The massive scope of the MCU has allowed Marvel
Studios to create a sprawling, interconnected universe built on a shared continuity, and
much like the comics the movies are based on, that means things can get pretty complicated. The Marvel Cinematic Universe 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. Instead, like most universes, this one starts
at the Big Bang. Going chronologically, the first event we
see in the MCU is the creation of the Infinity Stones. As the Collector explains in Guardians of
the Galaxy, they were formed from the "six singularities" that caused the universe to
explode into existence, before being scattered across the universe. That, of course, was billions of years ago,
but "millions of years" before we get to the present-day MCU, Ego the Living Planet comes
into existence and starts seeding worlds with his essence in an attempt to create another
Celestial being like himself. Thousands of years ago, as we find out in
Thor: The Dark World, Malekith the Accursed laid siege to Asgard and was fought off by
Bor, the father of Odin. Bor "vanquished" 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 long before Thor, Hela carries it into battle. Once the realms have been conquered, Hela's
bloodthirsty nature causes Odin to turn against her, and in the battle that follows, Hela
destroys the Valkyries. The sole surviving Valkyrie flees from Asgard
and eventually winds up drunk and depressed on Sakaar. Hela is then imprisoned in another dimension
by Odin, who literally covers up all traces of her existence. Sometime after that, but still pretty far
back, Odin and Frigga have a son, Thor. Shortly thereafter, Odin slays the frost giant
Laufey and adopts his son, Loki, as his own. As children, they did not exactly get along. "He transformed himself into a snake, and
he knows I love snakes, so I picked up the snake to admire it, then he transformed back
into himself and said, ‘BYAH! It’s me!’ and then he stabbed me." 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. Believe it or not, there's not a whole lot
that happens between the unification of Wakanda and the 20th century. The first big event that we see in the movies
is the arrival of, well, the First Avenger. In 1942, a Nazi officer known as the Red Skull
creates a splinter group called Hydra. With the discovery of one of the Infinity
Stones, he creates a technologically advanced army of his own. That same year, Steve Rogers volunteers for
an experimental attempt at creating a "super soldier" using a technique created by Dr.
Abraham Erskine. The project works, giving Steve the body of
Marvel's hunkiest Chris. When Erskine is assassinated, the research
is lost. Rather than risking their only super-soldier
by sending him to fight in the war, the army gives Steve the codename "Captain America"
and uses him primarily as a spokesman to sell war bonds. Eventually, Steve becomes an active soldier
in the war, leading a strike team called the Howling Commandos. On one of their missions, his best friend
Bucky falls from a train in the mountains. Steve believes him to be dead, but he's actually
taken into custody by the Soviet Army and brainwashed into becoming a super-assassin,
codenamed Winter Soldier. After attempting to use the Tesseract, the
Red Skull is sucked into a wormhole, and somehow 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 survives, frozen
in suspended animation for the next 66 years. 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 Strategic
Science Reserve, first in New York in 1946, and then in Los Angeles alongside Howard Stark
in 1947. Around this same time, the Soviet Union produces
the first graduates of its brutal Red Room facility, where orphaned girls are trained
as spies and assassins. Sometime shortly after this, 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, including Arnim
Zola. His body dies in 1972, and 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. 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. In 1980, Ego comes to Earth, winning the heart
of Meredith Quill, and nine months later, her son Peter is born. In '87, 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 before
she dies. Peter is then abducted by a band of outer-space
outlaws called the Ravagers, who give him a pretty terrible childhood. "Yondu was the guy who abducted me, kicked
the crap out of me so I could learn to fight, and kept me in terror by threatening to eat
me. "Eat you?!" "Yeah." In 1989, Pym resigns from the SSR after finding
out that they intended to use his Pym Particles to create weapons. The organization has also now been renamed
to the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division. "That's quite a mouthful." "I know ... we're working on it." Also that year, Air Force Captain Carol Danvers,
who uses the callsign "Avenger," volunteers for a test flight of a lightspeed engine powered
by the Tesseract. When they're shot down by the Kree, a militaristic
