This timeline will be continually updated as more & more information is brought out in subsequent movie releases…
For now, here’s the Chronological listing of everything that happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Unknown time:
- Billions of years ago (undermined time) – the Big Bang & creation of the Infinity Stones happens.
- Millions of years ago (undermined time) – Ego becomes a planet and starts to seed worlds by fathering children on them to try & create a 2nd celestial being.
- Thousands of years ago (undetermined time) – Malekith lays siege to Asgard.
- Thousands of years ago (undetermined time) – Mjölnir is forged in the heart of a dying star. Odin & Hella conquer the 9 realms with Hella wielding it. Hella is imprisoned in another dimension.
- Thousands of years ago (undetermined time) – Thor is born. Loki is adopted.
- Thousands of years ago (undetermined time) – Meteorite made of vibranium strikes Africa.
- Hundreds of years ago (undetermined time) – The Kingdom of Wakanda is formed and the line of the Black Panthers start.
Known Time:
1943 – Hydra is born when Johann Schmidt aka Red Skull finds the Tesseract (with the space stone inside). Steve Rogers becomes Captain America with Dr Erskine’s serum.
1945 – Captain America beats Red Skull who then gets teleported to Vormir on touching the Tesseract. Bucky falls from the train into the mountains and is captured by the soviet army and ‘fixed’ to create the Winter Soldier. Steve crashes in the Arctic.
1948 – The Red Room comes into existence
1950 – Stark & Peggy continuing to work at the Strategic Science Reserve with Prof Zola (his brain in a computer) and other people including Hank Pym. From 1950s onwards, Prof Zola’s brain as a computer starts to rebuild Hydra within the SSR first and then within SHIELD.
1953 – Capt America travels back in time from 2023 to reunite with Peggy Carter. Nothing further is known about this timeline.
1970 – Hank Pym invents the Pym Particle.
1974 – Howard Stark launches Stark Expo which includes the City of the future powered by an Arc reactor. The city of the future also includes the structure to a new element which he is unable to synthesise at the time.
1980 – Ego comes to Earth. Hooks up with Meredith Quill. Peter is born in 1980 or 1981.
1987 – Janet VanDyne (Hank Pym’s wife) is lost in the quantum realm.
1988 – Meredith Quill dies. Peter Quill is kidnapped by Yondu.
1989 – Hank Pym resigns from SSR. SSR is renamed SHIELD.
1990 – Carol Danvers volunteers to test out a new fighter plane engine and crashes exposing herself to the tesseract’s energy but is yet to fully be aware of her powers.
1990 (or thereabouts) – Thanos, who has been searching for the infinity stones, abducts Gamora having already abducted Nebula earlier.
1991 – Soviets send the Winter Soldier to assassinate Howard Stark & his wife.
1992 – King Tchaka goes to the US to confront his brother Njobu who is illegally trading in vibranium-based weapons. Njobu is killed. Eric witnesses the death.
1995 – Carol Danvers crash lands on earth trying to escape the Skrulls. She starts working with Nick Fury & Phil Coulson in SHIELD. She becomes Captain Marvel fully harnessing her powers and defeats Yon Rogg & Ronan the Accuser. She gives Nick Fury a special pager to reach her for help if needed. Fury creates the Avengers initiative.
1999 – Tony Stark meets Maya Hansen & Aldrich Killian at a conference in Switzerland. Aldrich vows revenge.
2009-10 – Tony Stark is kidnapped by the Ten Rings (an inside job arranged by Obadiah Stane) but he builds a miniature arc reactor and escapes. Creates the Iron Man suit and becomes Iron Man working with the AI Jarvis.
2011 – Dr Bruce Banner overexposes himself to gamma radiation and becomes the Hulk. Defeats the abomination.
2011 – Justin Hammer & Anton Vanko create the Iron Legion, with Vanko hacking all the suits. Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow, who has already been recruited by SHIELD infiltrates Stark Enterprises. James Rhodes becomes the War Machine and working with Tony Stark destroys the Iron Legion and kills Vanko.
2011 – Loki tricks Thor into going to war with the frost giants. Odin exiles Thor to Earth and enchants Mjolnir to be wielded only by one who is ‘worthy’ of being Thor. Thor proves himself worthy and stops Loki from staging a coup in Asgard.
2011 – Captain America’s crashed plane is discovered and Captain America is ‘thawed out’ and reanimated. He joins the Avengers as well.
2012 – Loki is enlisted by Thanos to recover the Tesseract from earth. He is given the mind stone sceptre to use and the Chitauri army to command. The battle of Manhattan occurs in which the original 6 avengers come together – Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow & Hawkeye.
2012 – Adrian Toomes is removed from the salvage & reconstruction project of Manhattan by the Department of Damage Control (a SHIELD sub group). Toomes steals a lot of space age weapons and the material needed to create more.
2013 – Tony Stark undergoes PTSD at the same time as Aldrich Killian and Maya Hansen work together to create the regenerative Extremis treatment. He creates the Mandarin using the same imagery as the Ten Rings and using an actor as its fake face. Tony & Pepper Potts defeat Killian with Pepper Potts getting her own iron suit.
2013 – Malekith Returns summoned by the Aether which is discovered by Jane Foster. After unsuccessfully trying to extract the Aether from her, Thor, with Loki’s help, escape from Asgard. Loki is presumed dead and Thor defeats Malekith with help from Jane Foster and Prof Selvig. Loki stashes Odin in a retirement home in New York, takes his identity and rules over Asgard.
