GeekTimelinesMethod

Sources & method

Every year, link and label on the map is traced to a published source. Estimates are marked rather than smoothed over.

What is on this map, and why

Inclusion follows one list: the MCU Complete Timeline that Marvel publishes on the Disney+ brand page, which breaks films and TV seasons out individually. If a title is on that list it belongs here, and the order on the map is the order Marvel gives. That means the Netflix run — Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, The Defenders and The Punisher — is part of this timeline, because Marvel places it there.

Four titles here go beyond that list, because it has not caught up with them yet: Spider-Man: Brand New Day, VisionQuest, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars. One title is here despite not being on it: Agent Carter, which chronology guides commonly include and which is marked ≈ with that caveat spelled out on its own page.

Marvel Television titles carry no phase. They sit on the official timeline but were never part of Marvel Studios’ phase structure, so their cards say Marvel Television rather than inventing a phase number for them.

Order and dates

In-universe years come from Marvel’s own The Marvel Cinematic Universe: An Official Timeline (2023) or from dates stated on screen. Where a year is only a fan or press consensus, the card is marked ≈ and the entry page says so in full.

Release dates are theatrical and streaming premiere dates, verified against TMDB. Dates from 2026 onward are scheduled and may shift.

Chronology inside an entry

A story is rarely a single year. The First Avenger runs from 1943 to 1945 and then wakes up in 2011; Endgame lives in 2018 and 2023 and reaches back into 1970, 2012, 2013 and 2014; Eternals crosses seven thousand years. On the map an entry is drawn as a bar covering the years its story mainly occupies, and everything outside that span is listed as a chronology on the entry itself, labelled as a flashback, a piece of time travel, or an epilogue.

Flashbacks are deliberately not moved on the map. Scattering a single film across six points would make the timeline unreadable and would misrepresent where the story actually sits, so the depth lives one click away instead.

Every dated event carries its source, printed next to it. Three are in use: Shown on screen for dates the film or series states outright in a title card, Marvel official timeline (2023) for Marvel’s own published book, and Popverse MCU timeline for the dated chronology published by Popverse. An event with no source does not get written down.

Titles that sit off the year axis

Some stories do not happen in a year at all. Loki runs outside time at the TVA, What If…? and Marvel Zombies are other universes, and Deadpool & Wolverine takes place largely on Earth-10005 and in the Void. Marvel’s official list still gives them a position, but it is a narrative position rather than a chronological one. These are marked ✦ and their placement on the map is a reading convenience, not a claim about when they happen.

What is never invented

Summaries describe only what happens on screen. A title that has been announced but has no released material carries ⧗ and no summary. A title that is out but has no verified summary here also carries ⧗, with a note saying exactly that.

Connections drawn as solid or dashed lines are script facts: a direct continuation, a post-credits setup, a character crossing over, a multiverse branch. Connections that are only announced or reasonably inferred are drawn in the faintest weight and labelled as such. They are never mixed in with the confirmed ones.

Known disputes, flagged on the cards

The placement of Eternals and Black Widow; the “8 years” line in Spider-Man: Homecoming that contradicts the official chronology; Marvel Television productions such as Agent Carter; and the titles that sit off the main axis — Loki and the TVA, What If…?, Marvel Zombies, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps on its own Earth.

Sources

Out of scope

Comics are deliberately excluded. A trustworthy comics chronology needs its own dataset built around events and tie-ins, not a single line, and adding one badly would undermine everything else here.

Found a mistake?

Send it in through the contact page with the source, and it gets fixed.