For years I kept getting the same question in my group chat: what order do I watch this in?
Marvel had become a calendar. Star Wars had three different chronologies depending on who you asked. Breaking Bad had a sequel-that-was-actually-a-prequel that started after the original ended, ran longer than the original, and overlapped with it in the middle — and then a movie picked up right where the original left off. And don’t even get me started on DC’s mess of timelines (yet). The streaming era kept adding things to watch, but nobody’s job was to tell anyone where to start.
So I started tracking each one, and my notes eventually became a hobby — and Binge Base was born.
This site is simply a one-person point of view of what I would recommend to watch and in what order. Throughout, I’ll recommend skipping episodes or entire movies (and sometimes whole shows). You won’t get 47-tab spreadsheets or generic actually-you-need-to-watch-every-interconnected-piece-of-media-or-you’ll-be-confused (you won’t).
What’s a Binge Map
A Binge Map is a watch order guide for a single franchise. Every Binge Map has:
- The order — release order and chronological order, side by side, because both have a case
- Essential vs. optional — what you actually need to see, and what’s there if you want it
- Total runtime — yes, the whole franchise in hours, so you know what you’re signing up for
- Where to stream each entry — current as of the last update
- A take — my actual opinion, including which entries can be skipped without missing anything
If a Binge Map doesn’t have an opinion in it, I’m not done with it yet.
What you won’t find here
You won’t find me telling you everything is essential — most franchises have a few entries that aren’t.
You won’t find me pretending the worst entry in a franchise is good because it’s part of the canon. (It isn’t. And no, you don’t have to watch The Star Wars Holiday Special.)
You won’t find a 4,000-word setup buried before a five-word recommendation — the recommendation is up top.
You won’t find me sending you down some “secret hidden order” that nobody’s heard of. Release order or chronological order. Two ways. Pick one.
And you won’t find me recommending a streaming service just because the affiliate commission is good. More on that on the Editorial Standards page.
How to use this
Pick a franchise. Read the Binge Map. Decide if you want completionist mode or the casual path. Start watching. Come back when you finish if you want to argue with me about the skip recommendations — that part’s half the fun.
I’m Larry Sheridan — the friend in the group chat who’s seen the deep cuts, watched the spinoff nobody finished, and has a real opinion on whether you actually need to watch Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. before Secret Invasion. (You don’t. Mostly.)
I started Binge Base for the same reason most things get built — I was tired of answering the same question.