How’s it going, guys and geeks? Welcome to Geekritique! My name is Dakota, and today I’ve tasked myself with helping you determine where best to place She-Hulk: Attorney at Law on the MCU Timeline. After long deliberation over the last 9 weeks, I’ve finally determined where I place the Disney+ series on our timeline, and let me tell you, it wasn’t an easy task. The biggest issue was pinpointing a year, and while that may seem easy, you’ll soon learn why I found that so absurdly difficult. So join me on this journey across the timeline as we weave through many of Phase 4’s biggest titles to pinpoint where exactly this series fits best.

But first, let me congratulate you for finding your way to this video. The fact that you’re here tells me that you want to get the most value out of the films and shows that you invest your time in. You want to dig deeper into the lore. You want to learn more about the history of this fictional world, because it means something to you. And that means something to me. And I’m so happy I can help provide you with meaningful timeline breakdowns like this. If you enjoy our discussion today, don’t forget to like this video, and subscribe, as we have more insightful content coming for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday special, and more in the near future, and you won’t want to miss it.

Before we can firmly establish what year She-Hulk occurs in, the far easier task is determining what time of year the show takes place in. So we’ll have to start at the very beginning. A few months ago, that is, a few months before the main events of the series, Jennifer Walters gains her Hulk abilities thanks to the unexpected infusion of her cousin Bruce Banner’s blood into her blood system thanks to a car crash. But notice that the arm brace Bruce is wearing is the very same type as the one he’s wearing in the mid-credits scene of Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, because he’s still injured from handling the Infinity Stones. Well, that is until the very next day, when Bruce reveals that Jennifer’s blood was able to heal his arm. This immediately places She-Hulk after Shang-Chi, which we’ve previously determined to be early April 2024, and the mid-credits scene to be mid-to-late April. So it’s safe to assume that the few months ago scenes likely happened at the earliest in Spring.

But wait, if this is happening after Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, why then, a few months later, does this footage suddenly leak of Abomination fighting with Wong? Well that’s fairly simple. This is not in any way meant to depict that She-Hulk and Shang-Chi are concurrent. Video footage leaks to the press all the time, sometimes weeks, months, or years after the fact, so if anything this just reaffirms that this is post-Shang-Chi, and that these few months later are at the earliest edging into early Summer. Now why the footage leaked? Probably someone has a grudge against Emil Blonsky, or they saw the Abomination on the news and thought “oh hey, I remember that guy. I have footage of him on my phone, let’s put that online.” Who knows, there’s a lot of ways you can take that.

An interesting decision on behalf of the Disney+ MCU Timeline is that Eternals is placed after Shang-Chi for some undefined reason. Side note, I place Eternals in early-2024, and am gearing up for a revisit to the film soon, because there’s evidence it takes place in late-2023. If you’re interested in me possibly revising my Eternals timeline placement with one of these in-depth breakdowns let me know. But is there any evidence that She-Hulk occurs after Eternals? Yes! On this website we see an ad for a clickbait article titled “Why there is a giant statue of a man sticking out of the ocean” and we know that’s a direct reference to the Celestial corpse of Tiamut scene at the end of Eternals. But this shot also features an ad teasing Wolverine, so it’s likely no more than a big Easter egg. But we can safely assume if She-Hulk is after Shang-Chi that it’s also after Eternals.

Speaking to TVLine, Jessica Gao, the head writer on She-Hulk confirmed that the show is set “not too far” after Shang-Chi. “It’s not, like, years later. It’s a relatively short amount of time.” Well wow, this sounds like She-Hulk could just be a few short months after Shang-Chi. Could we be looking at a Summer 2024 placement? Well that’s where it gets tricky, because the Disney+ timeline places it firmly in their 2025 selection. They place She-Hulk between Moon Knight in Spring 2025 and Ms. Marvel in Fall 2025. Side note, watch my Moon Knight timeline breakdown after this to discover how you can decipher the true timeline of that show as being a whole year earlier. But anyway, being that they placed it between Spring and Fall, that’s a solid endorsement of She-Hulk being a Summer placement. But do we believe Jessica Gao, the head writer on the series, with a Summer 2024 placement, or are we leaning towards Disney+’s placement of Summer 2025? We’re gonna need more information.

Let’s sidebar that discussion briefly as we narrow down when in the year the series’ climax occurs. How much time actually elapses throughout the entirety of the first season’s main timeframe, from the point of Walters’ first making known to the world that she can Hulk out, to the point where Intelligencia has that meetup that she accidentally crashes? The show is purposely vague on it all. Sometimes they’ll showcase days of the week when the plot necessitates your being conscious of the passage of time, but there are far more days showcased where they don’t identify either a day of the week or any indicator at all. And I think this was intentional, as the characters don’t even seem to be aware of how much time has passed. After Bruce leaves to go off to Sakaar, Jen reaches out to him a number of times. “Bruce, where are ya? I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for weeks, or months, or days, or whatever.”

