---
title: 'The MCU Timeline Fully Explained'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=OZIDPVzaPds'
video_id: 'OZIDPVzaPds'
date: 2026-07-01
duration_sec: 2737
---

# The MCU Timeline Fully Explained

> Source: [The MCU Timeline Fully Explained](https://youtube.com/watch?v=OZIDPVzaPds)

## Summary

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has been going strong since 2008, but its story covers thousands of years, from before the Big Bang to the present day. This video provides a comprehensive timeline of the MCU, explaining the origins of the universe, the rise of ancient civilizations, and the modern era of superheroes.

### Key Points

- **Cosmic Origins** [00:26] — Before the Big Bang, the Celestials, led by Arishem the Judge, created the original planets, stars, and lifeforms. They seeded planets with embryonic Celestials, which would be born once sentient life reached a critical point, destroying the planet in the process.
- **Creation of the Eternals** [01:28] — The Celestials created the Eternals to kill the Deviants, who were wiping out all life. The Eternals were regarded as gods but were unknowingly preparing planets for destruction. Their memories were wiped after each Emergence.
- **Infinity Stones** [01:54] — The six singularities that created the cosmos became the Infinity Stones, controlling time, space, and reality. They were scattered across the universe.
- **Eternals on Earth** [03:03] — In 5000 BC, ten Eternals arrived on Earth to defeat the Deviants. After succeeding in 1521, they scattered and took on various roles.
- **Odin and Hela** [04:28] — Odin conquered the Nine Realms with Hela, who later turned against him. Hela was imprisoned, and Odin covered up her existence.
- **Wakanda's Origin** [05:50] — A meteorite of Vibranium struck Earth in Africa, leading to the rise of Wakanda, a secretive nation with advanced technology.
- **The Ten Rings** [06:20] — Xu Wenwu discovered the ten rings, granting him immortality and power, and established the Ten Rings organization.
- **Super Soldier Program** [07:08] — In 1942, Johann Schmidt experimented on himself with the Super Soldier Serum, becoming the Red Skull. Steve Rogers volunteered for the same program and became Captain America.
- **Winter Soldier** [08:19] — Bucky Barnes fell from a train and was taken by the Soviets, becoming the brainwashed Winter Soldier.
- **Captain Marvel** [15:03] — In 1995, Carol Danvers, as Captain Marvel, fought off the Kree and saved Skrull refugees. She gave Nick Fury a pager to summon her in an emergency.
- **Iron Man's Origin** [17:10] — In 2008, Tony Stark was kidnapped by the Ten Rings, built the Iron Man suit, and escaped. He later revealed his identity as Iron Man.
- **Battle of New York** [21:59] — In 2012, Loki led the Chitauri invasion of New York, leading to the formation of the Avengers. The battle inspired Kate Bishop to become a vigilante.
- **Thanos and the Snap** [33:06] — In 2018, Thanos gathered the Infinity Stones and snapped, killing half of all life. The surviving Avengers later used time travel to undo the Snap, but Tony Stark died in the process.
- **Multiverse and Kang** [36:00] — After the Snap, the multiverse was unleashed, leading to the introduction of variants like Loki and Sylvie, and the threat of Kang the Conqueror.

## Transcript

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been 
going strong since 2008, but its story  
at this point covers thousands of years. 
Need to catch up on the latest developments?  
Ah, let's just go through the whole thing.
"Uh, where to start. Um…"
If you really want to know where things 
started in the Marvel Cinematic Universe,  
you have to go all the way back to 
before the Big Bang. No, really.
Before the beginning of the universe, before 
even the creation of the "six singularities"  
that caused the universe to explode into 
existence, there were the Celestials. Beings  
of infinite cosmic power, the Celestials — led by 
Arishem the Judge — created the original planets,  
stars, and lifeforms of the infant 
universe following the Big Bang.
Realizing they need help to expand 
the universe and create more life,  
the first Celestials seed planets 
with embryonic Celestials.  
These new gods would be born once sentient life 
on each planet rose to a critical juncture,  
allowing for the Emergence of a new Celestial 
and resulting in the destruction of that world.  
To assist in this process, the Celestials 
genetically engineered Deviant monsters  
to wipe out the apex predators of each world, 
encouraging sentient life to develop and multiply.
Unfortunately, the Celestials miscalculated. 
The Deviants did their job so well they started  
hunting down and killing all lifeforms, preventing 
Emergences. To keep them in check, the Celestials  
created the Eternals, synthetic lifeforms sent 
to different worlds across the cosmos to kill  
the Deviants and protect the planet's lifeforms. 
Regarded as gods and superheroes by the populace,  
the Eternals are unknowingly preparing the planets 
for their destruction. Following each Emergence,  
the Eternals' memories are wiped so they 
could be reused on different worlds.
Meanwhile, other interesting things are happening 
throughout the universe. The "six singularities"  
that created the cosmos became the Infinity 
Stones — objects that controlled fundamental  
forces like time, space, and reality itself. 
They were then scattered across the universe,  
popping up here and there and awaiting 
the eventual arrival of a giant golden  
oven mitt that would be used by a purple 
sociopath to kill off half the universe.
That, of course, was billions of years ago, but 
it's not the only thing to happen in those long  
eons. Millions of years before we get to the 
present-day MCU, Ego the Living Planet comes  
into existence, gains cosmic awareness, and 
seeds "thousands of worlds" with his essence in  
an attempt to create another Celestial being like 
himself. But though he may in fact be a god-like  
figure, in the end he's still essentially just a 
selfish, deadbeat dad. No wonder Peter has issues.
"Well, of course I have issues. 
That's my freakin' father!"
