The MCU timeline can be a confusing mess of battles, betrayals and basically everything else. Heck, even Spider-Man: Homecoming is a little bit sketchy on exactly when it takes place, unless you want to dig into it. If you’re on Marvel’s books, though, (like Homecoming director Jon Watts) you get access to the document detailing everything in the MCU and, yes, it’s a giant scroll. Because Marvel don’t do things by halves, clearly.
Speaking to EW, Watts revealed that he’s privy to a few of Marvel’s big secrets, and there was one in particular he was keen to divulge, “Well, there is this scroll. It’s an actual scroll they unrolled for me. One of my producers, Eric Carroll, it was his first job at Marvel to work on this timeline and to see where things line up and where they didn’t quite. It’s the most amazing thing because it starts, no joke, at the beginning of time. So you can see where all the events line up! Like, oh that’s when Captain America was born.”
Captain America being born, though, wasn’t the beginning of the MCU timeline. Not even close. Watts was asked, probably jokingly, whether it started at The Big Bang and… well, it’s not far off: “I can’t remember specifically [where the timeline starts] but I think it has something to do with a Thor storyline. Or maybe Guardians. It’s the MCU version of the history of time. It’s a very long scroll. Longer than conference table. It’s a pretty amazing document.”
One day maybe us commoners will be able to feast our eyes on the scroll (I seriously can’t believe it’s actually a scroll), but for now we’ll have to make do with imagining the faces of suited Marvel execs as a giant scroll is rolled out in front of them. It must be quite the picture.
