The Best Order For Watching The Mummy And Scorpion King Movies

For those who were into the action-adventure genre in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they'll recall that few franchises were bigger and more influential than Universal's Brendan Fraser-led Mummy films. The blooming blockbuster property took over Hollywood for a brief period back in the day, with its willingness to embrace its inherent campiness, thrilling action, and the charisma of the cast making it happen. This, of course, led to plenty of sequels, a cartoon television show, and the ever-popular Scorpion King spinoff series getting the green light, expanding the mythology of this fictional world ... for better or worse.

Many fans have only really taken notice of the first two Mummy features — 1999's The Mummy and 2001's The Mummy Returns — in addition to the inaugural Scorpion King film that catapulted Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's into superstardom. The reality is, there's so much extra lore to this continuity that few bother to look into, retroactively enhancing the story of the more popular additions, and they are worth checking out, should you find the time. However, it's not as simple as watching each movie and TV show in the order they came out: For everything to make sense, you have to shuffle the sequence of events around.

This is a mammoth undertaking, but, thankfully, Reddit user SilentDues rolled up their sleeves, and took care of the heavy lifting for everyone, putting the entire Mummy and Scorpion King saga into as close to chronological order as one can assemble.

According to their Reddit post, given the events of the Scorpion King films are set long before the other Mummy media (5,000 years at their earliest), they're arguably the biggest obstacles in making it through this enduring continuity. Surely, you're thinking, "Okay, five movies is pretty doable. I start at The Scorpion King and go down the line from there, right?" 

You're soon going to wish it were that simple.

Kicking this marathon off in head-scratching fashion, the starting feature is 2008's The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior, since it's a prequel to the first movie, and provides some important backstory for Mathayas, contextualizing his eventual rise to prominence. With that direct-to-DVD screening under your belt, then you can move on to the only theatrically released installment in the series, that being 2002's The Scorpion King.

As if things couldn't get any more convoluted, SilentDues broke apart a film into two distinct sections with a couple of full ones in between: They recommend you watch just The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption's pre-title sequence and stop there, before viewing 2018's The Scorpion King 5: Book of Souls. From there, you go to The Scorpion King 4: The Quest for Power — and only then, two movies later, you polish off the remainder of Battle for Redemption, rounding out this unnecessarily complicated offshoot franchise and completing Mathayas' character arc.

With that headache-inducing journey into the ancient past over with, the Reddit user deduces that you can finally fast forward to the 1920s, for the real draws of this shared chronology. The Mummy and its direct sequel, The Mummy Returns, are the next hurdles to jump over, but are now easier to follow and enjoy with some of the added information supplied by the Scorpion King series.

After spending a collective 255 minutes on those films, you're on the hook for two seasons of the short-lived program The Mummy: The Animated Series, that spans 26 episodes. Once you wrap that up, you're in for a mild time skip into the mid-1940's China for the final chapter in the Mummy story, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, thus successfully conquering a niche yet incredibly expansive franchise.

As with any continuity this huge, there's no shame in skipping out on the odd movie or perusing your phone during an uneventful episode of the cartoon. There's a lot of Mummy and Scorpion King content out there, with something for everyone, and it's entirely likely not all of it will strike your fancy. However, if you're committed to this universe and want to soak up as much knowledge about it as you can, this is the premier way to do so.