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." Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about the
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a handful of glaring mistakes in there, but mostly correct