Um, What Year Is It Supposed To Be In Avengers: Endgame?

With 22 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, all of them spanning times and space, it’s easy to get a little confused about the timeline. Some movies take place before others that are released years apart, some movies take place at literally the same exact time in different galaxies, and some movies are actually supposed to happen back to back. With the release of Avengers: Endgame, the MCU timeline, has been cleared up, regarding what takes place before and after the movie. But what isn't clearly answered is the question of what year it is at the end of Avengers: Endgame since that’s also something that needs to be established for Phase Four of the MCU.

While everything is referred to as “present day” in the movie, Endgame doesn’t exactly take place in our “present day.” Infinity War is supposed to take place in 2018 (the year it came out), and the opening events of Endgame take place at that same time, and then roughly 22 days later as Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.) informs us it’s been that long since the snap. Then, as we all know, we do a massive five-year time jump into the future. So we're roughly in the year 2023 — now four years from our present day in 2019 — as the events of the movie conclude.

So will all upcoming Marvel movies also be set in the future, in 2013? Spider-Man: Far From Home is the next one to hit theaters later this summer, and it (supposedly) takes place immediately after Endgame, so that puts it in the year 2023. The likes of Doctor Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 have already been announced, and they'll more than likely fall after Endgame as well — but Doctor Strange can travel wherever he wants in time, and Black Panther is already living like it’s the year 3000 so time doesn’t even matter to Wakanda.

Though Captain Marvel hasn’t received a sequel order yet, her later movie could take place literally anytime between 1995 and 2023 and beyond, so any Endgame timeline doesn’t necessarily matter to Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), either.

Other upcoming Marvel movies — like The Eternals and Shang-Chi — haven’t been introduced in the MCU yet so their establishing films could happen pre- or post-Thanos-snap. They could even happen during the mysterious (and probably sad) five year time period that we skipped in Endgame.

And even though Endgame told us that we’re now five years in the future, there’s nothing set in stone that says the movies have to stick to that. The MCU has (accidentally) messed up its timeline before, most notably when Spider-Man: Homecoming claimed to be eight years after the Battle of New York, when it really should have been approximately four years after the Battle of New York. Hey, it happens! There are 22 movies and like a thousand different characters to keep track of, so these things sometimes fall a little out of whack.

So what we're saying is, we very well could be in the future for every MCU movie from her on out. Or... things are about to get really all over the place.