After six years, Marvel Studios has officially retconned a Spider-Man: Homecoming continuity error.
In the newly published encyclopedia Marvel Studios The Marvel Cinematic Universe An Official Timeline (via The Direct), the events of 2017’s Spider-Man: Homecoming are revealed to no longer take place eight years after the Battle of New York in 2012’s The Avengers.
The 2017 superhero movie begins with a scene featuring Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes set after the Battle of New York. The movie then shows an “8 Years Later” timecard, placing the events of Spider-Man: Homecoming in 2020. Unfortunately, that date contradicts other events on the MCU timeline, particularly the Wall-Crawler’s debut in Captain America: Civil War, which was set in 2016, the same year it was released in theaters.
Marvel Studios The Marvel Cinematic Universe An Official Timeline has now corrected the continuity error, stating that the opening flashback scene takes place in “Spring 2012” while the rest of Homecoming is set in “Fall 2016,” a few months after the events of Civil War but before the character’s appearance in Avengers: Infinity War (2018).
Another Homecoming continuity error baffles even Miss Minutes
As for a line of dialogue spoken by Toomes in Homecoming mentioning that his criminal endeavors have flown under the radar for “eight years,” the encyclopedia employs Loki‘s Miss Minutes to explain away the error. The fan-favorite A.I. appears in a small text box on page 173 with the following message: “Redline alert! Hi again! Adrien Toomes says the Battle of New York was eight years ago, but that event was only four years prior. This one’s a real head scratcher for us — I reckon an analyst misplaced the case file.”
Spider-Man: Homecoming was the first Spider-Man movie co-produced by Sony and Marvel following the character’s MCU debut in Civil War. In Homecoming, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) tries to balance high school life with being Spider-Man while facing Adrian Toomes, who has taken up the alias Vulture in the years since the Battle of New York.
The rest of the cast for Homecoming includes Jon Favreau as Happy Hogan, Zendaya as Michelle “MJ” Jones-Watson, Jacob Batalon as Ned Leeds, Tony Revolori as Flash Thompson, Marisa Tomei as Aunt May, and Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark/Iron Man.
Spider-Man: Homecoming is streaming on Disney+.