As far as the heroes and villains of Earth 
are concerned, the MCU doesn't start with  
Tony Stark getting kidnapped in 2008, Carol 
Danvers being taken to Hala in the '90s, or  
even with Steve Rogers volunteering for the Super 
Soldier program in the '40s. The actual beginning  
happened in 5000 BC when ten immortal Eternals 
— Sersi, Ikaris, Ajak, Kingo, Sprite, Phastos,  
Makkari, Thena, Druig, and Gilgamesh — arrived 
on Earth to take out the Deviants on our planet.
For thousands of years, the Eternals 
protected emerging humankind,  
largely through epic super 
battles with giant monsters.  
By 1521, the Eternals finally manage to defeat 
all the Deviants on Earth — or so they think.  
Lacking any real direction now that their 
main reason for coming to the planet is gone,  
they scatter and get jobs as teachers, Bollywood 
film stars, and South American cult leaders.
Since the Celestials have instructed 
the Eternals not to interfere in  
humanity unless Deviants were involved, 
other god-like beings get the chance to  
descend onto Earth and have their time 
to shine. These include the Asgardians,  
vastly powerful alien beings who visit our planet 
many times and give rise to Norse mythology.  
Still, the most exciting stuff those guys were 
up to happens off-world in the realm of Asgard.
This mythological time scale begins 
millennia ago, as we find out in "Thor:  
The Dark World," when Malekith the Accursed 
lays siege to Asgard and is fought off by Bor,  
the father of Odin. Bor vanquishes Malekith, 
which turns out to be a temporary solution.
While we don't know exactly when it happens,  
the next chronological event that we see from our 
characters is Odin's conquest of the Nine Realms  
alongside his first child, Hela, 
Goddess of Death. During this era,  
the magic warhammer Mjolnir is forged in 
the heart of a dying star, and used by Hela.
Thanks to her bloodthirsty 
ruthlessness and ambition,  
Odin turns against her, and in the battle that 
follows, Hela slaughters the Valkyrior. The sole  
surviving Valkyrie flees from Asgard, spending 
the next few thousand years drunk and depressed.  
Eventually, she winds up on Sakaar, a 
cosmic garbage dump that an immortal  
being called the Grandmaster builds 
into an interstellar gladiatorial arena.  
Hela is then imprisoned in another dimension by 
Odin, who covers up all traces of her existence.
Sometime after that (but still far enough 
back that people were writing about it  
in the 13th century), Odin and Frigga 
have a son, Thor. Shortly thereafter,  
Odin slays the frost giant Laufey and adopts his 
son, Loki, as his own. Not too long after this,  
during their youth, Loki turns into a 
snake because he knows Thor loves snakes,  
and then tries to stab him. In one 
universe, he manages to succeed.
"What was your nexus event, your majesty?"
"I killed Thor."
Also millions of years before the present day, 
a meteorite made of the super-metal Vibranium  
strikes Earth in Africa, drastically 
affecting the surrounding area. Much,  
much later, this area becomes the country 
of Wakanda when a "warrior shaman" receives  
a vision from the goddess Bast and founds a 
dynasty of kings known as the Black Panthers.  
The Wakandans become secretive and isolationist, 
remaining unconquered throughout history and using  
the Vibranium to create fantastic technology, 
away from the eyes of the outside world.
Moving to just about a thousand 
years before the present day,  
the warlord Xu Wenwu makes a fantastic discovery 
of his own when he comes across ten otherworldly  
rings that grant him immortality and the 
strength of a god. Using the rings to  
establish his Ten Rings criminal organization, 
Wenwu conquers kingdoms and topples governments,  
amassing an incredible power structure 
that influences the direction of the world.
Believe it or not, there's not a 
whole lot that happens between the  
unification of Wakanda, the rise 
of Wenwu, and the 20th century.
In 1693 the witch Agatha Harkness escapes 
being burned at the stake by her mother  
and a bunch of other witches who aren't 
happy with her practice of dark magic.  
She drains their life energies and gets her 
hands on the Darkhold before disappearing  
to get into all sorts of trouble before 
she pops up again in the present day.
Jumping ahead to 1942, a Nazi officer 
known as Johann Schmidt experiments on  
himself with an early version of Dr. Abraham 
Erskine's Super Soldier Serum, gaining both a  
physically perfect body and a decidedly redder 
complexion. Now calling himself the Red Skull,  
he takes charge of a splinter group called Hydra. 
With the discovery of one of the Infinity Stones  
(in the form of the Tesseract), he creates 
a technologically advanced army of his own.
That same year, Steve Rogers volunteers 
for the Strategic Scientific Reserve's  
attempt at creating a super-soldier using 
a technique created by Dr. Abraham Erskine.  
The project works, giving Steve the body of 
a hunky Chris Evans. After the experiment,  
Erskine is assassinated, and his research is lost. 
Rather than risking their only super-soldier by  
sending him to fight in the war, the SSR gives 
Steve the codename Captain America and uses  
him primarily as a spokesman to sell war bonds 
in USO shows set to an extremely catchy song.
Eventually, Steve goes AWOL to rescue his 
best friend Bucky Barnes, and becomes an  
active soldier in the war, leading a strike team 
called the Howling Commandos, including Bucky.  
On one of their missions, Bucky falls from a train 
into a ravine, seemingly to his death. However,  
Bucky is actually taken into custody by the 
Soviet Army, given cybernetic enhancements,  
and brainwashed into becoming a 
super-assassin, codenamed Winter Soldier.
After attempting to use the Tesseract, 
the Red Skull is sucked into a wormhole,  
becoming the second person in "Captain America: 
The First Avenger" to survive an apparent death.  
In reality, he winds up on the distant planet 
Vormir, serving as a sort of spectral guardian  
for the Soul Stone. As for Steve, he crashes a 
bomber jet into the arctic to keep Hydra from  
destroying New York. He is also presumed 
dead, but he survives, frozen in suspended  
animation for the next 66 years. Jeez, doesn't 
anyone who dies in this movie actually die?
