Order in the (Marvel) Universe (Part VII)

Many, many moons ago, right in the middle of one of the UK lockdowns, I tried to keep myself sane and distracted by rewatching all of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (including the TV series) in chronological order of events.

Just because the world (well, certainly the UK) seems to think the pandemic has ended, I'm still keeping as safe as possible, and keeping myself as sane as possible by continuing this massive Marvel rewatch.

Last time I posted about the Marvel marathon was back in July, and we continued our watch through in the order that DigitalSpy recommended. We finished that section with a back-to-back rewatch of Seasons One and Two of Marvel's Cloak and Dagger. So what was next on the list in order of events?

We head back to Netflix and return to Luke Cage for Season Two. Another excellent series, though I spent most of my time frustrated by the villains again. I know you're not supposed to like Mariah, but I really hated her in this series. Luckily, she is so completely hateful, and does such absolutely horrible things that her sidekick, Shades, eventually turns on her, and she's eventually killed by her own daughter. 

Once again, Mike Colter is freakin' awesome, as is Simone Missick, and the music is just brilliant again. One episode really stood out (Episode 4) where Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram performs on stage in the club, and... man, can that guy play. 

There's a little video of his 22nd Birthday concert. He's 22. Wow... 

After Luke Cage's final season, we head over to Iron Fist's last — a shorter season of ten episodes (and it really shows that most of the Marvel series on Netflix may have worked better as ten episode runs rather than thirteen). It's a good season again, plenty going on in it. It introduces one of my wife's favourite characters from Daredevil with 'Typhoid' Mary, and once again Jessica Henwick steals the show as Colleen Wing. After a climatic battle, Wing ends up with the Iron Fist powers, channeling them through her katana, though Danny Rand can still manifest the power in some way through guns? Weird. I'd have loved to have seen where this would have continued. 

Continuing the watch through in order, we move onto another of Netflix's 'Defenders' series, and the final season of Daredevil.

Can't believe it's been so long with the world thinking Matt Murdock was dead. This series Matt is hiding for most of it under the church, his suit having been stolen by Kingpin's goons and given to Bullseye. Some amazing scenes in this again — there's the 'filmed as one shot' sequence in the prison, where Murdock foolishly goes in to get info and as trapped in there, drugged, while a riot breaks out. And then there's the intense Karen Page / Kingpin scene in Kingpin's 'home arrest' luxury apartment. Fantastic as always. Brilliant cast, and I'd love to see the actors continue these rolls in future. Will Murdock be in Spider-man? Is Kingpin in the Hawkeye series? Who knows... only time will tell.

Next in the viewing order we head back over to Disney+ for Season Two of Marvel's Runaways.

I don't know what happened. I really enjoyed Season One when we rewatched it. I remember enjoying all three seasons first time around (though the main villain in Season Three was a strange choice). But this time around, rewatching Season Two was a bit of a struggle. Maybe it's because it was longer (thirteen episodes rather than ten), and the 'big bad' is kinda stopped by the seventh or eighth episode. After that it flounders a little as they try to establish the alien possessions storyline, the AWOL storyline, and just try to get to grips with what's going on... and then it just kinda stops. 

Oh well. Onto something completely new to me - 

Season Two of The Punisher. Now, I'm going to confess, I really liked Season One, despite it being one of the most violent series I've watched in a long time. But when Season Two dropped, I didn't quite get around to watching it straight away. And then the reviews started coming in saying it wasn't as good as the first, so we never quite got around to sitting down and actually watching it. So this was the first time for us, and we were pleasantly surprised! I thought it was going to be bad, but (again helped by some great supporting cast) it was rather good again. My only complaint is the end scene with Frank gunning down a load of drug dealers. Part of me was kinda hoping he was going to go back to that roadhouse and see if he could make up again with Beth Quinn, but alas. Billy Russo met a fitting finale, and 'John Pilgrim' was scarily brutal. 

And that's as far as we've got!!

Next up on the list is another Netflix series we haven't seen before — Season Three of Jessica Jones.

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If you want to catch up and keep up with the rewatch of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we've been following the order that DigitalSpy produced a little while ago. If you want to join in, here's the list we've worked through so far...

1 - Captain America: The First Avenger

2 - Agent Carter (Season One)

3 - Agent Carter (Season Two)

4 - Agent Carter (Marvel One-Shot - on Iron Man 3 bluray)

5 - Captain Marvel

6 - Iron Man

7 - Iron Man 2

8 - The Incredible Hulk (on Netflix)

9 - The Consultant (Marvel One-Shot - on the Thor bluray)

10 - A Funny Thing Happened On The Way to Thor's Hammer (Marvel One-Shot - on the Captain America: The First Avenger bluray)

11 - Thor: The Mighty Avenger

12 - Avengers Assemble (the first Avengers movie)

13 - Item 47 (Marvel One-Shot - on the Avengers bluray)

14 - Iron Man 3

15 - All Hail The King (Marvel One-Shot on the Thor: The Dark World bluray)

16 - Agents of SHIELD (Season One, Episodes 1-7)

17 - Thor: The Dark World

18 - Agents of SHIELD (Season One, Episodes 8-16)

19 - Captain America: The Winter Soldier

20 - Agents of SHIELD (Season One, Episodes 17-22)

21 - Guardians of the Galaxy

22 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2

23 - Daredevil (Season One)

24 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Two, Episodes 1-10)

25 - Jessica Jones (Season One)

26 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Two, Episodes 11-19)

27 - Avengers: Age of Ultron

28 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Two, Episodes 20-22)

29 - Daredevil (Season Two, Episodes 1-4)

30 - Luke Cage (Season One, Episodes 1-4)

31 - Daredevil (Season Two, Episodes 5-11)

32 - Luke Cage (Season One, Episodes 5-8)

33 - Daredevil (Season Two, Episodes 12-13)

34 - Luke Cage (Season One, Episodes 9-13)

35 - Ant-Man

36 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Three, Episodes 1-10)

37 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Three, Episodes 11-19)

38 - Iron Fist (Season One)

39 - Captain America: Civil War

40 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Three, Episodes 20-22)

41 - The Defenders

42 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Four, Episodes 1-6)

43 - Doctor Strange

44 - Black Panther

45 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Four, Episodes 7-8)

46 - Agents of SHIELD: Slingshot (Episodes 1-6)

47 - Agents of SHIELD (Season Four, Episodes 9-22)

48 - Spider-man: Homecoming

49 - Thor: Ragnarok

50 - Inhumans (Season One)

51 - The Punisher (Season One)

52 - Runaways (Season One)

53 - Agents of SHIELD (Season 5, Episodes 1-10)

54 - Jessica Jones (Season Two)

55 - Agents of SHIELD (Season 5, Episodes 11-18)

56 - Cloak and Dagger (Season One)

57 - Cloak and Dagger (Season Two)

58 - Luke Cage (Season Two) 

59 - Iron Fist (Season Two)

60 - Daredevil (Season Three)

61 - Runaways (Season Two)

62 - The Punisher (Season Two)

Next up is...

63 - Jessica Jones (Season Three) <--We Are Here!!

64 - Ant-Man and the Wasp (credits after Infinity War)

65 - Avengers: Infinity War

66 - Agents of SHIELD (Season 5, Episodes 19-22)

67 - Agents of SHIELD (Season 6)

[I have noticed that DigitalSpy's page has updated to insert Black Widow as Number 40 in the sequence, but we're way past that now - I haven't seen Black Widow yet, but will rectify that as soon as it hits non-premiere Disney+]