That’s the thing about multiverses — just when you think you’re used to things as they are, something comes along to shuffle everything around.
Eternals just made its Disney Plus debut and, as expected, the celestial epic has been slotted into the streaming service’s chronological lineup of Marvel Cinematic Universe properties. The lineup gives a fairly reliable timeline as to what happens when in the MCU, starting with the WWII war movie action of Captain America: The First Avenger all the way up to Disney’s latest streaming series, the Christmas-y noir Hawkeye.
Eternals is slotted in just before the avenging archer’s solo-ish series, indicating that the film’s contemporary non-flashback sequences, as well as the world-threatening climax, occur slightly after Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Apparently, the folks in Hawkeye were either too weary after the events of Endgame to pay any lip service to the global events in Eternals or just wanted to enjoy the holiday break without discussions about the fate of the planet. Or perhaps they were just being New Yorkers.
According to The Direct, Marvel Studios producer Nate Moore has stated the Eternals occurs “right around the same time as Spider-Man: Far From Home, with the world recovering from the attack of Thanos and the return of half the world population.”
Of note is that Loki, slotting in as the first post-Phase Three project, implies that the matter of the Multiverse has been a factor since the beginning of Phase Four. No telling how this will affect the next project slated for cinematic release, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, or indeed whether any chronology will be anything but fuzzy after the introduction of multiple timelines inherent in the multiverse concept.
The new order of properties – not including The Incredible Hulk or the Sony/Marvel Spider-Man movies which are not currently available on Disney Plus – stands as follows:
- Captain America: The First Avenger
- Captain Marvel
- Iron Man
- Iron Man 2
- Thor
- The Avengers
- Thor: The Dark World
- Iron Man 3
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
- Avengers: Age of Ultron
- Ant-Man
- Captain America: Civil War
- Black Widow
- Black Panther
- Doctor Strange
- Thor: Ragnarok
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Avengers: Endgame
- Loki
- What If…?
- WandaVision
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
- Eternals
- Hawkeye
Eternals is now available to stream on Disney Plus.