Heave a sigh of relief because the latest Marvel movie, Thunderbolts*, is good. Not mind-blowing, not the salvation of cinema or as exciting as Avengers: Infinity War, but good. One of my biggest complaints about it is something that doesn’t crop up until the final post-credits scene, in fact, which is that for no obvious good reason, they’ve kicked the chronological can over a fictional year farther down the road again. To put that in context, we must briefly revisit a mediocre Disney+ series almost no one watched, namely Marvel’s Nick Fury-vs.-aliens tale Secret Invasion.
I wrote in a previous column that to make sense of the fact that a guy named Ritson is the U.S. president in that series, which appears to be set in late 2026—whereas a just-elected guy named Ross (played by Harrison Ford and CGI animation of a Red Hulk) is the president in Captain America: Brave New World, which appears to be set in early 2027—we may have to assume that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, either (a) presidential elections have long been held on every fourth year following 1786 (instead of 1788, as in the real world), which might actually smooth some references to “President Ellis” but also Trump and Obama in previous MCU material, or (b) a special election was held in 2018 immediately after the “Snap” that disappeared half the population in Avengers: Infinity War (not such an unreasonable political reaction to the emergency) and thereafter every four years.
However, the consensus at the most prominent MCU Wiki seems to be that Ritson was elected in normal fashion in 2024 and yet that Ross was elected a short time later in 2026—not put in place via Ritson being impeached or replaced in a sudden special election, as vexing as the world might have found Ritson’s declaration of war on aliens in Secret Invasion.
2026 is an odd year for a president to be elected regardless of the explanation, but I was happy to chalk it up to the MCU’s global “Unity Day” (glimpsed in Secret Invasion), which also may have produced a New York City mayoral election in 2026 (per the Disney+ series Daredevil: Born Again) and perhaps other oddly-timed but harmonious elections around the world. All that would be made more palatable to me if the secret goal in the minds of the MCU’s writers and producers were just to have events in the MCU happen in close quick proximity so that we can shortly get back to having its events coincide with the real world’s calendar dates instead of having lingering delay-effects from that “Five Years Later” leap back in Avengers: Endgame. Their 2027 might be our 2027, it appeared for a short time there.
But the bulk of Thunderbolts* explicitly takes place after the early-2027 events of Captain America: Brave New World, and then (argh!) the final post-credits scene of Thunderbolts*, which I’m not spoiling in any significant way, I swear, explicitly takes place “fourteen months” after the rest of the movie. So, for some reason, we’ve likely bound all the way into July of 2028 rather than slowing down to synch up with the slow-poke real world. Why? A mere fetish for being set in the future? Some writer’s unthinking whim? If it’s for no good reason at all—if it’s just that no one, not even Marvel head Kevin Feige, is thinking these decisions through or minding the store—fans have reason to worry, even the ones who don’t give a damn whether the math adds up in these silly fantasies.
However, all is forgiven if the secret goal here is to have the new unified timeline they’re obviously planning to create in (real) 2027’s Avengers: Secret Wars—a timeline in which the Avengers, Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and if Sony is playing nice Spider-Man all live on the same Earth and always have—also be a timeline that quickly depicts and incorporates the 2028 Westchester massacre of X-Men (perhaps blaming it on Doctor Doom now!) and the 2029 deaths of Wolverine and Prof. X depicted in Logan. What a neat surprise it might be if, after all the rumors of recasting and rebooting the mutants, the MCU just fearlessly absorbs/keeps those dark events and moves onward (Excelsior!). That would be very respectful of canon indeed.
It wouldn’t even be that hard to resurrect Logan and Prof. X later without cosmic shenanigans if the writers wanted to: The former has a mutant healing factor and the other, as we’ve seen before, can transport his mind into a new body if need be. What fan would complain if Patrick Stewart’s mind were transferred to a new James McAvoy body? At least one ex-girlfriend of mine probably wishes all the characters’ minds, and at least some of the fans’, would be transferred into James McAvoy bodies.
Then, without it even looking like a non-sequitur, Marvel could proceed to cast new, younger mutants (not as the already-established characters we’ve seen, most of whom can still be played by the un-aging likes of Halle Berry, but as still-unseen characters from the vast Marvel print reservoir of mutants) and even revisit the timely plotline from Logan about young, Latin American mutants wanting to flee the U.S. and continue north to Canada. Not even grouchy online right-wingers could complain it was at odds with earlier story logic. Just proceed from Logan’s (temporary) 2029 death and show us what happens next instead of endlessly rewriting the past.
For good or ill, Thunderbolts* may in any case show us what happens thematically when the MCU isn’t dwelling on particularly “woke” topics: a now standard but still educational hunted-by-evil-intelligence-sector-agents plot and, less encouragingly, the new favorite psychobabble trope for lazy millennial writers (no doubt caused by so many of them having divorced parents), which is the idea that everyone is angry that they were emotionally abandoned by the people they thought were close to them. So many characters now moan, “Where were you when I needed you?” I instead moan: when did every writer in Hollywood become such a sad, lonely, needy whiner?
I’ve long since given up on film writers shaping up psychologically, but our superheroes, by contrast, can stop the traumatized whining now. Other than that, they can keep punching and maybe occasionally quipping, and if some things explode or collapse as nicely as they do in Thunderbolts*’ final act, we may be mostly okay, even if this Dirty Dozen/Suicide Squad-like team of antiheroes is not emotionally okay.
—Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on X at @ToddSeavey
