#mcu timelines

[the0fi]

MCU TIMELINE UPDATE

i’ve been working on a more detailed version of my mcu timeline with the ages of those characters who usually show up in bishova fanfics, so as i promised in my original post i’m sharing it because no one should be subjected to the hell that is trying to make sense of the mcu timeline

(new post because the reblogs were getting too long and confusing for my taste, and link to the previous update in case anyone wants to check it out)

a few notes on the update:

first of all, just a reminder that all dates are in DD/MM/YYYY format

i changed the format a bit to make it more accurate, but i fear it might be a bit messier (and uglier) than it was before so sorry about that

as @uncleasad suggested, i added a red line in the “endgame” row for those people who were blipped to make it clearer and more visual

i added a few more notes besides the one about yelena to clarify a couple of things. they’re about billy’s birth month, the marvels placement, and the daredevil born again timeline

peter and sam’s age changed from the earlier version because their birthdays are in a month between the snap and the blip, meaning they kinda lost a birthday? i don’t know, blip-logic is confusing, so feel free to ignore it and age them up a year (this technically also happens with nate barton, but him being 3 or 4 doesn’t change much so i ignored it lol)

i moved secret invasion to november 2025 because i found more evidence of it happening then, which leaves a few months gap between it and the marvels (see: note number 3 in the image)

i also found a footnote that approximates kamala’s birthday to march 2009 despite her wiki saying “late 2009”, so i changed it to that because it ended up making more sense timeline-wise

for bucky i calculated his chronological age, but if you’re interested in his physical age you should check out this post

turns out there’s a whole subreddit for the mcu timeline, so i’m just leaving it here in case anyone wants to check it out. there’s also this post my friend @griffinborn sent me that has a timeline for all marvel projects in their respective phases, so i recommend checking it out for a more complete overview of the mcu

in this comment i talk a bit about why antonia dreykov isn’t in the chart, but as a general consensus most people tend to make her to be either late 1990s or around yelena’s post-blip age

finally, no one gave me any info on eli so i deleted him for now😔

[phillipjaekwoncoulson]

Welcome to my current hyperfixation, creating as accurate a timeline as possible for the life (until 1st death) of one Phillip J Coulson, under the cut for your convenience

July 8, 1964

Born in Manitowoc WI to history teacher and football coach Robert, and homemaker Julie Coulson.

Summers 1970-73

Played Little League (batted .400), fixed up a cherry red 62 Chevy with his dad

1973

Death of his father, circumstances unknown, but was considered a Defining Moment in his life. He's "forgotten more about [his dad] than he remembers." He and his mother then moved away from Manitowoc.

1982

First contact with SHIELD, right out of high school. Canon differs on whether he was recruited straight out of senior year or simply tapped and recruited after some college (reported history degree which got him on SHIELD's radar, but Coulson personally said "younger than [Skye, early 20s] when I was recruited, straight out of high school." My personal thought is that he was approached during/just after high school, but was encouraged to get a degree to help him get into SHIELD Academy

1986 (likely)

Formal recruitment into SHIELD Academy of Communications, to study data analysis and become "The analysis expert" -Agent Tripp.

1990

Coulson + Melinda May's first mission, in Sausalito, CA, with no proper exit plan that ended with May stuck in the bay for 5 hours.

(this year, presuming he entered SHIELD Academy after a 4 year college degree, is exact and lines up better with him being a Junior Agent in Captain Marvel, 1995. According to Jemma Simmons' stated biography, the Academy is a 4 year program. When undercover in HYDRA she stated she started at SHIELD at 17. She was born in 1987 and graduated the Academy "in 2004, 3 years early" meaning she only spent 1 year there max. She could not have entered the academy any younger for multiple reasons (had at least 1 PhD, and to gain a visa to study/work younger than 17 would have been nigh impossible))

1990s

Ran multiple missions with Katherine Shane and presumably had a casual relationship

