The placement of Thor is pivotal to the chronology of the Phase One films, as it’s the last release that occurs in Fury’s Big Week. This is part 4 of a 20 part video series discussing when each film in the MCU takes place. So when does Thor take place.

“Your ancestors called it magic, and you call it science. Well I come from a place where they’re one and the same thing.”

The opening of the film begins with Laufey and the Frost Giants invading Tønsburg, Norway in 965 A.D. Then we get a short scene from some indeterminate year some century or two afterwards with Odin explaining how he saved Midgard from an eternal winter.

Thor is the first film in the series that has absolutely no modern dates attached to it in any form, so the present is open for some interpretation. Since it occurs during Fury’s Big Week, we can interpret that the first present day begins on May 30th, the day after Tony Stark’s birthday party. According to Fury’s timeline, Thor occurs over 4 days. But after thoroughly studying the film we can say with some certainty that it takes place over 3 days and nights, the last day being June 1st.

But what year does it take place? We’ve mentioned in the three previous parts that there’s a strong possibility of Fury’s Big Week occurring in 2011, instead of 2010, and it all revolves around Thor. In Avengers, which we explain in part 6, occurs in 2012, Fury has this to say: “Last year earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town.” At first I thought this may have been a mistake, considering he didn’t also mention the events of The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2, which were far more potentially catastrophic than what we saw in Thor, and they supposedly occurred concurrently. But then this line from Thor: The Dark World, which we explain in part 8 occurs in 2013, said “Last time he was gone for, like, two years.” Both lines together would firmly retcon the events of, not only Thor, but The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man 2 as taking place in May 2011. In total, 2.4% of the runtime takes place in 965, 1.6% in some indeterminate year, and 96% in 2011.