Photo: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures/Photofest. Warning: Spoilers from Avengers: Endgame are ahead. With 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all of them spanning times and space, it’s easy to get a little confused about the timeline. Some movies take place before others that are released years apart, some movies take place at literally
the same exact time in different galaxies, and some movies are actually supposed to happen back to back. With the release of Avengers: Endgame, the MCU timeline, has been cleared up, regarding what takes place before and after the movie. But what isn't clearly answered is the question of
what year it is at the end of Avengers: Endgame since that’s also something that needs to be established for Phase Four of the MCU. While everything is referred to as “present day” in the movie, Endgame doesn’t exactly take place in our “present day.” Infinity War is supposed to take place in 2018 [the year it came out], and the
opening events of Endgame take place at that same time, and then roughly 22 days later as Tony Stark [Robert Downey, Jr.] informs us it’s been that long since the snap. Then, as we all know, we do a massive five-year time jump into the future. So we're roughly in the year 2023 — now four years from our present day in 2019 — as the events of the movie conclude. So will all upcoming Marvel movies also be set in the future, in 2013?
Spider-Man: Far From Home is the next one to hit theaters later this summer, and it [supposedly] takes place immediately after Endgame, so that puts it in the year 2023. The likes of Doctor Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 have already been announced, and they'll more than likely fall after Endgame as well — but
Doctor Strange can travel wherever he wants in time, and Black Panther is already living like it’s the year 3000 so time doesn’t even matter to Wakanda. Though Captain Marvel hasn’t received a sequel order yet, her later movie could take place literally anytime between 1995 and 2023 and beyond, so any Endgame timeline doesn’t
necessarily matter to Carol Danvers [Brie Larson], either. Other upcoming Marvel movies — like The Eternals and Shang-Chi — haven’t been introduced in the MCU yet so their establishing films could happen pre- or post-Thanos-snap. They could even happen during the mysterious [and probably sad] five year time period that we skipped
in Endgame. And even though Endgame told us that we’re now five years in the future, there’s nothing set in stone that says the movies have to stick to that. The MCU has [accidentally] messed up its timeline before, most notably when Spider-Man: Homecoming claimed to be eight years after the Battle of New York, when it
really should have been approximately four years after the Battle of New York. Hey, it happens! There are 22 movies and like a thousand different characters to keep track of, so these things sometimes fall a little out of whack. So what we're saying is, we very well could be in the future for every MCU movie from her on out. Or... things are about to get really all over the place.
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline was hard to keep track of before a universe-changing event occurred in Avengers: Endgame, prompting the main chronology of the series to skip five years ahead mid-movie. Now we’re on the other side of “the Blip,” and the five-year time jump it prompted, but what does that mean for the latest MCU movies and TV shows, including Spider-Man: No Way Home? Let’s break it down, year by year.
MCU: 2018
Endgame begins in 2018, not too long after the events of Infinity War where half the universe was “blipped” out of existence with a snap of Thanos’ fingers.
MCU: 2019-2022
While we have gotten some glimpses into life in the MCU during the Blip, for the most part, none of the MCU stories take place during this time. Many have compared this fictional period to the real-life experience of living during a pandemic, especially during lockdown when it can feel like time is standing still.
MCU: 2023
The bulk of Avengers: Endgame takes place in the fall of 2023, as the remaining Avengers work to reverse Thanos’ snap and bring back all of the people lost in the Blip. This is also the year in which the events of WandaVision take place, a few weeks after the end of Endgame as Wanda struggles to process the death of Vision.
MCU: 2024
Falcon and the Winter Soldier takes place six months after the events of Endgame, which means it is set circa April 2024. While many theorize that Shang-Chi takes place in 2023, my money is actually on 2024; if this were taking place in the final months of 2023, we would be seeing more immediate post-Blip effects.
Spider-Man: Far From Home takes place eight months after the main events of Endgame, which puts it in the summer of 2024. The main events of Marvel’s Eternals are also set during this time period.
Spider-Man: No Way Home picks up directly after the events of Far From Home, which means it also takes place in 2024, though heading into the start-of-school/fall season.
Hawkeye is set at the end of 2024, during the Christmas season. It sees Clint Barton dealing with the consequences of his tenure as Ronin, the vigilante alter-ego he took on during the Blip.
It’s 2024. For a period of time, we were going to set it two years out – which would make it 2025 – hence me messing with your minds about the timeline. But it’s 1 year out.
— Rhys Thomas [@RhysThom2] November 24, 2021
While the MCU’s post-Blip timeline is already a bit of a headache, especially given that the chronology of the TV show or movies’ releases has not always coincided with the chronology of the in-universe world, things might get even more complicated with Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. It’s been hard enough to keep track of the MCU timeline without adding in other universes. It’s been fun, kids.