Underworld Timeline: The Story in Order

The story begins with Underworld: Rise of the Lycans (2009), directed by Patrick Tatopoulos in his first feature as a director, and it plays out centuries before the 2003 film. Viktor, a vampire elder, rules a fortress meant to shield his coven from the feral werewolves outside its walls. Inside, he keeps Lucian, a Lycan who can pass as human, working as a laborer. Lucian and Viktor's daughter Sonja fall for each other, and because a vampire and a Lycan are forbidden to bond, they have to meet in secret.

Once the affair is exposed, Lucian escapes, Sonja is punished, and he gathers the free werewolves into an army. That army storms the fortress, and Viktor executes Sonja, who is pregnant, as the battle turns bloody. Lucian seems to destroy Viktor, yet the elder is only left in a long hibernation. The closing moments connect to the opening of Underworld (2003), with Kraven's voice and a brief glimpse of Selene, so the prequel hands the story over without a gap. Full details are on the underworld rise of the lycans page.

Underworld (2003), directed by Len Wiseman, is the second chapter in story order and the point where Selene enters the saga. The war between vampires and Lycans has run in secret for generations, and Selene, a Death Dealer, spends her nights killing Lycans. Her curiosity is stirred when Lucian's pack keeps shadowing a human doctor named Michael Corvin. After Lucian bites Michael, she must decide whether to kill him or shield him.

Her choice puts her against the coven. She rouses Viktor ahead of schedule to warn him about Kraven, and he waves her off. Lycans kill the elder Amelia, while Michael, in captivity, hears that Viktor once killed his own daughter Sonja over her love for Lucian, the same wound the prequel dramatizes. Singe, a Lycan scientist, tells Michael that he descends from an ancestor shared by both races and could become a hybrid. Viktor then kills Singe and raids the Lycan lair. Kraven kills Lucian there, and Viktor confesses that he murdered Selene's family. Selene kills him, escapes with Michael, and the film ends with the elder Marcus Corvinus waking as a hybrid. See underworld 2003 for the full film page.

Underworld: Evolution (2006), also directed by Len Wiseman, is the third chapter in story order, and it digs back to the year 1202 to show how the Corvinus brothers began. Marcus Corvinus, Viktor and Amelia raid a werewolf village that year and seize William, Marcus's twin and the first werewolf. Viktor buries him in a hidden prison.

In the present day, Selene hurries Michael to a safe house while Kraven tries to cut them off from Marcus. Marcus wakes ahead of schedule and slaughters Kraven and his followers, so the pair go into hiding and chase the meaning of the pendant he wants. The exiled historian Andreas Tanis explains that Marcus, William and a third brother were sons of Alexander Corvinus, the first immortal, and that the pendant opens William's prison. Marcus drinks Tanis's blood to learn where it is, and the pair then discover that a man called Lorenz Macaro is Alexander himself.

Marcus impales Michael, takes the prison's location from Selene's blood and mortally wounds his father. Alexander lets Selene drink his blood, which strengthens her greatly, and he dies destroying his ship. Michael, who appeared dead, revives as a full hybrid and kills William. Selene pushes Marcus into helicopter rotor blades, and Alexander's blood leaves her able to walk in sunlight. The family tree behind all this is laid out on the corvinus bloodline page, and the film has its own underworld evolution page.

Underworld: Awakening (2012), directed by Måns Mårlind and Björn Stein, is the fourth chapter in story order, and it jumps the saga into a world where humans have found out that vampires and Lycans are real. The fallout arrives six months after Evolution. Human authorities set out to study the two species, the effort curdles into the Purge, and the Purge becomes a mass killing. Selene and Michael are caught in the sweep, and she is sealed into cryogenic suspension.

Roughly twelve years pass before she tears her way out of the lab, taking with her a girl who turns out to be Eve, her hybrid daughter. A vampire called David leads them to his coven, which the Lycans soon assault. Selene finds herself facing Quint, an enormous Super Lycan, and she revives the badly hurt David with her own blood. It emerges that David's father Thomas had handed Eve to the Lycans, hoping to halt the assault.