1995

Junior Agent Coulson, along with Nick Fury, is tasked with investigating an unusual circumstance at a Blockbuster in LA. Plot of Captain Marvel happens here, along with the first mention of the (currently unnamed) Avengers Initiative. At this time Coulson does not know the true story of how Fury lost his eye

1996 (likely)

First meeting with Audrey Nathan (the cellist and proclaimed Coulson's true love). Proceeded to start a relationship, including trips to Hawaii (to get a tie as a gift and eat some poi) and dinners at The Richmond

Marcus Daniels' wiki says he was in a lab accident at college sometime between 1992-96. Watsonian logic, Coulson was likely picked for the case because of his previous experience with light-based powered persons

2001 (likely)

Recruitment of Clint Barton

Wiki says he was hand-picked by Fury in the early 2000s. He met Laura working with her at SHIELD and his oldest daughter was born around 2004.

2002

Coulson stationed in Cusco, Peru alongside Camilla Reyes, a member of Policia Militar del Perú, with whom he formed some form of romantic/casual relationship.

Best guess, Coulson considered all his relationships casual/incidental, saying goodbye to Audrey each time and hoping to be able to come back but making no promises of fidelity. Either that or he's a prolific cheater because Marvel can't get their stories straight. I prefer option A.

2003-5

Promoted to training teams of agents

Between being an attache to a foreign governmental body and gaining Akela (next bullet), a notoriously difficult recruit, he had to have cut his teeth training other teams/agents. Akela's training absolutely falls under this timeline as well, given how well she knew him

2006

sent his recruit Akela with a small team to raid a gulag owned by criminal Vanchat, where Akela was either captured or killed somewhere in the Shanxi Province, according to record.

2008, likely early spring

Coulson and May were sent as the Welcome Wagon to talk to a possible gifted in Bahrain, resulting in the birth of The Cavalry and May's cold personality change

2008, June

Word of The Hulk reaches SHIELD. Coulson questions whether Fury wants to fold him in, to which he's told the Hulk is "Thunderbolt Ross's problem"

2008, October

Sent as the Welcome Wagon to recruit Tony Stark to SHIELD after his return from captivity under the guise of a debrief

2008, early winter

Sends Agent Barton on a mission in Russia in which Barton runs across the Black Widow. Barton is then sent back to kill her, resulting in a standoff in Budapest, days off grid, the death of a young girl, and the recruitment of Natasha Romanoff

2009

Takes up overseeing the TAHITI project (in 2014 one of the agents who had taken part and was wiped was officially declared dead 5 years previous). Also shuts down the project due to the insurmountable issues presenting in the subjects.

2010, May

Sent to babysit Tony Stark on his house arrest, threatening to "tase him and watch Supernanny while he drools into the carpet"

2010, May/June

Sent to investigate an 084 alongside a science team and Agent Barton, resulting in the plot of Thor

2011

Captain America found in the ice. Defrosted and set up in a 1940s dummy hospital setup, presumably planned by Coulson, the resident expert on Captain America, history, and gifted recruits. Plus he "watched Steve while he was sleeping"

2012, pre-May

Hawkeye is assigned to infiltrate the helicarrier under Fury's orders and learns of the Avengers Initiative, as well as Coulson's involvement.

2012, May

Coulson dies. Had a date planned with Audrey in Portland, missed it due to gaining a new piece of Asgardian hardware in his chest

2012, June/July

Coulson undergoes multiple invasive surgeries in an attempt to revive him using Kree blood as part of the TAHITI project.

2013

Starts up a new team composed of Melinda May, Grant Ward, Jemma Simmons, and Leopold Fitz to take on interesting problems, functioning as a quick-response unit (and to allow May to keep a very close eye on Coulson)

[broadwayfan92]

Time travel in the MCU:

[alloftheblackwidowfeelings]

Is there a universally accepted idea of how old Natasha was when Budapest happened?

I haven't found one, and I can't parse one out.

I was hoping an answer might show up on commentary but the blu-ray doesn't have commentary. So I assume that if we get that information, it will be in the Art of the Movie book, which BN.com indicates comes out in August of 2022.

