Things used to be simple in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. You knew where you stood: Captain America was the main man, Groot was Groot, and time flowed forward in an orderly fashion. Since Avengers: Endgame, though, things have become a little bit knotty. In fact, if you can hold the timeline of the events of Eternals, Quantumania, Shang-Chi and all Marvel’s many, many TV shows in your head at the same time, you must have some Doctor Strange levels of mental agility going on. But that confusion is set to officially end.
A new tome, titled The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline, is arriving soon to straighten things out – establishing the canonical chronology of every single event, reference and nod so far in the MCU and its attendant TV series, once and for all. “It’s the first time we’re officially laying out the timeline,” Marvel exec Brad Winderbaum says in a trailer for the book. “It’s incredible once it’s all laid out how interconnected and how seamless it is.”
So, get ready to find out exactly when all the post-Endgame, post-Blip, post-Loki-opening-the-Multiverse stuff officially takes place. Obviously though, the big question is this: how many years after The Avengers is Spider-Man: Homecoming? That film famously announces itself as being eight years after the Battle Of New York – which, if you’re keeping up, would put Homecoming in 2020 and therefore some time in the future rather than almost immediately after Captain America: Civil War in 2016, as the story would demand. Even Joe Russo admitted that the time jump was “a very incorrect eight years”. So, some discreet ironing out is perhaps overdue. We’ll find out for sure when The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline is published on 23 October.