DCEU Movies in Order

There are 15 DC Extended Universe films, from Man of Steel (2013) to Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, which opened in the US on December 22, 2023. If you have seen a count of 16 somewhere, that is someone counting Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021) separately; it is an alternate cut of the 2017 Justice League rather than a new film. The DCEU also had exactly one TV series, Peacemaker season 1 (2022), which is not on this list because this guide covers the movies.

Release order, starting with Man of Steel (2013). In full: Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), Suicide Squad (2016), Wonder Woman (2017), Justice League (2017), Aquaman (2018), Shazam! (2019), Birds of Prey (2020), Wonder Woman 1984 (2020), The Suicide Squad (2021), Black Adam (2022), Shazam! Fury of the Gods (2023), The Flash (2023), Blue Beetle (2023), Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (2023). The year people get tangled is 2023, which had four of them: Fury of the Gods in March, The Flash in June, Blue Beetle in August and Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom in December. Release order keeps the cameos and the tonal swings landing the way audiences met them, and it sidesteps the timeline arguments completely.

Yes, most of them, if you only want the connected story. The spine is three films: Man of Steel (2013), Batman v Superman (2016) and Justice League (2017). After that the DCEU largely stopped building toward anything, so the rest breaks into self-contained runs. Aquaman only needs Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Shazam! only needs Fury of the Gods, and Wonder Woman only needs Wonder Woman 1984. Suicide Squad, Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad form a loose Harley Quinn thread you can watch on its own. Blue Beetle (2023) references almost nothing from the other films and works completely cold. The most skippable is Black Adam (2022): its big hook was a mid-credits Henry Cavill cameo setting up a Superman showdown that was cancelled weeks later when Gunn and Safran took over, so it sets up nothing that ever happens. The one film not to watch cold is The Flash (2023), which leans on Man of Steel and Batman v Superman for most of its payoff.

In the US as of August 2026, all 15 stream on HBO Max, which is the natural home for them because Warner Bros. made every one. Both versions of Justice League are there, the 2017 theatrical cut and the four-hour Zack Snyder's Justice League. Black Adam (2022) is also on Netflix, and several of them rotate through TNT, TBS and truTV if you have cable. All 15 can be rented or bought from Prime Video, the Apple TV app and Fandango at Home. Rights differ a lot by country and shift over time, so check a local listing such as JustWatch before you plan a marathon.

No, and this is the single most confusing thing about DC right now. The DCEU ran from 2013 to 2023 and is over. James Gunn and Peter Safran took charge of DC Studios in late 2022 and started a separate continuity called the DCU, which began with the animated series Creature Commandos (December 2024) and the film Superman (July 11, 2025), starring David Corenswet instead of Henry Cavill. It is a soft reboot rather than a clean wipe. Three DCEU actors kept their roles: Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, John Cena as Peacemaker and Xolo Mariduena as Blue Beetle, and Gunn has said Jaime Reyes was in fact the first DCU character even though Blue Beetle (2023) is on this list. Jason Momoa is back too, but as the bounty hunter Lobo in Supergirl (June 26, 2026), not as Aquaman. Everything else was recast or dropped: Cavill's Superman, Gal Gadot's planned Wonder Woman 3, and Ben Affleck's Batman, whose last appearance was The Flash (2023); he shot a cameo for Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom but it was cut before release, so despite what a lot of listings say he is not in that film. The working rule is that a DCEU event counts in the DCU only if a DCU project references it directly.

No. Superman (2025) was built as a jumping-on point and assumes you have seen nothing. The same goes for Supergirl (June 26, 2026), the Lanterns series (premiering August 16, 2026 on HBO and HBO Max), Clayface (October 23, 2026) and the Superman sequel Man of Tomorrow (July 9, 2027). The only DCEU-era viewing that pays off is Peacemaker season 1 (2022) before season 2, and even that is optional, because season 2 opens by rewriting its own Justice League tie-in to fit the new continuity. Worth knowing separately: The Batman (2022) and The Batman Part II (February 18, 2028), plus Joker (2019) and Joker: Folie a Deux (2024), sit outside both universes under the DC Elseworlds label, so they are not homework for either.

One word in the title, and five years. Suicide Squad (2016) is David Ayer's film; The Suicide Squad (2021) is James Gunn's relaunch. They share Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn, Viola Davis's Amanda Waller, Joel Kinnaman's Rick Flag and Jai Courtney's Captain Boomerang, but Gunn's is a new mission with a mostly new roster and needs no setup from the 2016 film. If you are only watching one, take the 2021 version: it was far better received by critics, and it is the one the rest of the franchise followed up on, through Peacemaker and into the DCU.

It is a four-hour director's cut of the 2017 Justice League, released on HBO Max on March 18, 2021 after a long fan campaign. The theatrical cut runs 120 minutes; Snyder's runs 242 minutes and uses none of the footage shot by Joss Whedon, restoring a much larger arc for Cyborg and putting Darkseid on screen. It is the same core story either way, so watch orders count it as one entry, not two. Both cuts stream on HBO Max in the US, so you can pick whichever you have four hours for.

It is contested. We treat The Flash as the chronological capstone because it is a multiverse story that resets the timeline, placing only the post-reset Blue Beetle after it. Some guides instead slot The Flash early, right after Man of Steel (2013), because most of the film plays out in an altered past. Either choice works; release order avoids the question entirely.

No, and on a first watch it works against you. Chronological order really only moves two films: Wonder Woman, set during World War I, and Wonder Woman 1984, set in the Cold War, both jumping to the front. The catch is that Wonder Woman (2017) opens and closes in the present day, with Diana at the Louvre receiving the WWI photograph sent to her by Bruce Wayne, a direct callback to Batman v Superman (2016). Watch it first and the film's own framing device is pointing at a movie you have not seen. Save chronological order for a rewatch, where leading with Diana is a genuinely nice reframing of the whole run.