While things are pretty quiet for the MCU between 
1945 and 1995, there are a few notable exceptions.  
Peggy Carter continues to work for 
the SSR, first in New York in 1946,  
and then in Los Angeles alongside 
Howard Stark in 1947. Around this time,  
the Soviet Union produces the first 
graduates of its brutal Red Room facility,  
where orphaned girls are trained as spies 
and assassins– codenamed Black Widows.
Sometime after this — presumably around 1948 
or '49 — Steve Rogers travels back in time  
from 2023 to reunite with Peggy. She continues 
to work in military intelligence for the next  
few decades with Stark, whose defense contracts 
turn Stark Industries into the world's leading  
arms manufacturer. By 1970, both of them are 
working out of SSR Headquarters at Camp Lehigh,  
along with a few other notable figures. Arnim 
Zola, who worked with the Red Skull back in  
the '40s, is stationed here, and although his 
body dies in the '70s, his brain is transferred  
into a computer databank that continues 
Hydra's infiltration of the government. Also,  
Hank Pym is working here, assisted by Bill Foster 
in his experiments with the size-changing "Pym  
Particles" that will allow him and his wife Janet 
Van Dyne to become the original Ant-Man and Wasp.
Between the '70s and the '90s, several small 
but key events happen throughout the MCU.  
In 1974, Howard Stark launches the Stark 
Expo, displaying the City of the Future,  
powered by a clean-energy ARC reactor 
that's about the size of a house.  
For some reason, he also hides the structure of a 
new element in the arrangement of the buildings,  
which is the kind of science it 
pays to not think too hard about.
"Congratulations, sir. You 
have created a new element."
In 1980, Ego comes to Earth, winning the 
heart of Meredith Quill. Nine months later,  
their son Peter Quill is born. In 1987, 
Janet Van Dyne is lost in the Quantum Realm  
after she and Hank Pym attempt to stop a rogue 
Soviet missile targeting the United States.
In 1988, Meredith Quill dies from brain cancer 
(intentionally caused by Ego), leaving her son  
a mixtape of classic rock favorites. Peter is 
then abducted by a band of outer-space outlaws  
called the Ravagers. Their leader, Yondu, then 
raises Quill as a son, albeit very abusively.
In 1989, Pym resigns from the SSR 
(now renamed as the Strategic Homeland  
Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division)  
after finding out that they intended 
to use Pym Particles to create weapons.
Also that year, Air Force Captain Carol 
Danvers, who uses the callsign "Avenger"  
during her flights, volunteers for a test flight 
of a lightspeed engine created by scientist Wendy  
Lawson. Lawson turns out to be one of the Kree, 
a militaristic alien race constantly at war  
with the shapeshifting Skrulls, and her engine is 
powered by the Tesseract. When they're shot down,  
Carol's body is overloaded with the Tesseract's 
energy, giving her incredible powers and also  
wiping her memory. A Kree soldier named 
Yon-Rogg abducts her and takes her back  
to the Kree homeworld of Hala, where she is made 
to believe that she's actually a Kree named Vers,  
fighting alongside them as a 
member of the Kree Starforce.
While all of this is happening on Earth, 
things continue to develop in space.  
Thanos, an incredibly powerful alien from 
the planet Titan who's obsessed with balance,  
begins to seek out the Infinity Stones. Along the 
way, he lays waste to half of the population of  
entire planets, occasionally taking young 
survivors and training them as soldiers.
Assuming that most of the more humanoid characters 
are the same age as the people portraying them,  
then his two most notable adoptions 
happen in the late '80s or early '90s.  
Gamora is taken in as a young girl after Thanos 
kills half of the population of her home planet.  
Throughout her childhood, Thanos pits her against 
her adopted sister, Nebula. Every time they spar,  
Gamora wins, and Thanos systematically replaces 
pieces of Nebula's body with cybernetic parts in  
order to make her a more efficient killer. This 
creates a lot of resentment in Nebula, not only  
against Thanos but also toward Gamora, which 
will greatly affect their later relationship.
In 1991, the Soviet government sends the Winter 
Soldier to assassinate Howard and Maria Stark.  
This will have massive ramifications later on, 
but the immediate effect is that their brilliant  
slacker son, Tony Stark, is left in charge of 
Stark Industries, along with Obadiah Stane as  
CEO. They continue to manufacture weapons 
using Tony's increasingly deadly designs,  
selling them to all sides of 
virtually every global conflict,  
with Obadiah in particular making a profit 
from secret arms deals with terrorist groups.
In 1992, King T'Chaka of Wakanda goes 
to Oakland, California, to investigate  
arms deals involving stolen Vibranium. The 
culprit is his brother, N'Jobu, who is killed in  
the altercation. N'Jobu's son, Erik, is a witness 
to the whole thing and grows up craving revenge.
Meanwhile, Russian super-soldier Alexei 
Shostakov and Black Widow weapons designer  
Melina Vostokoff go deep undercover in 
Ohio, posing as an all-American family  
with their so-called "daughters" — 7-year-old 
Natasha Romanoff and 3-year-old Yelena Belova.
While Alexei and Melina work to steal a 
SHIELD (or actually HYDRA) project focused  
on free will and mind control, Natasha and Yelena 
experience some semblance of a normal childhood.
By 1995, however, the mission is complete, 
and the family flees to Cuba. However,  
once they arrive they are split apart and 
Natasha and Yelena return to the Red Room,  
where they continue their Black 
Widow training/torture sessions.
Also in 1995, Carol Danvers — still without her 
memories of Earth — returns to her home planet  
after escaping from the Skrulls. She teams up 
with SHIELD Agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson  
to stop the Skrulls from invading Earth, only 
to learn that they're not actually the bad guys.  
Instead, it's the Kree that are the problem, 
with Yon-Rogg and Ronan the Accuser en route  
in search of the Infinity Stones that will 
end their war of conquest once and for all.
