On Sunday we released our latest edition to our MCU Timeline v7 Collection, with the ‘When Does WEREWOLF BY NIGHT Take Place?’ video, and it’s been received fairly well so far. We used a number of practices and on-screen indicators to determine its location on the timeline, and landed on December 29th, 2025 as the night of the hunt. We appear to have overlooked a pretty sizable timeline indicator though, in the face paint on Jack Russell’s character, which leans to the possibility that this could take place on Dia de Muertos (usually celebrated between October 31 through November 2nd). Is it possible that this special occurs at that time?

Absolutely it’s possible. Werewolf By Night was billed as a Halloween special, and outside of the film’s horror aesthetic, this is by far the biggest proof we have of it occurring at that time. And considering 5 nights before the full moon in November leads directly to the night of Halloween works perfectly in this case. BUT this would mean you’d either need to ignore certain factors of the film, like Ulysses’ death on the last full moon of the year, or suspend your disbelief that Elsa would have waited 11 months to claim the Bloodstone that she believed was her’s by birthright.

Beyond the physical paint upon Gael García Bernal’s face, it’s important to note that the character of Jack Russell actually wears the paint to honor his ancestors. Later in the special he ruminates on the dead in his family, and the family he’s still protecting – it’s a part of him in ways he’s clearly still processing. This introspection and the significance of the face paint does lend itself towards a Day of the Dead setting, and it may very well be, but it isn’t how I interpret it.

I believe that no matter the night of the funeral, he would have worn this face paint regardless. Mortality in the face of someone who’s likely lived hundreds of years is something that clearly gets to him. It seems to me that this is his way of mourning, by also remembering and honoring those that came before him. Let’s look at what director Michael Giacchino says on the matter.

Speaking to But Why Tho, he says “[the face paint] is all he has, this tether to his family. You can imagine that he’s been alive for a long time, I don’t know, one hundred, three hundred years, four hundred years, and family is important to him because he doesn’t have a family right now. Man-Thing is his family, the people around him who he can [help], they’re his family and there are not a lot of those. So for me, it was very important to be able to say ‘I carry this with me, it’s a part of my strength,’ or ‘my family is my strength.’ To be able to say that is a big idea and I didn’t want to lose that. And then as the werewolf, it’s a part of his superpower, that connection he has to his past.”

Speaking to The Wrap, he reiterates: “I thought, Well if he’s going to turn into a werewolf, that makeup’s not going away. It should still be on. Which to me felt very powerful in a way, because it’s almost like that was a part of his power, his connection to his family. […] It just felt right and it felt emotionally right as well.”

This sounds to me like he wears the face paint all the time, as if it’s part of his regular ensemble. It’s important to note he doesn’t appear to be wearing the face paint on the morning after his forced transformation, though how he washed this off in his lycanthropic-stupor isn’t explained. My guess is he fell into a nearby river, unwittingly dousing himself back to a human form, and Man-Thing helped keep him from freezing.

I don’t want to dismiss the possibility that this can occur on Dia de Muerto, because it certainly can, but my interpretation of the face paint thus far is that no matter what time of year the funeral was held, he was going to wear it. Waiting 11 months for a funeral doesn’t seem likely, and the state of decay on Ulysses’ cadaver is too far gone to have been a product of taxidermy restoration, and not far gone enough for this to have been 11 months postmortem. Most likely, by my logic, this funeral was held about a month after his passing.

We will stick to the dating of December 29th, 2025 as the night of Ulysses Bloodstone’s funeral unless further proof is presented, or unless this is later retconned. Find more information on the Timeline Journal.