With the end of Phase 3 shortly upon us in the form of ‘Spider-Man Far From Home’, now is as good a time as any to assess the current state of the Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline before Phase 4 arrives. The three infographics below represent a comprehensive attempt at piecing together every bit of information offered by the movies, TV shows, short films (and occasionally tie-in comic books) into a single coherent timeline.
Keep in mind however that it is not possible to reconcile every piece of available information to us when it comes to creating a sensible timeline. Not only does Spider-Man Homecoming’s infamous “8 Years Later” tag have to be discounted, but so too do several other erroneous or contradictory pieces of information offered by characters, displayed on props, or otherwise implied by narrative context.
Clearly for each director the most important element has always been about providing the most compelling story possible for each movie, and so if that required picking up the story exactly where the previous movie left off, or instead to utilise the same time gap in the story as the audience had experienced between releases, then that has clearly always taken precedence over slavish adherence to any centralised timeline.
That said, piecing it all together is one of the things that makes the MCU so fun, and no doubt many of you will have your own interpretations as to the correct order of things, or have differing opinions as to what counts as “canon” or not, but below I present for your consideration my current MCU Timeline in the form of three infographics for each phase, as well as a bonus slide for major events that occurred pre-Phase 1.
PHASE 1 TIMELINE
Despite the limited number of moving parts, the timeline for Phase 1 was actually one of the hardest to piece together. Likely this stems from the fact that the MCU was still in its infancy and Marvel hadn’t quite mapped everything out, particularly in terms of whether movies would be anchored to real-world dates, or whether they should be considered solely in terms of their relative placements to other movies.
Iron Man 2 was particularly problematic, as whilst the movie initially appears to only offer a 6 month time jump from Iron Man 1, it also needs to tie into the event’s of 2011’s Thor. However, by assuming that the montage of Ivan Vanko creating his own Arc Reactor stretches out for at least the same amount of time as Stark took to make his first Arc Reactor (3 months) if not longer, and utilising Stark’s statement about the expo running “for a year” to the maximum, then we can just about stretch things out enough to make it work.
Slightly more fortuitously though was the Incredible Hulk, as whilst all of the initial signs in the movie indicate that it is set contemporary to it’s release, General Ross pops up late in the day to state that Banner has been on the run for 5 years, which (
taking into account all of the 2006 dated documentation in the opening montage) nicely sets the movie in 2011 alongside Thor (
and part of Iron Man 2). Not only is this remarkable in that it means the movie was actually set in the future when it came out, but it also means the events of the “Fury’s Big Week” tie-in comic book can remain canon in my eyes.
PHASE 2 TIMELINE
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The Phase 2 timeline was probably the easiest to put together, as all of the movies are broadly set in the same order as they were released, and the early seasons of Agents of SHIELD provide nice anchor points for most of the key events. Overall this probably represents the most inter-connected era that Marvel TV and Marvel Movies have yet managed.
The only slight point of debate here stems from Iron Man 3’s insistence on being set at Christmas despite being released in the summer. Whilst my placement in December 2012 does involve ignoring a rather prominent on-screen newspaper display, it actually works with more lines of dialogue in the film, as well as making much more narrative sense in terms of flowing into the early episodes of Agents of SHIELD where Extremis was a key plot device.
Also of note, is the fact that despite being a Phase 3 movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is actually set during Phase 2 (
hence it’s italicised appearance here).
PHASE 3 TIMELINE
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Whilst this was definitely the most difficult to construct in terms of the shear number of different entities to fit onto the graphic, the flow of time was actually much easier to determine, as by this time Marvel had become much more astute in terms of anchoring events into real world dates.
Even the sprawling Marvel Netflix shows fit neatly into a 2 year time period thanks to definitively stated references in both seasons of The Punisher, and a nice little Daredevil Easter Egg in Agents of SHIELD.
Agents of SHIELD admittedly did become the first show to fall foul of ignoring the permanency of Thanos’ Decimation, but for the other shows there is still plenty of time to play with if they want to squeeze another few seasons in before they are force to confront that same problem. That said, just to be sure I did bump Cloak and Dagger back from it’s 2018 release starting point to give it a bit more room to breathe going forward (
and hopefully to allow for a Runaways / Cloak and Dagger crossover in their respective season 3s)
2017’s Inhumans finds itself a place in 2016 on my timeline for no other reason then I felt that narratively it worked better following on from the inhuman-centric Seasons 3 of Agents of SHIELD. Frankly though the show should probably just feel grateful it made it on the timeline at all.
ADDITIONAL DATES
As a fun bonus slide, the following contains all of the major historical events depicted in the main MCU continuity which occur prior to the start of Phase 1.
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Any thoughts or opinions please let me know in the comments! Any decisions i've made on placement that you want to know, please check out the linked reference documents below. Entries marked in Green have been incorporated into the Timeline (
or otherwise don't contradict it) whilst those in Red have been omitted.
Phase 1 References Part 1
Phase 1 References Part 2
Phase 2 References Part 1
Phase 2 References Part 2
Phase 3 References Part 1
Phase 3 References Part 2
Netflix References
Agents of SHIELD References
Other TV References