When Does ‘Wonder Man’ Take Place on the MCU Timeline?

Wonder Man has arrived on Disney+, and the series has lived up to the hype, gaining some of the best reviews in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s history. It currently sits at 89% on Rotten Tomatoes, with many critics praising it for its meta-commentary on superhero fatigue and for being a more character-centric story rather than trying to set up future characters for crossover films or plot points for the Multiverse Saga. It fleshes out its own corner of the MCU.

As with every new project in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, fans are always curious about where Wonder Man fits in the Marvel franchise’s broader timeline. This has certainly become a bigger topic of conversation following Avengers: Endgame‘s five-year time-jump, which brought the franchise into 2023. The various films and television series have not been released in chronological order, and sometimes years apart from when they exist in the MCU timeline. Wonder Man might be largely standalone, but it offers enough details throughout its eight-episode run to place most of it within the larger MCU timeline.

‘Wonder Man’ Seems to Take Place in 2026

Wonder Man

Disney+

Wonder Man seems to take place in the year 2026, the year the series debuts. This is most notable when in episode 2, “Self-Tape”, Trevor Slattery says he has been sober for “13 years”, which would be 2013, when Iron Man 3 was released, and when it takes place in the MCU timeline. Trevor Slattery has been sober since he was imprisoned and captured in All Hail the King, and also during his time as a prisoner of Wenwu during Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Shang-Chi takes place in 2024, leaving Trevor Slattery’s status for two years unaccounted for. Maybe he spent a few years in Ta Lo before deciding to return to his home in Hollywood.

If Wonder Man does take place in 2026, that places it in the same year as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Secret Invasion, The Marvels, Agatha All Along, and the end of Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1, Episode 1, and the election prologue seen in Captain America: Brave New World. Where Wonder Man exactly fits in relation to these various series is unclear, though there are a few visual clues as to when. While Los Angeles is known for its temperate weather, the series seemingly takes place in the spring or summer, meaning it takes place before the election night of Wilson Fisk and President Thaddeus Ross, and likely before Agatha All Along as well.

Now, there are a few discrepancies in the placement of the 2026 timeline. One is that Simon Williams and Trevor Slattery meet at a screening of Midnight Cowboy at the Highland Theater in Highland Park, which closed in February 2024 (notably, one of the last films to play there was the Marvel-adjacent movie Madame Web). However, given how drastically the MCU likely diverged from the real-world timeline following the snap in 2018, maybe the theater stayed open in the MCU. Simon Williams recalls seeing Trevor Slattery’s The Mandarin “ten years ago,” which would theoretically place the series in 2023, though Wonder Man has to take place after the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, as one of Simon Williams’ cousins references Sam Wilson’s Captain America, and the hero publicly donned the costume in 2024 of the MCU. Simon might just have been using a vague date rather than an exact one. The series notes that Trevor Slattery is more precise with his words, as he doesn’t use sentence fragments, so his “13 years” recollection is likely the more accurate one.

With Wonder Man taking place in 2026, it marks the second time in the Multiverse Saga that a title took place in the year it was released, following Ironheart, which was released and set in 2025. Notably, both Wonder Man and Ironheart were delayed series. Following Avengers: Endgame‘s five-year time jump, most MCU titles take place in the near future for the audience. WandaVision, which aired in 2021, took place in 2023, while 2022 titles like Moon Knight, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Ms. Marvel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, and Thor: Love and Thunder all took place in 2025. In the Infinity Saga, the last MCU title to take place the year it was released was Ant-Man and the Wasp, back in 2018.

‘Wonder Man’ Provides Some Other Interesting Details About the MCU’s History

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Ben Kingsley in Wonder Man-1

Warning: This section includes some SPOILERS for the finale of Wonder Man!

If Wonder Man takes place in 2026, a few other key details can be extrapolated from this. In Episode 2, Simon says he moved from Pacomia to Los Angeles “eight years ago,” suggesting he moved in 2018, shortly before or after The Blip in Avengers: Infinity War. Maybe he got a better deal on an LA apartment when half the population vanished.

A recent poster for Wonder Man suggests the original Wonder Man film came out in 1980. Notably, 1980 was the year Ego met Meridith Quill and impregnated her with his son, Peter Quill/Star-Lord. The early 1980s is also when Isaiah Bradley is able to gain his freedom following a nurse helping the wrongfully incarcerated political prisoner fake his death. There is a strong chance that both Carol Danvers and Tony Stark saw Wonder Man in theaters, as the future Captain Marvel would have been 15 and the future Iron Man would have been 10.

The incident with DeMarr Davis/Doorman getting his powers seems to take place after 2017, as the news references actor Josh Gad as LaFou from Beauty and the Beast, which opened in March of that year. This implies that Doorman likely got his powers in 2018, possibly before or shortly after the events of Avengers: Infinity War. Simon Williams is working as an actor when he watches the news of the Doorman clause being passed in Hollywood, barring all superpowered individuals from working in Hollywood. If this takes place during Simon Williams’ first years living in Hollywood, it could be during the Blip, meaning Simon Williams was one of the people who survived Thanos’ snap.

However, no reference is ever made to half the world’s population vanishing during the Doorman’s episode or even Wonder Man’s main series timeline. This is likely due to Wonder Man being part of the Marvel Spotlight banner, which largely doesn’t focus on the wider interconnectivity of the MCU. However, it is entirely possible that Doorman’s rise to stardom took place in 2023 to 2024, following the events of Avengers: Endgame.

Then there is the final episode. The episode jumps forward to the premiere of Wonder Man, after filming has wrapped. Given that most blockbusters take two years to complete, this final episode likely takes place in 2028, when the Thunderbolts* post-credit scene occurs, setting up Avengers: Doomsday. Wonder Man‘s director, Von Kovak, suggested he would film the movie quickly; it is entirely possible he had a very short turnaround time, and it opened in 2027. That would place the premiere and Simon Williams breakout of Trevor Slatter from a Damage Control facility around the same time as Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts*.

A bigger clue about exactly where Wonder Man’s final scenes take place within the MCU timeline will likely be revealed in Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Spider-Man: No Way Home took place in December 2024, so it is unclear how big a time jump will take place between the Spider-Man sequels. If Spider-Man: Brand New Day features a Wonder Man poster, a likely Easter egg, since the movie is directed by Wonder Man co-creator and executive producer Destin Daniel Cretton, that means the upcoming Spider-Man movie and Wonder Man could take place at least in 2027 or even 2028. This could be confirmed by the news that Florence Pugh is set to reprise her role as Yelena Belova in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, likely set before the Thunderbolts* post-credit scene.

So for MCU fans, that means while Simon Williams is auditioning for the part of Wonder Man and starring in the film, a Skrull invasion is taking place on Earth while the Guardians of the Galaxy deal with the High Evolutionary, and the film’s premiere is likely happening in the aftermath of the President of the United States turning into a Red Hulk and The New Avengers being revealed to the public. There’s truly never a boring day in the MCU.