How Does The Incredible Hulk Fit Into The Marvel Timeline?

incredible hulk marvel timeline

As the first standalone Hulk movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Incredible Hulk set the bar pretty high. Edward Norton is a surprisingly good choice to be the green, angry monster, and Tim Roth’s Emil Blonsky/Abomination is one of the most fearsome villains ever to grace a screen. The film’s main thrust, however, was Bruce Banner and his failed gamma radiation experiment. It’s a moment that resonated and became a huge driver for the character’s entire MCU career.

Ang Lee’s 2003 film was an emotional and thought-provoking affair, but Louis Leterrier’s 2008 film is all about action. The film doesn’t hide the fact that the Hulk isn’t a nice guy, but it also relishes the smashing and destruction. In many ways, The Incredible Hulk is a movie that needs to have its characters clash in order to work.

That conflict between the human side of Bruce Banner and his green alter-ego is what led to his soul-searching at the end of Avengers: Infinity War. It’s what makes the character so compelling to both fans and the audience. And now, a Reddit user named Supervinyl thinks he might have just figured out how The Incredible Hulk fits into the MCU timeline.

According to the theory, The Incredible Hulk takes place during the MCU’s Phase 1. Back then, Disney didn’t even own Marvel (the films were still being released by Universal). That meant that the films didn’t necessarily have to jibe with other MCU releases.

MCU releases after The Incredible Hulk include Iron Man and RDJ’s world-making turn as Tony Stark, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and 2021’s Black Widow. After Thanos wiped out half of the world in Infinity War, the remaining heroes went through time to bring everyone back — and the Hulk was there for all of it, tearing into the Mad Titan in a scene that would make anyone scream.

The only problem is that, based on the current MCU timeline, this wouldn’t be possible. The reason being is that The Incredible Hulk takes place before the events of The First Avenger, where the gamma radiation experiment goes wrong. The First Avenger is set in 1995, so any MCU movies that take place after it could never see the light of day unless they were able to use the Tesseract’s power to alter the timeline. Luckily, this may not be the case after all. A new international listing on Disney+ seems to have confirmed that The Incredible Hulk is, indeed, part of the MCU’s timeline. Read on to find out exactly how and why.