Jennifer Walters has officially arrived in the MCU. When exactly did she get there, though? Like many Phase 4 projects, the answer isn’t exactly clear. At least not yet. But the first She-Hulk episode gave us enough information to identify it’s general spot in the overall MCU timeline. And the key to understanding the show’s place in the series is the status of Bruce Banner’s right arm.
Within the MCU, Earth’s mightiest heroes defeated Thanos in Avengers: Endgame around October of 2023. (We know which month Iron Man snapped away his enemy thanks to a line from Spider-Man: Far From Home.) That’s also when “Smart Hulk” injured his right arm while using the infinity stones to bring back everyone the Mad Titan had dusted. The Blip didn’t kill Bruce, but it did leave his arm severely damaged. He was still recovering at Tony’s funeral, where Hulk had his arm in a sling.
The next time we saw Bruce was during a mid-credits scene for Shang-Chi and the Ten Rings. He was back to his human form, but still had his right arm in a tight harness. Shang-Chi officially sits on the MCU’s Disney+ timeline after The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. That series took place roughly six months after Avengers: Endgame, which most likely puts Shang-Chi sometime in 2024.
There’s no question She-Hulk‘s premiere definitely happens sometime after Shang-Chi. When the Sakaarian ship attacked Jennifer’s car, Bruce’s injured right arm was still in a sling. She-Hulk‘s head writer also confirmed all of that… What that accident didn’t tell us is exactly how long after Shang-Chi‘s mid-credits scene the crash took place.
Even if we did know the exact date of that attack, though, we still wouldn’t know the exact day or even month when the primary action of She-Hulk takes place. The series occurs a nebulous few months later. We saw the Sakaarian ship and Jennifer Walter’s subsequent transformation into She-Hulk via flashback, right before she hulked out in court.
To further narrow the spot that She-Hulk occupies in the MCU timeline, we need the help of Disney+. Before She-Hulk the latest entry on that timeline was Ms. Marvel, which takes place in the spring of 2025. Everything released since The Falcon and the Winter Soldier takes place after that show and before the arrival of Kamala Khan. Marvel has slotted in She-Hulk before Ms. Marvel and after Moon Knight on its official Disney+ timeline. And since Moon Knight also takes place in early 2025, that means She-Hulk does too. Jessica Gao confirmed this, noting in an interview with The Direct, “the show is a few years after Endgame.” There you have it.
But what really matters is that we get to watch Jennifer Walters Hulk-out right now in 2022.
Originally published on August 18, 2022.
Mikey Walsh is a staff writer at Nerdist. You can follow him on Twitter at @burgermike. And also anywhere someone is ranking the Targaryen kings.