Carol, taking the name Captain Marvel, fights 
them off and saves a bunch of Skrull refugees.  
In the process, an alien cat scratches Nick 
Fury's left eye, blinding it and causing him  
to sport a fashionable eyepatch for the rest 
of the series. Before she journeys back into  
space to aid the Skrulls, Carol gives Fury a pager 
that can summon her in case of a dire emergency.  
Inspired by Carol and her original callsign, Fury 
lays the groundwork for the Avengers Initiative,  
a program designed to create 
a team of super-powered heroes  
to deal with large-scale 
threats like alien invasions.
In 1996, Wenwu — having used his Ten Rings 
organization to secretly conquer or influence  
practically everything on Earth — turns his 
attention to the mystical realm of Ta Lo.  
After finding a magical forest near the village 
entrance, he meets and falls in love with the  
village guardian, Ying Li. The two marry and 
have two children — Shang-Chi and Xialing.  
For a time, Wenwu reforms, but when 
his wife is killed by his rivals,  
he decides to recreate the Ten Rings and 
train his son Shang-Chi to be a living weapon.
In 1999, Tony Stark meets 
bio-engineers Maya Hansen  
and Aldrich Killian at a conference in Bern, 
Switzerland. He's very rude to Aldrich,  
who remembers that as a sore point for 
about 14 years. Throughout all this,  
Hydra continues its secret infiltration of SHIELD 
and all levels of the United States government.
All that brings us to 2008 and "Iron 
Man," the movie that launched the MCU.  
Almost everything from here on 
plays out in chronological order,  
in the years that the movies 
were actually released. Almost.
In 2008, Tony Stark is demonstrating 
his newest weapons in the Middle East  
when he's kidnapped by a terrorist 
organization called the Ten Rings,  
in what will eventually be revealed as a 
plot by Stane to get Tony out of the picture.
While he's imprisoned, the terrorists force him 
and another captive, Dr. Ho Yinsen (who was also  
at that fateful 1999 convention in Bern, not that 
Tony noticed), to make weapons for them. Instead,  
Tony is able to recreate a miniaturized version of 
his father's ARC reactor, using it to stabilize a  
piece of shrapnel that's lodged near his heart. 
The reactor also powers the "Iron Man," a suit  
of weaponized armor built from scrap, which 
allows Tony to escape after Yinsen's death.
"Tony Stark was able to build this 
in a cave! With a box of scraps!"
He returns to America, eats a cheeseburger, 
refines his design, and wipes out the Ten Rings  
(the ones in the Middle East, at least) in 
a brutally effective display of the Iron  
Man's weapons. He also defeats Stane, who 
attempts to kill Tony and create his own  
massive suit of powered armor. Tony then 
publicly reveals his identity as Iron Man,  
causing Nick Fury to approach him 
about the Avengers initiative.
Around the same time as Tony's capture, Dr. 
Bruce Banner — whose seven PhDs apparently  
include physics and biological engineering — is 
working on recreating the Super Soldier program.  
Instead of Erskine's "Vita Rays," he uses Gamma 
radiation, testing it on himself and turning  
himself into a rampaging, green, monstrous 
Hulk whenever he gets angry. After the Hulk  
inadvertently injures Banner's girlfriend, 
Betty Ross, he attempts to go underground,  
but returns to America in search of a cure for his 
condition. He winds up dealing with a scientist  
named Samuel Sterns, who wants to recreate 
the Hulk, and a soldier called Emil Blonsky,  
who turns himself into a similarly 
hulking monster called the Abomination.
Also, around this time, SHIELD agent Clint 
Barton, aka Hawkeye, is tasked with finding  
and eliminating Natasha Romanoff, the Black 
Widow. Barton tracks down Natasha to her  
safehouse in Budapest but feels Natasha wants 
out of the Red Room, so he lets her live. SHIELD  
decides to let Natasha defect to their side — but 
requires her to kill her overseer General Dreykov  
first. Natasha and Clint rig a five-story building 
with bombs and lure the Red Room's mastermind into  
the kill zone — but Dreykov's young daughter 
Antonia also gets caught in the explosion. While  
disturbed by the additional red in her ledger, 
Natasha nevertheless begins working for SHIELD.
Six months after revealing his identity publicly, 
Tony Stark is called to testify before Congress,  
because they are justifiably concerned about a 
private citizen building a suit of armor that can  
vaporize a tank. To create their own version, they 
turn to rival weapons manufacturer Justin Hammer.
After Tony's friend, Colonel James Rhodes, 
delivers a prototype Iron Man suit,  
Hammer and Russian scientist Ivan Vanko 
reverse-engineer them into an army of drones.  
Stark also gets a new personal 
assistant, who is revealed to be  
SHIELD agent and Red Room defector 
Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow.
"I want one."
"No."
Stark and Rhodes, equipped with his own 
militarized suit of armor codenamed War  
Machine, defeat Vanko and Hammer.
Over at the Ten Rings compound, a now 14-year-old 
Shang-Chi has become the Master of Kung Fu, having  
been taught every possible way to kill a man over 
the last seven years. Assigned to assassinate the  
man responsible for his mother's murder, Shang-Chi 
completes his mission but is badly traumatized.  
Unwilling to return to his father, Shang-Chi 
cleverly adopts the name Shaun and starts  
going to high school in San Francisco. There he 
meets his best friend Katy, a skilled driver.
While all this is happening on Earth, there's 
other stuff going on in the Golden Realm of  
Asgard. Loki tricks Thor into antagonizing 
the Frost Giants of Jotunheim against  
Odin's orders. As a consequence, Odin exiles 
Thor to Earth and enchants his hammer, Mjolnir,  
so that only someone worthy of Thor's power can 
lift it. It lands in New Mexico, where Agent  
Coulson discovers it. After a bunch of hicks try 
to yank it out of the ground with pickup trucks,  
SHIELD constructs a temporary facility around 
it. Thor eventually proves himself worthy,  
regains his hammer, and stops Loki 
from staging a coup in Asgard.