2014 – Hydra’s plot to take over SHIELD and using it, America, ends up with them planning to murder millions of civilians. Black Widow & Captain America discover it. Also they discover that Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes. SHIELD collapses.
2014 – The guardians of the Galaxy come together when Peter keeps the Power stone he is tasked to steal.
2015 – Tony Stark & Bruce Banner try to create an Artificial Intelligence based Android to try and protect earth but they mess up & Ultron is created. They try again using a vibranium body that Ultron was designing for himself and the mind stone from the Manhattan Sceptre and Thor’s lightning and JARVIS to create Vision. The battle of Sokovia occurs and Wanda Maximoff aka Scarlet Witch joins the Avengers with her brother Pietro Maximoff aka Quicksilver dying in the process of saving the earth and Sokovia. Hulk ends up flying off in the Quinjet and ends up on Sakar. Also Helmut Zemo’s family dies in Sokovia
2015 – The Guardians of the Galaxy get involved with Ego and end up killing him to stop him from taking over the galaxy. Yondu dies in the process.
2015 – Scott Lang finds the Ant Man suit in a robbery gone bad in Hank Pym’s house and becomes Ant Man working with Hank & Hope Pym.
2015 – Peter Parker is bitten by a genetically enhanced / radioactive spider and becomes Spiderman.
2016 – Helmut Zemo puts his plan in motion to destroy The Avengers at the same time when the Sokovia Accords are enforced, splitting the Avengers in a ‘Civil War’. King Tchaka of Wakanda is also assassinated leaving Tchalla to take over as the learder of Wakanda and become the Black Panther. The Avengers split with those loyal to Captain America go underground.
2016 – Dr Steven Strange after losing fine motor control in an accident, and with the help of the Ancient One and the Time Stone, becomes Dr Strange, defeating Dormamu.
2016 – Tony mentors Peter Parker aka Spiderman. Spiderman tries to deal with what Adrian Toomes aka the Vulture as become after using & trading in the alien advanced weaponry which was left behind after the War of Manhattan. Tony proposes to Pepper Potts.
2017 – Thor returns to Asgard, discovers Loki’s deception. Odin dies which releases Hella from her exile. Hella destroys Mjolnir and while escaping from her both Thor & Loki end up on Sakar. Thor recruits Hulk & Valkyrie to try to take Asgard back from Hella but end up destroying it & Hella while rescuing all Asgardians.
2017 – Tchalla is challenged by his cousin Eric (Njobu’s son who witnessed his death) for leadership of Wakanda with the help of arms dealer Ulysses Claw. In the first part of the fight, Tchalla seems to lose but comes back & finally defeats Eric.
2018 – Thanos gets into the final stages of his plan to eliminate half of all living beings in the universe. He attacks Xandar, defeats the Nova Corps and takes the Power Stone. He takes the Space stone and Kills Loki. He takes the Reality Stone from Knowwhere & kills the Collector. He goes with Gamora to Vormir, sacrifices her to get the Soul stone. He attacks Earth for the remaining 2 stones forcing the Avengers to come back together & start working as one again. However, he ends up taking first the Time Stone on Titan and then the Mind Stone off Vision’s head on Earth, thereby killing Vision. Thor goes to Nidavellir to forge Stormbreaker which is bound together by Groot using a piece of himself. However, with all the stones on the Infinity gauntlet, he snaps his fingers and kills half of all living beings in the Universe turning them into dust. He then beams himself to The Garden where he uses the Infinity Stones to destroy the Infinity stones. While Nick Fury is dying, he summons Captain Marvel. A few months later, all of them track Thanos down on The Garden and kill him.
2018 – Ant Man is working with Hope Pym aka The Wasp and Hank Pym in a bid to find Hank’s wife Janet Van Dyne in the Quantum realm and get stuck in the same when the snap happens and both Hank and Hope turn to dust.
2023 – A rat luckily presses the right buttons pulling Ant Man back from the Quantum realm to earth which has been only a few hours for him while it has been 5 years on Earth. The Avengers get together and Tony Stark and the Hulk build the Quantum Tunnel through which they go back in time, collect all the Infinity stones + Mjolnir from 2013 and come back to earth in 2023, bringing with themselves Thanos from 2014 alongwith his entire army. Hulk uses the Infinity Stones put on a new Infinity Gauntlet to snap all of those who were killed / turned to dust in 2018 back to life. All superheroes are back except Loki, Gamora and Black Widow. The final battle happens on the grounds of the Avengers compound between all the Avengers and their associates and Thanos and all his army. Iron Man ends it by pulling the Infinity stones on his suit which he has also designed to hold the Infinity stones, and killing Thanos and his army, but also dies in the process as there is just too much power in the stones for a human to handle.
2023 – Captain America then got back in time to return all the Infinity Stones to where they were. He stays back with Peggy Carter of 1953 and lives a full life with her before returning back to 2023 as an Old Captain America to hand over his shield to The Falcon to take over as the next Captain America.
2023 – Spiderman, who Iron Man has handed over control of EDITH – his augmented reality security, defense and artificial tactical intelligence system, ends up giving it up to Mysterio, who seems to be the new superhero fighting magic beings called elementals only for it to be all a sham. Spiderman ends up defeating Mysterio, only to have his identity revealed to the world at the end.
Things that are gaps which will be filled in future movies (possibly in the Black Widow movie):
- the backstory of Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow before she joins the Avengers
- the backstory of Hawkeye before he joins the Avengers