This Is (Kinda) Where Dark Phoenix Fits, Chronologically, In The X-Men Movie Timeline

If you think the Marvel Cinematic Universe is sorta messy when it comes to timeline, have you met the X-Men movies timeline? What started out as just some superhero flicks in the 2000s has turned into a saga that’s now spanned 12 films across multiple timelines — some that aren’t even technically considered canon anymore — and though they all started present day, they’re now in the past, still rewriting the futures of the movies.

In short, it’s confusing.

The time period in the latest X-Men movie, Dark Phoenix is the 1990s (and just for reference, the first X-Men movie was released in 2000). Going off of the prior movies and their timeline, Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) is still living and working at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters with Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) himself. After a mission into space (yes, space!) goes horribly wrong, Jean accidentally absorbs way too much power, turning this already powerful mutant into an even more powerful mutant. If you’re thinking “uh didn’t we see this in 2006’s X-Men The Last Stand?” the answer is both yes and no, because the X-Men movies rewrote their own timeline during the movies, and just completely forgot about other things as they trudged forward with more sequels.

I said this would be confusing.

So if you’re trying to figure out what X-Men movie goes where here’s the timeline in order that they occur — and please be warned that some of them just don’t exist on this timeline anymore.