In 2011, a team of Russian oil drillers discovers 
the crashed Hydra plane in the arctic and alerts  
SHIELD. Captain America is thawed out and revived, 
and after realizing that he's in the 21st century,  
he joins up with Nick Fury's Avengers 
Initiative. It turns out he was just in time!
In 2012, Loki, last seen adrift in 
space after his failed coup in Asgard,  
is enlisted by Thanos to recover the Tesseract 
from Earth, with his recent brief visit to the  
planet being seen by the Mad Titan as relevant 
employment experience. In exchange, Thanos gives  
him control of the Chitauri, a massive army of 
hive-minded destroyers, which would allow Loki to  
lay waste to the planet. Loki, apparently being in 
One Of His Moods that day, agrees. He lets himself  
be captured by SHIELD, incites a riot, and stabs 
poor Phil Coulson in the back – but don't worry,  
he gets better. The ensuing ruckus provides 
the superheroes with a reason to come together.
The result is the Battle of New York, in which the 
Avengers — Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Black  
Widow, Hulk, and Hawkeye — are gathered for the 
first time as a team. The good guys win after Loki  
is smashed against the ground five or six times, 
but the battle is not without its consequences.
Unlike in the real world, where it's pretty 
nice these days, the MCU's version of Hell's  
Kitchen takes a lot of damage and winds up being 
a center of corruption and graft as it's rebuilt.  
This injustice leads blind lawyer Matt Murdock to 
take on the identity of Daredevil to fight against  
criminal kingpin Wilson Fisk, and eventually 
team up with other super-powered "street-level"  
crimefighters — Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron 
Fist, and kinda-sorta the Punisher — on Netflix.
The reconstruction of New York is mostly handled 
by the newly formed Department of Damage Control,  
who take over the lucrative 
contract and leave construction  
foreman Adrian Toomes embittered — and in 
possession of advanced alien technology.
While the Battle of New York comes with 
its fair share of trauma, it also leaves  
some people inspired. After seeing Clint Barton 
unknowingly saving her life while battling aliens  
with a bow and arrow, 10-year-old Kate Bishop 
decides to take up archery and learn martial  
arts in an attempt to protect her family against 
future threats. She turns out to be a gifted,  
if extremely reckless, prodigy who often 
damages public property with her trick shots.
In 2013, Tony Stark in particular is 
overwhelmed by the concept of his universe  
suddenly expanding to include gods, aliens, 
and other unknowable cosmic forces. He deals  
with post-traumatic stress, which unfortunately 
coincides with the return of Aldrich Killian.  
Killian has been experimenting with Maya 
Hansen's regenerative "Extremis" treatment,  
which has the unfortunate tendency 
to cause its subjects to explode.
To cover his operations, Killian appropriates 
Wenwu's Ten Rings and creates a fictional  
terrorist based on Wenwu called the Mandarin, 
hiring an actor named Trevor Slattery to play  
him in threatening videos. The plot is 
uncovered and stopped by Tony and Rhodey.
"I wouldn't go in there for 
twenty minutes, ha ha ha."
In the aftermath, Killian is killed by Pepper 
Potts and Slattery gets sent to federal prison  
where he's later abducted by the real Ten Rings 
for impersonating Wenwu. Although Wenwu is intent  
on killing this strange man who named himself 
after a chicken dish, he has a change of heart  
after seeing how good Slattery is at performing 
Shakespeare and decides to make him his jester.
Around this time, Phil Coulson 
resurfaces and begins recruiting  
some additional members into his own agents 
of SHIELD. They have their own adventures,  
including many involving the Inhumans and Ghost 
Rider, but like the good secret agents they are,  
a lot of this flies beneath the 
radar of most major MCU events.
Oh, also, Malekith comes back and Thor fights 
him, and Loki becomes the latest in a long line  
of presumed deaths that actually aren't. He 
stashes Odin in a retirement home in New York  
and then takes his identity, ruling over Asgard 
and putting on critically acclaimed plays.
"I'm sorry about that thing with the Tesseract. 
I just couldn't help myself. I'm a trickster."
In 2014, Hydra's decades-long plot 
to infiltrate and take over America  
is finally discovered by 
Captain America and Black Widow,  
who also learn that the Winter Soldier is a 
brainwashed Bucky Barnes. While Cap fights  
to restore his best friend's memories, the 
Hydra plot is exposed, and in the aftermath,  
SHIELD collapses, leaving the Avengers without the 
oversight and support of the larger organization.
That power vacuum leads directly to 
Tony Stark and Bruce Banner attempting  
to create an artificial intelligence 
that would help protect the world.  
Unfortunately, they goof that plan up big time, 
instead creating a genocidal robot named Ultron  
who winds up destroying an entire city, 
resulting in the breakup of the country Sokovia.
Hoping for an ally against Ultron, Tony and Bruce 
combine the Mind Stone, a synthesized body created  
by Ultron, and Tony's onboard AI, J.A.R.V.I.S., 
into a much more heroic AI called the Vision.  
Also, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, two 
definitely-not-mutants, join the team.  
Speedster Quicksilver immediately dies, partly 
from bullets but mostly because Disney and Fox  
were having a problem figuring out the character's 
film rights. The destruction in Sokovia also kills  
the family of Helmut Zemo, who then dedicates his 
life to revenge. Immediately after the battle,  
the Hulk hijacks a Quinjet and blasts off 
to space, eventually landing on Sakaar.
While all that's going on, Peter Quill is out 
in space on a job to steal a valuable orb,  
which — unbeknownst to him — 
contains an Infinity Stone.  
