From the start, Moon Knight sets out to tell its own story with little reference to the larger Marvel Cinematic Universe. Beyond the opening Marvel Studios credits, Episode 1 doesn’t offer much in terms of how its new superhero, Steven Grant aka Marc Spector (Oscar Isaac), is connected to the Avengers and recent Marvel events. But more so, it’s very unclear about where Moon Knight actually takes place in the MCU’s timeline.
Episode 1 may not answer this looming question, but a trailer for Moon Knight reveals one substantial piece of evidence that points us in the right direction. This clue, at the very least, provides a general window of time in which the events of the Disney+ show are taking place.
Moon Knight’s MCU timeline, explained
In Episode 1, Moon Knight introduces Steven Grant, a British museum gift shop attendant, who discovers that another person — an American mercenary named Marc — also shares his body. The premiere episode focuses its story on Steven as he tries to understand what’s happening to him and why he keeps waking up in violent and unrecognizable situations.
While the episode moves in and out of London, where the first couple of episodes predominantly take place, we aren’t given a sense of when this is all happening. The London streets seem to carry few clues with nary a Rogers the Musical poster in sight.
At first, it’s hard to place whether this Disney+ series is set in a pre- or post-Blip MCU world. Or even if Moon Knight takes place in the same universe as the other Marvel movies and shows. With the introduction of the multiverse in Loki, almost anything goes at this point.
However, the Moon Knight trailer, titled “Secret Agent,” reveals a key background detail that confirms the show is set in the post-Blip MCU. In one shot from the trailer, Moon Knight stands in front of a bus advertising GRC, the Global Repatriation Council. You may remember the GRC from Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which introduced the organization meant to restore order after the Avengers undid Thanos’ Snap in Endgame.
Where does Moon Knight fit the MCU?
With confirmation that Moon Knight is a post-Blip story, we still don’t have enough evidence to say where the show falls in the Phase 4 timeline.
Hawkeye and the ending of Spider-Man: No Way Home both take place around the holiday season in 2024. So we can speculate — based on the order of releases alone — that Moon Knight might fall between the events of No Way Home and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The latter Marvel film coincidentally (or not) premieres the same week as the Moon Knight finale, and both include sets featuring the British Museum. It’ll only make sense for the show to segue into the next major Marvel release.
But even if Moon Knight doesn’t connect to the Doctor Strange sequel, we expect the series to make a more definitive MCU connection by the end of the season. Executive producer Grant Curtis confirmed to Inverse that the show is “very much in the MCU.”
“We never intentionally tried to make this standalone,” Curtis added.
How Moon Knight will branch out of its story into Marvel’s ever-expanding cinematic universe remains to be seen. But we are sure it will take Phase 4 and beyond in a whole new direction — something different from what we’ve seen before.
Moon Knight releases new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.