From there, Selene and Detective Sebastian follow the trail to Antigen, a front company staffed by Lycans passing as people. Its chief, Dr. Jacob Lane, wants Eve's DNA to strengthen his race. During the raid on the Antigen building, Selene pulls Michael out of a cryogenic tank, then has to leave him thawing so she can protect Eve. She beats Quint by baiting him back into his weaker human form and finishing him with a silver grenade, while Eve deals with Lane herself. The tank turns out to be empty when the group returns. That vanished body is the question Underworld: Blood Wars picks up, and the film has its own page at underworld awakening.

Underworld: Blood Wars, directed by Anna Foerster, closes the story as the fifth and latest chapter, opening in Australia on December 1, 2016 and in US theaters on January 6, 2017. It follows Underworld: Awakening, where Selene left Michael's empty tank behind, and it moves the saga away from the human Purge and back to the vampire covens, which are close to collapse under Lycan pressure.

The Lycans are now led by Marius, who needs Selene because she is the key to finding her hybrid daughter Eve. Inside the Eastern Coven, the council member Semira offers Selene a pardon in exchange for training a new generation of Death Dealers. It is a setup. Semira and her lover Varga poison Selene, murder the recruits, pin the crime on her, and Semira drains Selene's blood for the power it holds.

Thomas and his son David pull Selene out, at the cost of Thomas's life, and the two run north to the Nordic Coven. The elder Vidar tells David that his mother was the Grand Elder Amelia, so he is the rightful heir to the Eastern Coven. Meanwhile Alexia, sent by Semira, has been feeding information to Marius, and the Lycans hit the Nordic Coven. Alexia stabs Selene, Marius realizes Selene truly does not know where Eve is and halts the attack, and Selene disappears beneath the cracked ice.

The finale returns to the Eastern Coven. Semira kills Alexia after discovering the deal with Marius, David takes charge and denounces Semira, and Varga walks away from her. When the Lycans storm the castle, Selene comes back, restored by the Nordic Coven with new powers. A drop of Marius's blood hands her his memories, including the moment he killed Michael Corvin, and she turns her own memories of Michael against him and rips out his spine. David kills Semira and holds up Marius's severed head, which sends the Lycans into retreat.

Selene, David and Lena become the new Elders. Eve found her mother through their telepathic link, and Selene had deliberately kept her own knowledge of Eve's location buried to protect her. That reunion is where the timeline currently stops, and the film has its own underworld blood wars page.

In my opinion, the cleanest way to read the Underworld timeline is as three connected stories rather than five separate films. The first is the Sonja and Lucian tragedy, which Underworld: Rise of the Lycans tells in full and Underworld (2003) only hints at through Michael's captivity. The second is the Corvinus bloodline, which Underworld (2003) opens up with Marcus Corvinus waking as a hybrid and Underworld: Evolution answers by going back to 1202 and to Alexander Corvinus. The third is Selene and Michael, which stretches across all four of the later films, and it is the one that carries the real emotional weight.

That structure is also why the prequel suits some viewers as a first watch and others not at all. Underworld: Rise of the Lycans ends on Viktor sealed away in sleep, so it hands you sympathy for Lucian before Underworld (2003) arrives and lets Kraven kill him. It could be argued that this softens the reveal about Sonja in the original film, since you already know the story. If you want the mystery as the 2003 film intended it, perhaps start in release order and save the prequel for third, and the underworld movies in order guide lays out both routes.

The loose thread is Michael Corvin. He survives Underworld: Evolution as a full hybrid, vanishes into an empty cryogenic tank at the end of Underworld: Awakening, and is shown to have been killed by Marius through the memories Selene takes in Underworld: Blood Wars. That makes her fight with Marius the payoff to the question the empty tank left open. For the cast behind each era, see underworld cast, and for what may come after Underworld: Blood Wars, see underworld 6.