That puts him in the sights of both Ronan 
the Accuser, who's been looking for another  
Infinity Stone since 1995, and 
Thanos, who sends Gamora after him.
Quill and Gamora wind up running 
across Drax (a very literal  
warrior whose family was killed by Thanos), 
Rocket (a space raccoon who was painfully  
experimented on and given cybernetic 
enhancements), and Groot (a tree).
After being imprisoned together, the five of them 
stage a jailbreak, defeat Ronan in a dance-off,  
recover the Power Stone with the help 
of the real power, which is friendship,  
and turn it over to the Nova Corps, a 
bunch of space cops on the planet Xandar.  
Shortly thereafter, Thanos attacks 
Xandar and recovers it for himself.
In 2015, an electrical engineer named Scott Lang 
gets out of prison and stumbles onto Hank Pym's  
old size-changing equipment. Under the guidance of 
Pym and his daughter Hope, Lang becomes the second  
Ant-Man, and helps to keep the Pym Particles from 
falling into the hands of an evil arms dealer.
More importantly, it's likely somewhere around 
this time that a kid named Peter Parker is bitten  
by a radioactive spider, tries to capitalize 
on his powers by becoming famous as Spider-Man,  
and fails to stop a robber 
that later kills his Uncle Ben.  
None of this is actually covered in the MCU, but 
you might've seen five other movies about it.
The following year sees Helmut Zemo's 
plan to destroy the Avengers reach  
its fruition. As the world responds to the 
destruction of Sokovia by trying to install  
new governmental oversight over the Avengers, 
Zemo furthers a wedge between Captain America  
and Iron Man by revealing that Bucky was 
the one who killed Tony Stark's parents.
He also frames Bucky for the assassination of 
King T'Chaka of Wakanda, leaving the king's  
son T'Challa to take over leadership of the 
country — not to mention the identity (and  
powers) of the Black Panther. The end result 
of all of this is that the Avengers break up,  
the ones loyal to Cap go underground, and T'Challa 
refuses to give Zemo the death he desires.
Fleeing the U.S. after the rest of Cap's team is 
imprisoned, Natasha Romanoff spends some time in  
Norway watching James Bond films. Unfortunately, 
her vacation is cut short when she's attacked by  
Taskmaster, an assassin who can mimic any 
fighting style. Later, she discovers Taskmaster  
is the brainwashed daughter of a still-alive 
General Dreykov, who has restarted a crueler  
version of the Red Room that brainwashes 
new Black Widows and robs them of free will.
One of those Black Widows turns out 
to be Natasha's sister Yelena. Freed  
of her programming by another Widow, Yelena 
sends the brainwashing antidote to Natasha,  
drawing her into the fight. Together, 
Yelena and Natasha work to reunite  
with their former "parents," Alexei and 
Melina, and really kill Dreykov this time.  
Although the dysfunctional deep cover family has 
more than its share of issues, they manage to  
pull together and take down the Red Room. In the 
end, Yelena gets to work liberating Black Widows  
around the world while Natasha goes to break 
her other family, the Avengers, out of jail.
While all this is going on, Dr. Stephen Strange, 
who lost the fine motor control in hands after  
a car accident, seeks out the Ancient One and, 
after her death, becomes a Master of the Mystic  
Arts. He stops an invasion by Dormammu, 
a demonic force from the Dark Dimension,  
by using the Time Stone to die over and over 
again until the cosmic villain gets annoyed  
enough to leave the Earth alone. Meanwhile, the 
Guardians of the Galaxy encounter and subsequently  
kill Ego before he can manipulate Peter Quill 
into aiding his conquest of the entire galaxy.
In the absence of the Avengers, Tony 
Stark begins to mentor Peter Parker.  
As Spider-Man, Peter tries to deal with 
the evil arms dealer known as the Vulture,  
aka Adrian Toomes, who turns out to be his 
homecoming date's dad. The Vulture is defeated,  
arrested, and sent to prison, but not before 
he and several of Peter's classmates figure  
out Spider-Man's real identity. Also, Tony 
Stark finally proposes to Pepper Potts.
Lest you think Peter is the only 
superpowered teenager in the MCU,  
over in New Orleans teenagers Tandy Bowen 
and Tyrone Johnson acquire powers of light  
and darkness and become the vigilantes Cloak 
and Dagger. Meanwhile, on the West Coast,  
privileged teenager Alex Wilder and his friends 
learn their parents are all supervillains who  
control a powerful criminal organization 
called the Pride. The kids go on the run,  
learn many of them have superpowers 
or connections to advanced technology,  
and even run afoul of dangerous artifacts like 
the Darkhold. Sadly, it looks like Peter won't  
be meeting any of these young heroes as their 
worlds are only slightly connected to the MCU.
In Asgard, Thor returns from two years of 
looking for Infinity Stones in various realms  
to discover Loki's deception. When they find 
the real Odin, he's at the end of his life,  
and his death allows Hela to escape her 
millennia of imprisonment. She destroys Mjolnir,  
blasts the two brothers into space, and 
takes over Asgard. Thor winds up on Sakaar,  
where he recruits Hulk and Valkyrie for a 
mission to overthrow Hela, which goes about  
as well as it can for a plan that ends with the 
complete destruction of Asgard via fire giant.
In Wakanda, T'Challa's rule is 
challenged by his cousin Erik,  
who teams up with evil arms dealer Ulysses 
Klaue and then betrays him in order to  
gain favor with Wakandans who know Klaue as a 
Vibranium smuggler. After being presumed dead,  
T'Challa returns and, aided by Nakia, Okoye, 
and Shuri, regains control of his country.