alien race constantly at war with the shapeshifting Skrulls, 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 his homeworld, Hala, here she is made to believe that she's actually
a Kree named Vers. 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, laying
waste to half of the population of entire planets. He also occasionally abducts young survivors,
training them as soldiers. Assuming that most of the more humanoid characters
are around the same age as the people portraying them, then his two most notable "adoptions"
happen in the late '80s or early '90s: Gamora and Nebula. Every time the two "sisters" spar, Gamora
wins, and Thanos systematically replaces pieces of Nebula's body with cybernetic parts. In 1991, the Soviet government sends the Winter
Soldier to assassinate Howard and Maria Stark, making it look like a car accident. Their brilliant slacker son, Tony, is left
in charge of Stark Industries, along with Obadiah Stane as CEO. Unbeknownst to Tony, Stane makes a tidy 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. In 1995, Carol Danvers ... still without her
memories of Earth ... returns to her home planet after escaping from the Skrulls. She teams up with S.H.I.E.L.D. Agents Nick Fury and Phil Coulson to stop
the Skrulls from invading Earth. It turns out that the Kree are the bad guys,
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. Finally at full power, Carol fights them off,
and 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 franchise. Before she journeys back into space, 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 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 S.H.I.E.L.D. and all levels of the United States government. "Hail Hydra." In 2008, we finally catch up to the MCU as
it happens. 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, to make weapons for them. Instead, Tony is able to recreate a miniaturized
ARC reactor, using it to stabilize a piece of shrapnel that's lodged near his heart. "It's impossible!" "Tony Stark was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!" The reactor also powers the Iron Man, a suit
of weaponized armor built from scrap, which allows Tony to escape after Yinsen's death. He returns to America, eats a cheeseburger,
refines his design, and wipes out the Ten Rings 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... "I am Iron Man." ... which causes Nick Fury to approach him
about the Avengers initiative. Around the same time as Tony's capture, Dr.
Bruce Banner 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… which is always. 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, whose attempt to recreate the Hulk turns special forces soldier Emil Blonsky
into the monstrous Abomination. 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 Anton Vanko reverse-engineer
them into an army of militarized drones. Stark also gets a new personal assistant,
who is revealed to be S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and Red Room defector Natasha Romanoff,
the Black Widow. Rhodes gets his own suit of armor codenamed
War Machine, and he and Tony team up to defeat Vanko and Hammer. Speaking of hammers, 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 against Odin's orders. As a consequence, Odin exiles Thor to Earth
and enchants his hammer, Mjolnir. "Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy,
should possess the power of Thor." It lands in New Mexico, where Agent Coulson
discovers it, and a bunch of locals try to yank it out of the ground with pickup trucks. Thor eventually proves himself worthy, regains
his hammer, and stops Loki from staging a coup in Asgard. In 2011, the crashed Hydra plane is discovered
in the arctic. S.H.I.E.L.D. thaws out Captain America, and after realizing
that he's in the 21st century, he teams 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. In exchange, Thanos gives him control of the
Chitauri, a massive army of hive-minded destroyers. Loki agrees, because he's apparently in One
Of His Moods that day. The result is the Battle of Manhattan, 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 a lot, but the battle is extremely destructive. The reconstruction 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 technology. In 2013, Tony Stark is left with post-traumatic
stress as a result of the battle and his concept of the universe suddenly expanding to include
gods, aliens, and other unknowable cosmic forces. Unfortunately, this coincides with the return
of Aldrich Killian, who has been experimenting with Maya Hansen's regenerative "Extremis"
treatment, which has a tendency to cause its subjects to explode. To cover his operations, Killian creates a
fictional terrorist called the Mandarin, hiring an actor named Trevor Slattery to play him
in threatening videos. Needless to say, Tony and Rhodey stop Killian's
plot after they uncover the truth. "If you want something, take it. Although the guns are all fake, because the
