Avengers: Age of Ultron begins the tradition of not properly dating events in film, but not to worry; we have other means of figuring out when this film takes place. This is part 11 of a 20 part video series discussing when each film in the MCU takes place. So when does Age of Ultron occur?

“I’m always pickin’ up after you boys.”

After several years of planning, Tony unveils his Iron Legion concept to the world in Sokovia, after the events in Iron Man 3 had worked so well. During this time we’re introduced properly to the twins Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, as the Avengers take back the Scepter, which hides the Mind Stone within. Roughly four days later at a party thrown by Tony at the Avengers Tower, Ultron is born.

No present day dates are featured in this film, so context clues from other films and material need to be injected. That said, most of the dates featured in this movie have either all been retconned, or aren’t worth noting in the first place. Upon booting up for the first time, Ultron sees a montage of happenings from previous films. We see this shot of the MK 1 Iron Man suit dated to February 2010, when it should be sometime in early May of 2008, as we explain in parts 1 and 13. We can rationalize that, since this is a shot of his suit on display in Ton’y garage, it occurred between the first two Iron Man films. But this footage from Iron Man 1 dates that film to July 2010, which is impossible. We also see this date for the Avengers pop up as April 3rd, 2012, which is a month off from when that film placed itself as. Considering this sequence has so many mistakes, I don’t give it much merit.

About a week passes before Vision is born, and the following day Ultron levels Sokovia. “Well, I was born yesterday.” After the battle a few months pass, considering Laura has had her baby. One interesting line from Thor claims that in the past four years four Infinity Stones have shown up, which helps place it in 2015, as we discussed that Thor took place in 2011 in part 4. As we’ll discuss more of in part 13, Civil War, which takes place in 2016, claims that Age of Ultron occurred the previous summer. So Summer 2015. We can narrow it down thanks to this clip from WHiH Newsfront which is dated to July 2nd, where they claim the events in Sokovia happened recently. “We’ll discuss the fallout of the Avengers most recent conflict in Sokovia, and the ongoing aid efforts in that region.” Likely, the events in Avengers: Age of Ultron took place between May and June of 2015.

All said, 100% of the film takes place in 2015.