After six years of waiting around, Thanos decides 
to personally seek out the Infinity Stones,  
and the results are devastating. He kills Loki and 
nearly obliterates the last surviving Asgardians,  
and an invasion of Earth leads to things getting 
so desperate that the whole Avengers crew (except  
Hawkeye and Ant-Man, who are under house arrest 
for violating the Sokovia Accords) need to get  
back together to sort it out. They don't do so 
well. Despite fighting on two fronts, with one  
small team in space and a massive force on Earth, 
Thanos gathers the stones, snaps his fingers,  
and kills half the life forms in the universe, 
dissolving them into dust. Before he dissolves,  
Nick Fury uses the space-pager to alert 
Captain Marvel that Earth needs her help.
A month later, Captain Marvel and the 
surviving Avengers track Thanos down in space,  
only to find out that he's destroyed the stones 
and, with them, any chance of bringing back the  
dead half of the universe. Thor beheads 
Thanos, and the Avengers return home.
Weirdly enough, all of this happens while Ant-Man 
is involved in a relatively low-stakes heist  
movie. When the snap happens, though, he's left 
stranded in the Quantum Realm. While he's there,  
five years go by, during which the heroes 
deal with the horrific trauma in various,  
mostly unhealthy ways. Notably, Tony Stark 
and Pepper Potts have a daughter named Morgan,  
Banner merges his brain with the Hulk, while 
Thor and Valkyrie found New Asgard in Norway.
Hawkeye loses his entire family in 
the snap, causing him to go rogue,  
adopting a new hairstyle and anti-hero 
identity as the merciless Ronin, who hunts  
down and ruthlessly kills criminals around the 
world. One of these criminals is William Lopez,  
the father of fighting prodigy Maya. After seeing 
her dad die, Maya swears vengeance on Ronin,  
not knowing that her dad's boss 
— Kingpin — wanted William dead.
After Ant-Man returns from the Quantum Realm 
(where, for him, only a few hours have passed),  
the heroes realize that the solution to the 
problem is, of course, time travel. With the help  
of Iron Man and the now-smart Hulk, the heroes 
travel back to various key points in the timeline  
(including 1970, 2012, and 2014) to gather up the 
Infinity Stones of those eras, along with Mjolnir,  
circa 2013. They also inadvertently 
bring the Thanos of 2014 forward to 2023,  
along with all of his minions. Fortunately, the 
Hulk uses a rebuilt Infinity Gauntlet to wish  
everyone back to life, and virtually 
every hero in the entire MCU takes  
Thanos on at once. The final blow is dealt 
by Iron Man, who dies on the battlefield.
After gathering for a funeral, Steve Rogers hops 
into the timestream to return everything to where  
it should be, returning after living a full 
life with Peggy Carter in an alternate past  
to bequeath his shield to Sam Wilson, 
naming him the new Captain America.
Outside of the mainstream MCU, the version of 
Loki that the Avengers freed from an alternate  
2012 in "Avengers: Endgame" ends up in the Gobi 
Desert, where he immediately begins fulfilling his  
"glorious purpose" by trying to conquer the world, 
again. Instead, he gets picked up by the Time  
Variance Authority, or TVA, a time police force 
tasked with hunting down rogue variants like Loki  
and destroying alternate timelines before they can 
branch out too far from their "sacred timeline."
Loki gets paired with Mobius, a sympathetic 
TVA agent, who recruits the trickster god  
into the agency to help find their 
latest target — another Loki variant.
"This isn't about you."
This variant turns out to be a 
female version of Loki called Sylvie,  
who restarts the multiverse, allowing a bunch 
of rogue timelines to emerge from history.  
Loki teams up with Sylvie and discovers 
the TVA is made up of variants forcibly  
recruited into the organization to prune rogue 
timelines and prevent really evil versions of  
the TVA's mysterious leader from destroying 
everything. While offered a chance to let this  
deception persist, Sylvie instead murders the 
mastermind, letting the multiverse run wild.
While this may lead to the destruction of 
reality, it makes one cosmic being's life  
more interesting. The god-like voyeur the Watcher 
observes realities in which Peggy Carter receives  
the Super Soldier Serum, Doctor Strange destroys 
his universe, and Thor becomes a party animal.  
Ultimately, the Watcher is forced to evolve from 
observer to doer when a variant Ultron threatens  
to destroy all sentient life in the multiverse. 
Assembling his own Guardians of the Multiverse  
team, the Watcher manipulates events so the 
alternate realities can continue to coexist.
In the mainstream MCU, the effects of Hulk's 
reverse snap are being felt on both a cosmic and  
street level. People like Yelena Belova 
and Monica Rambeau snap back to existence,  
only to discover that five years have 
passed and their loved ones are now gone.  
Reestablishing their lives proves 
difficult since different people  
live in their homes and billions are still 
legally dead. While support networks form,  
entire nations are also forcing out recent 
immigrants due to the sudden rise in population.
Believing life was better during the Blip when 
half of all life was gone, some people react  
to these changes violently. Anarchist Karli 
Morgenthau forms a terrorist group, the Flag  
Smashers, to attack governments threatening her 
One World vision and even augments her team with  
a new version of the Super Soldier Serum. This 
puts her in the sights of Sam Wilson, who rejects  
Steve Rogers' request that he become the new 
Captain America. After working with Bucky Barnes  
and seeing how Steve's legacy can be tarnished by 
unworthy successors like the dangerously unhinged  
John Walker, Sam takes on the mantle of 
Captain America and stops the Flag Smashers.
The sudden rise in sentient life on Earth also 
jump-starts the Emergence, which threatens to  
destroy the entire planet when a new Celestial 
is born. Alerted by the cosmic event and a few  
remaining Deviants, the Eternals reunite. Where 
before they have always stood by and allowed  
planets to be destroyed, a few now have enough 
love for humanity to try and save the Earth.  
Sersi draws enough power from her teammates 
to halt the birth of the Celestial Tiamut,  
and the Celestial Arishem uses the Eternals' 
memories to determine if Earth should be spared.
While all this is going on, one rogue Avenger 
is unknowingly creating her own brand of chaos  
in the small town of Westview, New Jersey. 