wankers wouldn’t trust me with the real ones." “What?!” “Hey, they’re fancy! Great with all the birds.” 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 for the next two years. In 2014, Hydra's decades-long plot to infiltrate
and take over America is finally discovered by Captain America and Black Widow. "Before we get started… does anyone want
to get out?" They also learn that the Winter Soldier is
Bucky Barnes. While Cap fights to restore his best friend's
memories, the Hydra plot is exposed, and in the aftermath, S.H.I.E.L.D. collapses, leaving the Avengers without the
oversight and support of the larger organization. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner then attempt 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 country,
Sokovia. Tony and Banner decide that if at first you
don't succeed, make another robot and hope it's not genocidal. They use the Soul Stone to transform Tony's
onboard AI, J.A.R.V.I.S., into a much more heroic AI called the Vision. In the fight that follows, the Hulk hijacks
a Quinjet and blasts off into space, landing on Sakaar. Also, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, two definitely-not-mutants,
join the team. Quicksilver immediately dies, partly from
bullets but mostly because Disney and Fox were having a fight over who had the character's
film rights. The destruction of Sokovia also kills the
family of Helmut Zemo, who then dedicates his life to revenge. 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. Ronan sends Gamora after Quill, and winds
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. "I am Groot." 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 power of 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
in 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, and tries
to capitalize on his new super-powers by becoming famous as Spider-Man, and fails to stop a
robber that later kills his Uncle Ben. None of this is 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
the a wedge between Captain America and Iron Man by revealing that Bucky was the one who
killed Tony Stark's parents. He also uses his control over Bucky to assassinate
King T'Chaka of Wakanda, leading 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. While all this is going on, Dr. Stephen Strange,
who lost the fine motor control in his hands after a car accident, seeks out the Ancient
One and, following 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. “I’m Mary Poppins, y’all!” In the absence of the Avengers, Tony Stark
begins to mentor Peter Parker. As Spider-Man, Peter tries to deal with the
... wait for it ... evil arms dealer known as the Vulture, who turns out to be none other
than Adrian Toomes, 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. 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. “Hulk stop! Just for once in your life, DON’T SMASH!” “BIG MONSTER!” In Wakanda, T'Challa's rule is challenged
by his cousin Erik, who teams up with another evil arms dealer Ulysses Klaue, another evil
arms dealer. There are a lot of evil arms dealers in these
movies. Erik betrays Klaue in order to gain favor
with Wakandans. He seemingly kills T'Challa and takes over,
but T'Challa returns and regains control of his country. "I never yielded! And as you can see, I am not dead!" 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. An attack on 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. "Dude, you're embarrassing me in front of
the wizards." “I don’t…” "It's okay stand down." "Keep an eye on him?" 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. As 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. Thor beheads Thanos, and the Avengers return
home, having won this battle while losing the bigger war. Weirdly enough, all of this happens while
Ant-Man is involved in a relatively low-stakes heist movie. When the snap happens, he's left stranded
in the Quantum Realm, which turns out to be an extremely lucky coincidence. While he's there, five years go by, during
which the heroes deal with the horrific trauma of losing trillions of lives in various, mostly
unhealthy ways. Thanks to an assist from the most heroic rat
in the universe, Ant-Man returns from the Quantum Realm, where, for him, only a few
hours have passed. When he reunites with the Avengers, the heroes
realize that the solution to their problem is: "Time travel!" With the help of Iron Man and the now-smart
Hulk, the heroes travel back to various key points in the timeline 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. Right before he starts attacking, 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 like a freaking rock star. After gathering for a funeral, Steve Rogers
hops into the timestream to return everything to where it should be. After living a full life with Peggy Carter
in an alternate past, he returns to this world one more time as an old man to bequeath his
shield to Sam Wilson, the Falcon, naming him the new Captain America. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about the MCU
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