ultimatepopculture.fandom.com); Marvel Anime airs in Japan 2010–11 (en.wikipedia.org); Marvel One-Shots begin extending MCU films on home video (fandom.com).
2013–2019 — TV joins the MCU. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. debuts tied directly to The Avengers with Coulson reprising his film role (en.wikipedia.org); Daredevil references The Avengers and an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. character (en.wikipedia.org); The Defenders unites four series (kiddle.co); Runaways × Cloak & Dagger crossover is confirmed (marvel.com); Endgame carries Jarvis from TV into film (en.wikipedia.org).
2021–2024 — the multiverse era. No Way Home brings back Maguire and Garfield as their own Peters (en.wikipedia.org); Venom: Let There Be Carnage's mid-credits scene officially connects the SSU and MCU (fourkents.com); Multiverse of Madness stages Fox's Xavier and Inhumans' Black Bolt as alternate-universe versions (en.wikipedia.org); Across the Spider-Verse name-checks Earth-199999 (en.wikipedia.org); Deadpool & Wolverine pulls Fox, Blade and Fantastic Four legacies into the MCU via the multiverse (en.wikipedia.org).
2024–2026 — retroactive anchoring. Marvel Studios integrates the Netflix shows into its Disney+ timeline (thepopverse.com); Born Again season 2 references Cybertek from Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (screenrant.com); Sadie Sink's Jean Grey debuts in Spider-Man: Brand New Day ahead of Marvel Studios' X-Men (marvel.com).
Consolidated, evidence-backed links only; duplicate claims merged. Labels use the four-tier scale.
| From | To | Date | Evidence | Relationship | Label | Source |
|---|
Named characters carried between screen continuities, classified without silently equating counterparts.
| Character (performer) | Journey | Classification | Source |
|---|
The Avengers (2012) is the anchor Marvel Television built against — Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. "directly tied into" its events (grokipedia.com). The Defenders (2017) physically merged four Netflix casts (kiddle.co). Runaways / Cloak & Dagger (2019) proved the Hulu/Freeform shows shared a world (screenrant.com). Avengers: Endgame (2019) reversed the flow of characters, TV to film, with Jarvis (reference.org).
Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021) used Strange's spells to bring past Spider-Man universes into contact and send them home again (en.wikipedia.org), and debuted Cox's Murdock in a Marvel Studios film. Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021) and Morbius credit scenes established SSU–MCU adjacency without merging the lines (fourkents.com). Multiverse of Madness (2022) staged Fox's Xavier, Inhumans' Black Bolt and a fancast Reed Richards as explicit alternate-universe versions (en.wikipedia.org). The Marvels (2023) extended this with Grammer's Beast (en.wikipedia.org). Deadpool & Wolverine (2024) is the widest bridge, carrying Fox, Blade and Fantastic Four legacies into the MCU through the multiverse (marvel.com). The Spider-Verse films canonize the Raimi, Webb, SSU and MCU worlds as neighbouring universes (thepopverse.com). What If…? (2021–24) made the multiverse itself the MCU's connective format (marvel.com), and X-Men '97 raises legacy-animation questions via a Watcher cameo (comicbook.com).
Marvel Television vs the MCU. For: the shows were produced as MCU continuity and featured film characters (en.wikipedia.org); Born Again s2's Cybertek reference is on-screen Marvel Studios acknowledgment (screenrant.com). Against: Marvel Studios' TV head gave only a cautious, non-committal answer on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (bleedingcool.com). Bottom line: confirmed for the ABC shows through at least season 1 events; branching-timeline reconciliation for later seasons remains ambiguous.
Netflix / Defenders. Winderbaum says he is "confident" Daredevil sits on the Sacred Timeline (firstcuriosity.com) and the shows were folded into the Disney+ timeline in 2024; Cox and D'Onofrio continue their roles. Bottom line: confirmed.
Inhumans, Runaways, Cloak & Dagger, Helstrom. Inhumans returns only as an alternate-universe Black Bolt — ambiguous for the series itself (en.wikipedia.org). Runaways/Cloak & Dagger were produced as MCU but "largely ignored the events of the films" — strongly implied (screenrant.com). Helstrom's own showrunner called it "our own separate thing" — non-canonical to the MCU (reference.org).
Fox timelines, Logan and Deadpool. Days of Future Past retroactively rewrote the film continuity (en.wikipedia.org); the Deadpool films present a distinct Deadpool from Origins yet cameo the young X-Men to claim the new timeline — strongly implied placement (en.wikipedia.org). Marvel Studios preserved Logan's ending by making Jackman's D&W Wolverine a variant, not the Logan of Logan — confirmed variant status (en.wikipedia.org).
Sony's Spider-Man Universe vs MCU. The credit-scene contacts are on-screen and official — confirmed multiversal adjacency, explicitly not a merged universe (fourkents.com). Returning actors as variants: Stewart, Grammer, Mount, Evans, Snipes and Jackman all play story-identified alternate versions; a returning face alone canonizes nothing, and none of these cameos canonize the actors' old franchises wholesale. Animation/live-action interaction is confirmed only in the Spider-Verse films (Glover's live-action Prowler cameo, archival footage) (en.wikipedia.org); X-Men '97's Watcher remains ambiguous per its producer (screenrant.com).
Standalone continuities containing multiple installments: the Marvel Anime family (four series plus film sequels, with Rise of Technovore continuing the Iron Man anime — grokipedia.com); Blade: The Series, which continues the Blade film trilogy on its own track (ultimatepopculture.fandom.com); the kid-friendly animated continuity that runs from Iron Man and His Awesome Friends into the announced Avengers: Mightiest Friends (timewarnerent.com); and Legion's parallel universe.
Truly single-production standalones with sourced statements: Helstrom (disconnected on release — wikiwand.com); the Wolverine anime, whose "story stands alone with minimal connections to broader X-Men lore", and Avengers Confidential: Black Widow & Punisher, "a standalone entry" (grokipedia.com). Many catalog titles simply lack connection evidence in this corpus (e.g. the motion-comic line, Powers, Marvel Disk Wars); absence of a recorded link is not treated as proof of standalone status.
The map at the top of this page is the report's continuity diagram, drawn in three readable clusters rather than one tangle: (a) the MCU and Marvel Television with their internal bridges at left; (b) the Sony, Fox and legacy live-action multiverse bridges at right; (c) animation, anime and standalone clusters below. Solid lines are confirmed direct links, dashed lines are labeled multiversal contact, dotted lines are disputed, and casting coincidences get no line at all. Hover any node or line for the actual characters and the sourced claim behind it; isolated boxes (Helstrom, Avengers Confidential, the kid continuity) are deliberately unconnected.
Method: built from a web-derived evidence corpus, not a hand-curated registry — 752 broad catalog rows, 25 conservative normalized sample rows used only for field cross-checking, and 2,595 intersection candidate rows from a 4,414-page diversified search; only the first 329 catalog rows and first 495 intersection rows were available to this build, so counts are indicative, exact aggregates are deliberately not claimed, and coverage is bounded by discoverability, inconsistent naming and the 2026-08-28 release cutoff. Duplicates were consolidated, unresolved cells left blank, fan-made and unreleased projects excluded, and on-screen or official-studio evidence privileged over secondary coverage. Rows with missing data or weak sourcing require further primary-source verification. Motion comics and several minor web shorts are grouped for space.