If there’s not enough information available about the amount of days we see on screen, I purposely don’t try to match each scene with a possible date, because there’s no telling how many time jumps we actually see between episodes. But I think it’s fair to say that at least 2, possibly 3 months pass between the start and end of the season’s main timeframe. But going back to Bruce, what are your guy’s thoughts on Skaar? Bruce originally traveled to Sakaar circa 2015, so presuming he began uhh… copulating at that point- “Smash you.” -and this is now 2024 or 2025, Skaar is roughly 8 or 9 in earth years, but we know time works differently on Sakaar, and that helped age him up to roughly young-adulthood for this introduction. Where do you guys think this story’s headed?

Another interesting timeframe we’re given is Bruce’s estimation on how long he thinks it’ll take for Jen Walters to get her She-Hulk in order. “About 15 years, give or take.” “15 YEARS?” Now there’s two ways this can be taken. It could mean 15 years between the present and when Bruce started trying to coexist with the Hulk, or it could mean that it took him 15 years to get the Hulk fully in order from the time the Hulk first manifested to the point where he’s at now with Smart Hulk. I tend to believe it’s the latter, because we know he’s pretty successfully managed to merge the two personalities of Hulk and Banner for a few years now, and you’d have to presume that’s the endgame he felt was best for Jen. So going with the latter, let’s do a little math. As per my timeline, The Incredible Hulk’s main events have been retconned to 2011, thanks to Fury’s Big Week, and we know he had the Hulk personality for 5 years prior to that, so 2006. 2006 plus 15 is 2021, so I’m going to surmise that Bruce Banner and the Hulk fully merged in 2021.

But anyway, that’s enough time talking about Bruce, whose show is this anyway? So currently we’re looking at She-Hulk occurring over a period of 2 to 3 months between Summer 2024 or Summer 2025. And while there’s nothing super explicit calling this out as a Summer show, there are a couple hints worth exploring. Mallory claims she’ll be married “11 years this October.” This affirms that the show, at least by episode 6, occurs before October, and is within a few months of the event, as Mallory’s already preparing for the date. We also get a glimpse on Jen’s day planner that she has a Q3 backlog. Q3 is the third quarter of a calendar year, and that’s definitely the Summer. And thanks to the hard work of Nikki trying to chart out the network of Intelligencia in the final episode we know there’s an event happening on 8/16, or August 16th. This could be in reference to a past Intelligencia event, but we know that she’s hard at work trying to infiltrate and get an invitation to an event being hosted by them soon, so it follows that she placed the post-it note with the date of that upcoming event in mind. If the Intelligencia meetup is scheduled at night, it should fall on the weekend, so looking at the dates, 8/16/2024 is on a Friday, and 8/16/2025 is on a Saturday. Both years, again, work. But we also know that Jen rewrote that scene as happening during the daytime, so this leans closer to it being held on a Saturday in 2025.

What does Wong’s appearance throughout the series tell us? “WONGERS!” We know he’s the current Sorcerer Supreme, based on the technicality that Stephen Strange was missing for over 5 years time, but he claims that his battle against Abomination was part of his training. “I required a worthy opponent as part of my training to become Sorcerer Supreme.” This is either a lie, or a really avoidable plot hole because Stephen was already back to life by the time Wongers had that fight against Abomination, and this would mean earth was without a Sorcerer Supreme for over 6 years. Now let’s look at his attire. He’s wearing his new uniform, first introduced in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, so does that mean this is his Sorcerer Supreme outfit? Not necessarily, as we know he’s Sorcerer Supreme by at least November 2024 in Spider-Man: No Way Home and he isn’t wearing that outfit in that film. So while this leans towards a post-Multiverse of Madness setting, it isn’t conclusive.

When Jen says that they have to do things by the book, he says “mmm… Book of Vishanti.” This has led many to believe it’s before Multiverse of Madness because we saw the book get destroyed. So that leans towards this being pre-Multiverse of Madness, though the reference to the book is hardly conclusive. And then Wong mentions a memory spell. “I’m not erasing everyone’s memories, not again.” This immediately evokes the events of No Way Home, so this leans it closer to 2025. BUT we know, thanks to No Way Home, that there were other memory spells that were cast in the past, and that Wong didn’t personally cast the memory spell to forget Peter Parker, so this likely isn’t what he’s referring to. This could also lean towards the Summer 2024 placement.

You’re starting to see how this is a very difficult project to place, aren’t you? But rest assured, there is one scene in particular that conclusively places the series in a specific year, but we’re going to go through all the evidence first to help narrow it down. We have the Rogers the Musical billboard visible in the penultimate episode. We’ve previously seen Rogers musical billboards in Spider-Man: No Way Home, as early as July 2024, in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in November 2024, and latest, with Hawkeye in December 2024. While this may at first seem like a hint that we’re still in 2024, it’s worth noting that Broadway plays often stay running for multiple years if successful, so this could very well be indicative of a 2025 placement as well.