That said, here is some pointless and unfounded math:

Natasha's ID in the openings give her a birthday of December 3, 1983. Accepting that as accurate for now (which means believing SHIELD had the wrong birthday for her, which is... hilarious and great, tbh), and assuming release dates of non-flashback-movies are accurate in-universe, that means she was 26 in Iron Man 2. Budapest was Nat proving her loyalty to SHIELD; by IM2 she's seen as loyal enough that she's in Fury's inner circle.

Coming at it in the other direction, while we don't have a date for her Red Room "graduation," the opening credits do give us more of a sense of Nat aging. We know how she looks at eleven (like Ever Anderson); we see teen Widows who look very clearly younger than Nat did in the Ultron flashbacks, when she was getting her hysterectomy.

(Two things I should note here: I assume the red-haired girl with a gun in the BW credits is Nat, but we don't actually know that; for the sake of argument, it could just be a different Widow. And due to Wanda's magic, it's very possible that Scarlett-As-Nat is how Natasha remembers herself but she actually looks like Ever Anderson or the red-haired girl in the credits.)

From a different angle: Young Antonia was played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, who was born in 2010, so when it filmed she was presumably about 9 or 10, so say Toni was that age. But then we'd need to math to get to adult Antonia, who is played by Olga Kurylenko, who was born in 1979, which means she would have been about 40 when it filmed, which is older than Scarlett when we know that Nat was much older than Antonia, so that helps us literally not at all. But for math purposes, it's important to note.

Also, I know nothing about costuming, but I didn't notice anything in the Budapest outfits that help us place it in a specific year.

We also know that the timeline is murky, because- again, if we accept all on-screen film canon as equally accurate canon- Nat says in Avengers she was making a name for herself as a mercenary before Clint was sent to kill her and saved her instead, but in Black Widow she says that killing Dreykov was her final act of separating from the Red Room. Nat's loyalty to SHIELD would be less suspicious the farther out she is from defecting, but we don't know if that's measured from when she first left the Red Room or when she tried to take out Dreykov.

(Full context here is also important because we know that after Nat's defection is when Dreykov started using Melina's techniques on the other Widows; I had been assuming that was right at Budapest, and Toni was the first attempt, but could it possibly have been earlier and Toni only got the implant after Dreykov decided her disfigured body was fundamentally broken? There's no good answer here but there are a LOT of intriguingly bad ones.)

So IF we accept all of those givens, which I am not fully ready to do but for the sake of argument will do anyway, I think Budapest had to happen sometime between 2002 and 2009, and I think I would place it around 2007, but I am not particularly confident in that assessment and am quite happy to be proven wrong.

[allofthefeelings]

In the Black Widow prelude comic, General Ross says that one of Natasha’s “earliest missions” was the Iranian nuclear engineer in Odessa, where Bucky shot him through her. After she recovered from that, she was given a “lower-pressure assignment: to monitor Tony Stark.”

But Fury’s Big Week establishes that over the course of a single week, Natasha dealt with Tony and Rhodey’s big fight, revealed herself to him and stuck him in the neck, attended Stark Expo with Pepper, rebooted Rhodey and got Tony his best friend back, IMMEDIATELY went over to Culver University to monitor Bruce because Sitwell had to go to New Mexico, found that Bruce had hulked out AND GENERAL ROSS WAS THERE, prevented Ross from taking Banner, watched Blonsky go against Banner, had a building knocked on her, went back to SHIELD and told Nick they enhanced Blonsky, went to Harlem, tried to retrieve the data Bruce may or may not have shared with Sterns, got attacked by Sterns who was starting to transform, incapacitated him, went to mark the roof with flares so SHIELD could handle it, walked right into Hulk and the Abomination having a fight, and returned to SHIELD, where she told Nick “It’s too much for us to handle” and he said “never thought I’d hear you say that,” and then he had her stay in the room while he called the World Security Council to negotiate terms.

