ReelX-Men watch order
13 films, two timelines that eventually get merged into one, and a couple of famously loose placements even fans argue about. Release order is how the story actually built its reputation; chronological order follows the in-universe timeline start to finish. Switch between them below.
Pick your order
Chronological placement follows the most commonly cited fan timeline, anchored to X-Men: Days of Future Past's 2014 timeline merge. Deadpool and Deadpool 2 are notoriously unstuck in time — the films themselves joke about it — and are placed here in their most commonly assumed near-present window rather than a confirmed year.
Every film, in detail
The film that proved comic-book movies could be taken seriously — Xavier and Magneto's ideological war begins.
A government strike on the school forces the X-Men and Magneto onto the same side, temporarily.
A “cure” for mutation splits the team just as Jean Grey's Phoenix side awakens.
Logan's backstory and the experiment that gave him his claws and his amnesia.
A younger Xavier and Magneto, still friends, during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Logan in Japan, stripped of his healing factor and forced to fight like it actually matters.
A time-travel reset that merges both movie timelines into one, undoing a bleak future.
A mercenary gets experimented on, comes back nearly unkillable, and breaks the fourth wall to complain about it.
The first mutant ever wakes up and decides to remake the world in his image.
A near-future where mutants are dying out, and Wolverine's last job is protecting a kid who might be like him.
A time-traveling soldier comes to kill a troubled kid, and Deadpool assembles a team to stop him.
Jean Grey's cosmic power finally consumes her, and the team can't agree on how to save her.
A horror-tinged detour following young mutants trapped in a mysterious facility.
Why is the X-Men timeline so confusing?
Because it technically isn't one timeline. The original trilogy (2000–2006) was made first and set roughly in its own release years. Then X-Men: First Class (2011) rebooted the story as a 1960s prequel with a mostly new cast, and Days of Future Past (2014) used time travel to deliberately merge both timelines into a single, cleaner one — which is why everything after that film fits together more cleanly than everything before it.
What about Deadpool?
Officially connected, loosely placed. Deadpool himself breaks the fourth wall more than once to joke about how little the timeline makes sense, so don't stress over exactly where the two films sit — watch them for the tone shift, not the continuity.
Where to watch
Most Fox-era X-Men films stream on Disney+ in regions where Fox's library was folded in; a few are still separate digital rentals depending on your country. Check availability →