Unable to cope with the loss of Vision,  
who Thanos kills by ripping the Mind Stone 
out of his head, Wanda Maximoff manifests  
powerful reality-warping abilities. Drawing 
from her childhood love of American sitcoms,  
Wanda warps Westview into an idyllic town 
where she lives a suburban life with a new  
version of Vision. She even gives birth to twin 
boys who quickly mature in a single episode.
To maintain this illusion, Wanda 
inadvertently mind-controls  
the real-life citizens of Westview 
into becoming her personal puppets.  
Her activities attract the attention 
of the new intelligence agency SWORD  
and Agatha Harkness. While Wanda eventually 
comes to her senses and tries to free Westview,  
Agatha goads Wanda into a battle. Wanda comes out 
on top, however, and although she has to sacrifice  
her happy life with her husband and children, she 
embraces her new role as "The Scarlet Witch." She  
also takes Agatha's Darkhold and starts studying 
it, leading to some major problems very soon.
Meanwhile, former assassin-turned-car-valet 
Shang-Chi, currently going by Shaun, learns  
his father is gunning for him when Ten Rings 
agents steal the jade pendant his mother left him.  
Teaming up with his sister, Shang-Chi 
finally addresses his issues with  
his father and stopping Wenwu from 
unleashing the soul-sucking monster  
known as Dweller-in-Darkness on the world. 
Before dying to save his son, Wenwu grants  
Shang-Chi the ten rings, which begin 
sending signals out into the universe.
In Europe, Peter Parker attempts to 
have a vacation free of Spider-Man.  
Unfortunately, this becomes impossible when Nick 
Fury (actually the shapeshifting Skrull Talos,  
who is covering for Fury while he's on vacation 
in space) recruits Spider-Man to help Mysterio,  
a man claiming to be from an alternate universe, 
to save the world from dangerous elemental beings.
Except it's all a lie. Mysterio is just Quentin 
Beck, a disgruntled ex-Stark employee who uses  
Peter to get his hands on a pair of Stark tech 
sunglasses that can control an army of weaponized  
drones. Spider-Man gets the drop on Mysterio's 
illusions to keep him from killing thousands of  
people — but in a final act of spite, Mysterio 
exposes Peter's secret identity to the world.
With his secret identity now exposed, 
Peter turns to Doctor Strange,  
hoping the sorcerer can snap his 
fingers and wish his problems away.  
Instead, Strange offers to cast a spell to make 
the world forget Peter Parker is Spider-Man. It  
seems like an ideal solution — until Peter keeps 
asking Strange to rewrite the spell, creating  
multiple fractures in the multiverse and drawing 
in people who know Peter Parker is Spider-Man.
Soon, Spider-Man villains from different 
cinematic universes, including Doctor Octopus,  
Sandman, the Lizard, and Electro, begin slipping 
into the MCU. However, the worst new arrival  
is the Green Goblin, who kills Peter's Aunt May. 
Distraught, Peter receives help from an unexpected  
source — two multiverse Peter Parkers who look 
a lot like Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire.
Together, the Spider-Men concoct some creative 
cures for their enemies and depower their shared  
Rogues Gallery. But just as things seem to be 
looking up, the multiverse begins to fracture.  
Peter does the responsible thing by asking Strange 
to make the whole world forget Peter Parker  
and prevent the villains from coming through. This 
essentially makes Peter a nonentity in the MCU,  
cuts him off from his support 
network of heroes and friends,  
and sets him up for a brand-new 
trilogy of solo Spider-Man films.
However, not all heroes need to be alone for the 
holidays. After a now 22-year-old Kate Bishop  
crashes an underground New York auction and steals 
Clint Barton's former Ronin outfit, she draws a  
lot of unwanted and potentially lethal attention 
to herself from the Track Suit Mafia and Kingpin.
Fortunately, Hawkeye is in town with his family 
to see the embarrassingly catchy "Rogers:  
The Musical." Initially hoping to retrieve 
his Ronin suit and keep Kate out of trouble,  
Clint ends up mentoring Kate as they go up against 
Maya Lopez, aka Echo, Yelena Belova, and Kingpin.  
After bonding with Clint over their 
shared trauma and showing she's really  
good at shooting people with trick arrows, 
Kate looks like she'll be taking over the  
mantle of Hawkeye and joining the MCU's 
ever-expanding roster of new superheroes.
Every universe meets its 
end one day – but right now,  
the Marvel Cinematic Universe 
is expanding faster than ever.
The addition of TV shows on Disney+, as well as 
Disney's acquisition of the Marvel properties  
that once belonged to Fox, means that more 
characters are entering the MCU than ever before.  
In addition, Marvel Studios' collaboration with 
Sony, which owns the film rights to Spider-Man  
and many Spider-Man-related characters, means 
the universe is more open to outside visitors  
than ever before, from the previous Sony 
Spider-Men to the Tom Hardy version of Venom.
On Disney+, fans will soon be treated to the 
arrivals of Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk,  
Echo, and a Secret Invasion of Skrulls. On 
the big screen, a Multiverse of Madness is  
preparing to burst open. Also on the big screen, 
we'll see the further adventures of Dane Whitman,  
aka the Black Knight, the return of Blade, and an 
exciting sequel in the third Ant-Man and the Wasp  
adventure, which will feature Kang the Conqueror, 
a menacing variant of the character you may know  
as He Who Remains. A Black Panther sequel will 
broaden the world of Wakanda, and a fourth "Thor"  
movie will prove Jane Foster worthy of wielding 
the hammer. And in the more distant future,  
we'll certainly see the arrival of the Fantastic 
Four, the X-Men, and who knows what else.
The MCU timeline is an ever-shifting thing, 
but when it comes to the first 15 years or so,  
you can now consider yourself fully caught up.
"Cool? Cool."
"So cool."
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