Just what is canon and what isn’t when it comes to Marvel works on TV has always been an unclear line in terms of the fandom.
It’s not hard to find fans who believe ABC’s “Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” and “Agent Carter,” Netflix’s “Daredevil” and their other shows, the assorted Hulu and Freeform series and more can or should be considered canon.
When Marvel Television was dissolved and Marvel Studios took over TV, that seemed to be a clear line – at least until they started bringing back some elements and actors from those shows but changing them up.
Then there’s been all the multiverse shenanigans and more recently the new “Loki” season dealing heavily with branched timelines and the so-called ‘Sacred Timeline’ (aka. ‘Earth-616’) which seems to be ‘true’ canon.
Now, Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige’s foreword from the newly released “Marvel Studios: The Marvel Cinematic Universe An Official Timeline” book has been released online on Twitter and has fired a raging debate on Reddit. It reads:
“On the Multiverse note, we recognize that there are stories – movies and series – that are canonical to Marvel but were created by different storytellers during different periods of Marvel’s history. The timeline presented in this book is specific to the MCU’s Sacred Timeline through Phase 4.
But, as we move forward and dive deeper into the Multiverse Saga, you never know when timelines may just crash or converge (hint, hint/spoiler alert).”
The statement pretty clearly indicates the Marvel Television titles are not part of the main MCU ‘Sacred Timeline’, whilst not entirely abandoning them altogether as they’re part of the ‘Multiverse’ and they intend to strip mine these shows from ‘branched timelines’ for the parts they want to keep.
That’s pretty succinctly spelled out in the book itself which makes no real mention of the Marvel Television shows suggesting they don’t ‘count’ per se. The statement has drawn understandable reactions of anger, annoyance, frustration and excitement from the fandom.
Could the eventual “Avengers: Secret Wars” end up collapsing all those alternate timelines? We have a few years to wait to find that out.
