When Marvel officially announced its full slate of projects for Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe at San Diego Comic-Con, it did something it had never done before: It included television shows as well as movies. While Marvel has previously made TV series set on the fringes of the MCU, like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Daredevil, you could skip those shows entirely and not miss any of the overarching MCU narrative.

That is going to change, though. Marvel’s Kevin Feige told Bloomberg that the notion that these shows are part of the MCU is not just a marketing tool designed to sell subscriptions to Disney+. If you miss them, Feige says, you might be a little lost at some of the upcoming movies. Or as he put it:

If you want to understand everything in future Marvel movies, he says, you’ll probably need a Disney+ subscription, because events from the new shows will factor into forthcoming films such as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The Scarlet Witch will be a key character in that movie, and Feige points out that the Loki series will tie in, too. ‘I’m not sure we’ve actually acknowledged that before,’ he says. ‘But it does.’

Disney+ launches next week, but Marvel’s MCU series don’t begin until next year, with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier in the fall of 2020, followed by WandaVision and Loki in the spring of 2021. So if you’re hsitant to sign up, you have a little time before it’s “necessary” from a Marvel perspective.

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