When does Thunderbolts* take place? Film’s spot in the MCU timeline, explored

Thunderbolts* is the 36th film in the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), released on May 2, 2025. The film revolves around the eponymous group of antiheroes on a mission. This Jake Schreier-directed film is written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, while Kevin Feige has produced it under the Marvel Studios banner. Here's the official synopsis:

"After finding themselves ensnared in a death trap, an unconventional team of antiheroes must embark on a dangerous mission that will force them to confront the darkest corners of their pasts."

Several fans have been reportedly curious to know the film's timeline and its place in the MCU.

Thunderbolts* timeline explored

Thunderbolts* reportedly takes place in 2027, which means it happens right after the events of Captain America: Brave New World, which happened in late 2026. While the film shares the timeline with Marvel's television series Daredevil: Born Again (which takes place between 2025 and 2027), it doesn't feature any events shown in the series.

The film takes place nearly a year after Brave New World. This is established as Bucky is shown to be a congress member for half a term, which means one year. It makes Thunderbolts* the most recent film in the MCU in terms of events. The ending of Brave New World suggests that Avengers: Doomsday might feature several superhero teams. The entire timeline of the MCU got slightly complicated after Thanos' snap in Avengers: Infinity War. The next film, Avengers: Endgame, takes place five years later. Subsequently, the sequence of events saw a back-and-forth.

More about Thunderbolts*

Thunderbolts* is the directorial work of Jake Schreier and features a set of actors portraying anti-heroes and different characters. They are,

Florence Pugh as Yelena Belova
Wyatt Russell as John Walker aka U.S. Agent
Sebastian Stan as Bucky Barnes
Olga Kurylenko as Antonia Dreykov / Taskmaster
Geraldine Viswanathan as Mel
Lewis Pullman as Bob Reynolds / Sentry / Void
Chris Bauer as Holt
David Harbour as Alexei Shostakov aka Red Guardian
Wendell Pierce as Gary
Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine
Hannah John-Kamen as Ava Starr aka Ghost

In an interview with ABC, Schreier spoke about being a part of the MCU. He mentioned his early discussions with the Marvel chief.

"Those early discussions were just about how to flip the kind of expected narrative about a team of bad guys sent to do covert missions. [It's] really more a story about people that were being discarded and sent to kill each other and sort of thrown away."

He added,

"You don't necessarily have that weight of expectation and you have some license to kind of take these characters in different places and tell new stories with them. And we really tried to embrace that, and use it to our advantage."

His earlier work, Beef, had similar themes, which Schreier used in the film.

"I was coming off of doing a show called Beef, where we explored a lot of the same themes, and [we] also found the tonal balance where there are really funny moments and also a lot of heartfelt moments and it goes to some dark places. I think that we always just believed that these stories didn't need to be niche stories anymore, that there was a universality to feeling like this, even if it seems like an odd fit for a big summer action movie."