In the finale, during the Intelligencia event, one of the dudebros says “and Lady Thor? Guys, she just sucks.” This is a fascinating line, but it too isn’t as clear cut as you may think, and can be interpreted a number of ways. First, let’s determine that Disney+ places Thor: Love and Thunder after Ms. Marvel for a roughly October 2025 date. I think that’s crazy given everything we learn in the film, and I place it in May 2024 on my timeline, almost a year and a half earlier. Notice that they don’t use a past tense when referring to her. If this is Summer 2024, Mighty Thor, or Lady Thor as they claim, would be dead at this time. If this were Summer 2025, Jane would also be dead, but if the Disney+ Love and Thunder timeline placement in October were accurate then it’s possible she could be Lady Thor at this time, but over two months earlier than Love and Thunder seems like a bit of a stretch based on the rapidity of her illness and what we see in the film. Either way, this line seems really off, as it references her in the present tense. I think there’s four possibilities here. Either she’s 1) alive at this time, 2) this dudebro is referring to her existence in general as a nebulous concept that shouldn’t exist, 3) the dudebro doesn’t know that she’s dead yet, or 4) the writers of She-Hulk didn’t want to spoil her death in Love and Thunder as the MCU’s release schedule is often in flux. The very same thing happened with Love and Thunder and Moon Knight where the Moon Knight writers removed references to Gorr the God Butcher so as not to spoil Love and Thunder because they weren’t sure when the titles would eventually release. I interpret this being a way for the She-Hulk writers to have the reference to Love and Thunder without spoiling the death of Jane Foster, just in case this released before the film. So again. This is not conclusive. Both 2024 and 2025 work.

Before we pinpoint exactly where this series takes place on the MCU Timeline, we need to discuss the fact that when Jen breaks through the fourth wall she enters a parallel timeline. It’s difficult to pinpoint when that occurs because we see that the most recent title outside of She-Hulk to be added to Disney+ is the I Am Groot shorts, and those came out in August 2022, but she purposely breaks through the Assembled episode for Shang-Chi, a special from November 2021. I think if she were to have entered any of the other titles, she would have joined them on their respective timelines, but as she entered the Assembled special, I think she entered the presumed “real world” at the time the special was coming out. So the parallel timeline Jen enters is roughly occurring in 2021, and the Disney+ pocket universe occurs in 2022. This is all very interesting, but let’s get back to the real MCU Timeline.

Remarkably, the one scene that sealed the deal for me in terms of placing it on the timeline comes at the very end. We know previously, while Emil was first imprisoned, Wong offered him asylum in Kamar-Taj. “I offered him asylum at Kamar-Taj, which is truly lovely this time of year, but he was quite adamant he be returned to serve out his sentence.” Well now that Blonsky’s back in prison, he’s definitely taking Wong up on that offer for asylum. If he were using Kamar-Taj as an asylum, he’d be staying on the Kamar-Taj campus for the long haul, so that he doesn’t get arrested again. And if She-Hulk took place in Summer 2024 and he stayed at Kamar-Taj after the fact, he would have been present during Wanda’s siege of Kamar-Taj in Multiverse of Madness. The fact that he wasn’t present during that film, when he could have very easily helped, is clear evidence to me that his asylum at Kamar-Taj began after Multiverse of Madness.

So with that, I can conclusively place She-Hulk: Attorney at Law in the Summer of 2025, with the climax happening on or after August 16th, 2025. This means the Disney+ MCU Timeline happens to line up with the facts this time around. .2% of the runtime occurs in the Disney+ pocket universe circa 2022, 3% occurs in the Assembled variant universe in 2021, and a whopping 96.8% of the show occurs in 2025 on the MCU’s 616 timeline. Patreon members get full access to a high quality downloadable image of the updated MCU Timeline v7.5. Thank you so much to all of our Patrons, you guys keep this channel alive with your help. If you’re interested in more details regarding She-Hulk’s timeline placement, head on over to the Timeline Journal on Geekritique.com and see all of my personal notes for all 9 episodes. And if you’re interested in more discussion type reviews and content, check out my podcast Project Geekology! We’ve just posted our 49th episode, all about Rogue One and how it helps set the stage for Andor. Find a link in the description below!

We did it guys. We figured it out. We went on a journey and like She-Hulk, we smashed that Timeline Placement. If you’ve made it this far, comment “SMASH” in the comments down below. Don’t forget to also smash that like button while you’re at it. And subscribe if this type of video is your thing. We’ve got major plans for the future of this channel, and we can’t wait to take you on more timeline journeys in the videos to come. If you aren’t caught up on our previous videos in this series, I highly recommend clicking that playlist card for the MCU Timeline v7 Collection and checking out some more content! Thanks guys, have a good one.