The upcoming spinoff/Fury Road prequel Furiosa will flesh out more of the Mad Max franchise’s unseen (and unclear) history, but it is not yet possible to tell exactly when Furiosa takes place in the series' timeline. The Mad Max franchise timeline has never been entirely clear. One fan theory posited that Fury Road took place between Mad Max and The Road Warrior, while other theories have argued that the sequels take place in the order they were released.
Thanks to all this confusion, it is almost impossible to tell exactly when the forthcoming Fury Road spinoff Furiosa takes place in the Mad Max franchise timeline. However, the official Furiosa synopsis does offer viewers some possible clues about the Anya Taylor-Joy vehicle’s place in the series. There is no definitive answer yet, but viewers can at least rule out some possibilities by the process of elimination (which is about as much clarity as the mercurial Mad Max franchise ever provides).
Furiosa will star Anya Taylor-Joy as a younger version of Charlize Theron’s Fury Road heroine while Chris Hemsworth plays the biker gang leader Dementus and Tom Burke rounds out the cast in an as-yet unidentified role. Burke may secretly be playing Immortan Joe, but Hemsworth’s character could also conceivably turn out to be a younger incarnation of the Fury Road villain in a surprise twist. What is clear is that, since it is a prequel, Furiosa will take place before Fury Road’s story right at the start of Mad Max's post-apocalyptic arid landscape. From this alone, viewers can roughly work out where the spinoff’s story will most likely land in the larger timeline of the franchise (presuming that the Mad Max movies take place in the order they were released), with a likely positioning between the original Mad Max and The Road Warrior. However, there are other factors at play that make a precise determination of Furiosa's place in the Mad Max timeline difficult.
Furiosa’s Synopsis Explained
Furiosa’s synopsis promises that "As the world fell, young Furiosa is snatched from the Green Place of Many Mothers and falls into the hands of a great Biker Horde led by the Warlord Dementus.” The Furiosa synopsis hints at a plot that will follow Dementus’s battle with a young Immortan Joe (who is presumably, but not necessarily, the same Immortan Joe from Fury Road) and says that Furisoa will face many trials in her formative journey. However, while these specific trials will form the movie's story, the crucial clue to Furiosa’s place in the Mad Max franchise timeline is hidden in the first few words of the synopsis. Since Furiosa’s story begins “as the world fell,” it is reasonable to presume that the first spinoff of the series will start with the Mad Max franchise’s apocalypse, and viewers do know when this important (if hitherto unseen) event takes place.
Could Furiosa Take Place Before The Original Mad Max?
From all that viewers have heard, it can be said for certain that Furiosa does not take place before Mad Max. 1979’s dark, gritty, and relatively realistic Mad Max is set in the future but takes place before “the world fell.” Crucially, Mad Max happens before the unseen apocalypse that took place in the franchise’s universe. Mad Max tells the story of a young police officer avenging the deaths of his wife and child by a violent biker gang and, while lawlessness is rampant in the setting of the original movie, the original Mad Max was only set in the future to save on production costs.
1979’s Mad Max is empathically not a post-apocalyptic thriller nor does it depict the apocalypse, meaning Furiosa must take place after its events. This theory is further supported by the original Mad Max star Mel Gibson's youth in the movie since it means the age gap between Max and Furiosa might be less than a decade. The recast Max seems the same age or possibly a little younger than Furiosa in Fury Road, but he could have lost his family at 23 while she experienced the apocalypse two years later at around 25 (Taylor-Joy is 26 during Furiosa’s filming).
Will Furiosa Be Set Before/During The Road Warrior?
Furiosa will almost certainly be set before or during the event of The Road Warrior. For one thing, this is the sequel with the most instantly recognizable visual aesthetic and (other than Fury Road) the most critically acclaimed and fan-beloved Mad Max outing. Also, the tribal wars over water and fuel that rage during The Road Warrior are perfect conditions for the rise of fascist strongmen like Lord Humungus and Immortan Joe. Furiosa could even reuse The Road Warrior’s cut twist if the spinoff is set around the same time as the first Mad Max sequel, justifying Furiosa’s support of the villainous Immortan Joe by reminding viewers that good people can be driven to do terrible things by drastic circumstances like a societal breakdown.
Could Furiosa Occur Alongside Beyond Thunderdome?
It seems unlikely that Furiosa will take place at the same time as Beyond Thunderdome for numerous reasons. For one thing, Max is visibly older in Beyond Thunderdome and, as noted above, he and Furiosa look around the same age in Fury Road. As such, Fury Road could take place just before or shortly after Beyond Thunderdome, but there aren't decades in the difference. Alternatively, Beyond Thunderdome could take place shortly before Fury Road (provided Max got a haircut between movies), but not long before, meaning Furiosa wouldn't have been as young as the synopsis implies. The other, more important reason that Mad Max’s third outing Beyond Thunderdome likely takes place before Furiosa is more closely linked to the sequel’s setting.
In Beyond Thunderdome, Max encounters Aunt Entity’s makeshift city where there are children who were born after the world ended. In contrast, Max and Furiosa were both alive and in their early adulthood when “the world fell.” As such, Beyond Thunderdome takes place at least a decade or so after this cataclysmic event, where Furiosa’s synopsis explicitly states that the sequel will take place as the world of the franchise falls apart. This means that Furiosa’s story will most likely take place alongside the action of The Road Warrior or shortly before the sequel’s story. If the spinoff lands in between the original Mad Max and The Road Warrior, then Furiosa will need to explain the cause of the Mad Max franchise’s unseen apocalypse, whereas if the spinoff occurs at the same time as The Road Warrior, it won’t run into this issue. In any case, though, Furiosa will almost certainly not predate the original Mad Max, and it seems unlikely that the spinoff will take place after that seminal movie's second sequel.