Which means that (assuming all prelude comics are equally canon) Natasha’s earliest assignments included getting shot by Bucky, going undercover at Stark Industries, and taking Sitwell’s place monitoring Bruce- all extremely-high-priority missions that, crucially, had to be done without a partner or supervision and involved reporting directly to the Director of SHIELD- and then was trusted with extremely sensitive information.

Which, in turn, means one of two things happened:

Nick didn’t just trust Natasha, he god tier trusted Natasha. Like, her feeling betrayed in Winter Soldier makes that much more sense, because within a few months of meeting he was like “Here is a billionaire former-arms-dealer, here is the Hulk, look at my top secret Avengers Initiative, check out the individuals on the WSC, I’m confident you will not do anything bad with any of this information!”

OR

Natasha and Nick sat down at one point and completely fabricated her history with SHIELD, because there was shit they didn’t want people to know, and they did such a good job that General Ross, who for all his many flaws is not bad at his job, completely believed what they made up.

I’m pretty sure that either one of these is the Nick and Natasha equivalent of exchanging BFF charms.

[allofthefeelings]

When Natasha mentioned the KGB, despite it not making sense with her 1984 birth timeline, I just assumed it was because the writers believed the audience would instantly understand KGB as opposed to the current FSB, which is basically the same organization with a different name.

I mean, part of this may be MY ignorance at the world overall. Who is the intended audience for the MCU? I assumed they were aiming to skew young, and wasn’t sure if “the KGB” is instantly understandable to people who were born after the KGB was dissolved, especially if they don’t know the comic book origins of the Winter Soldier as rooted in Russia and tied to the Cold War.

I feel like I am simultaneously having to understand history, how Marvel understands history, and how Marvel assumes its audience understands history, and these are three VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

[allofthefeelings]

tenlittlebullets replied to your post “How do you feel about MCU Nat's age?? Are you fine with her being born...”

I mean, it seems to me like any universe that has the KGB (or Hydra-in-the-KGB) take out a well-organized, successful hit on Howard Stark in *December 1991* either has nothing whatsoever to say about Russian history, or has something ballsy to say about the continuity of the Russian security services but never actually comes out and *says* it

So, this is an interesting wrench in the plan!

Cap2 talked about unmarked Russian slugs but otherwise so strongly avoided associating the Soldier with Russia I interpreted it as, by 1991, the KGB had transferred full use of the Soldier to Hydra. But your way makes it way more interesting.

And problematic. Super, super problematic.

(It also just occurred to me that if Hydra is inherently intertwined with the Winter Soldier, and the Winter Soldier is still in the MCU related to Project X, then not only are Natasha and Hydra are intertwined, but she escaped Hydra brainwashing to voluntarily work for an organization infiltrated by Hydra, and I am going to CRY.)

[the-lady-bryan]

By ignoring the Loki tv show and the TVA’s penchant for destroying timelines altogether, the 2012 “Bucky’s Alive/Loki Stole the Tesseract/Tony has a heart attack” timeline is PERFECT for those “Everyone lives in the tower and clint crawls in the vents” fics.

think about it.

with Loki stealing the tesseract and getting away, there’s the damn good reason SHIELD is going to want to keep this band together to find and stop him.

Cap’s gonna need help finding Bucky and HYDRA is going to want to get to the bottom of “is cap one of us? and if so, we’ve got a man on the avengers! SWEET!”

Thor’s gonna need to stick around because without the tesseract it’ll be a bitch to get home if he’s having to rely on Odin gathering up enough dark energy to open a portal to get him there because the rainbow bridge is still out of commission and needs the tesseract to help rebuild it faster.

like, this is the PERFECT timeline for all those 2012 era Team as Family in the Tower fics.

and for those who are sticklers for canon compliance, this can STILL be Endgame compliant because Endgame created this alternate timeline.

oh, and side note - for those like me who hate writing around Infinity War and Endgame? The timeline created when Thanos fucked off to the future and never went back to 2014 is perfect for that. You don’t have to deal with the infinity stones more than you personally want to, and you don’t have to fuck around with Infinity War like, at all.