For more than a decade, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a pioneer when it comes to interconnected storytelling; however, they've also made several retcons. Kicking off what would eventually become the most successful franchise in history in 2008 via Robert Downey Jr. and Jon Favreau's Iron Man, the MCU has grown continuously over the last 12 years with 23 films in total across three phases.
The universe is now in the middle of a transition after it recently capped off the Infinity Saga with Avengers: Endgame followed by Spider-Man: Far From Home serving as an epilogue. Miraculously, the Joe and Anthony Russo-directed film delivered a satisfying ending to the universe's overarching arc, tying up all plot points for a cohesive overall story. That doesn't mean that there weren't missteps along the way, incidentally, Marvel Studios was just able to make some tweaks to be able to present a holistic narrative for the MCU.
Throughout its 12-year history, there have been MCU retcons in varying degrees - some Marvel Studios pulled off better than others. Regardless, most of them were done in the service of the franchise's overall narrative.
Tony Stark Had Captain America's Shield in Iron Man
As the first film in the MCU, Iron Man was mostly a standalone project with the narrative focusing on Tony Stark's hero's journey to become Iron Man. However, it also featured subtle details that hinted at the world building it would start. Aside from the inclusion of S.H.I.E.L.D., not to mention the now iconic Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) post-credit scene, it also hinted at Captain America's existence in the MCU long before Steve Rogers' (Chris Evans) introduction. While Tony was working on his Iron Man suit in his home workshop, an unfinished Captain America shield can be seen in the background, but we later found out, the shield was supposedly still under ice with Steve - until he woke up in 2011 at the end of Captain America: The First Avenger.
Peter Parker in Iron Man 2
Spider-Man in the MCU only came to fruition in 2016's Captain America: Civil War thanks to an unprecedented deal between Marvel Studios and Sony Pictures. This resulted in the introduction of Tom Holland's iteration of the fan-favorite character. However, Kevin Feige and his team found a way to work the web-slinging hero in the franchise much earlier than his debut when they said that the boy wearing the Iron Man mask attending the Stark Expo in Iron Man 2 was actually a young Peter Parker. Obviously, this was nothing but a happy coincidence, one that Marvel Studios was happy to lean on considering the eventual relationship between Tony Stark and Peter. Fortunately the timeline checks out, allowing for this tiny tweak to easily be accepted as canon and adding a layer to the pair's mentor/mentee dynamic that was so pivotal in recent years.
Tony Stark Wasn't Really Recruiting Thunderbolt Ross to The Avengers
The Incredible Hulk's post-credit scene revealed Tony Stark coming to Thunderbolt Ross (William Hurt) about assembling a team - at this point in the MCU, it was viewed as a set-up for what would be the Avengers, although the sequence didn't give much more details. It also implied that Hulk was somehow in exile. This didn't have any narrative pay off whatsoever and that's intentional. Feige came out and admitted that this was such a big misstep that it almost screwed up their continuity, luckily, they were able to rectify the situation with the release of the Marvel One Shot titled The Consultant, which provided some context as to what's really behind Tony's reaching out to Ross.
The short clip featured Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Agent Jasper Sitwell (Maximiliano Hernández) brainstorming about how they can dissuade Ross from releasing Emil Blonsky/The Abomination (Tim Roth), but instead of requesting this, they used reverse psychology. They opted to send the consultant which was Tony to effectively annoy Ross so much that he wouldn't want to cooperate with them whatsoever.
Agent Coulson Was Alive After The Avengers
Marvel Studios' original character, Agent Phil Coulson, was the single thread the connected all Phase 1 together leading up to its culmination in The Avengers. With personal encounters to almost every single MCU founding hero, it made sense that his death at the hands of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) motivated the team to set aside their differences and go after the God of Mischief. But it wasn't long until we find out that Nick Fury was able to resurrect Coulson, without the knowledge of the Avengers, thanks to some alien technology. Coulson even led his own team in the MCU TV spinoff Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. The real deal about Coulson's death has yet to be clarified on the big screen. Although Gregg says that he assumes some of the heroes knew of his survival, there doesn't seem to be any plans to address this big mystery.
The Real Mandarin Exists
Comic book fans got so excited to learn that Tony Stark's comic book arch nemesis - The Mandarin - was going to make his big screen debut in Iron Man 3. However, it would soon be a point of contention among fans. This stemmed from director Shane Black's decision to pull a plot twist, revealing that what was supposed to be the worst global terrorist was nothing more than an actor, Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), playing a part for the film's real main antagonist, Aldrich Killian (Guy Pearce). This creative decision caused a wave of backlash from comic book purists that Marvel Studios had to address with the One Shot All Hail The King, in which it was revealed that the real Mandarin exists. Marvel Studios is even doubling downing on this as he's set to be introduced in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, played by Tony Leung.
The Tesseract Was the Space Stone and Loki's Scepter Had the Mind Stone
The six Infinity Stones were the McGuffins of MCU's Infinity Saga. While some of them emerged late, like the Soul Stone, others had existed in the universe as early as Phase 1, only in different forms. The First Avenger featured the first Infinity Stone via the Space Stone, which was then only known as the Tesseract - however, this wasn't always the case. In fact, it was merely a Cosmic Cube and was treated as such even in The Avengers. It was only in Thor: The Dark World where it was explicitly called an Infinity Stone, which stuck until Endgame.
Another big retcon that had something to do with an Infinity Stone was the reveal that Loki was being mind-controlled via the Mind Stone-fitted scepter that Thanos (Josh Brolin) gave him. Marvel Studios confirmed this via a slight change in the God of Mischief's official bio. This effectively established that Loki is more of an anti-hero than a pure villain.
The Infinity Gauntlet in Odin's Vault Was Fake
The Infinity Gauntlet was a focal point of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, as it allowed its wearer to wield all power of the Infinity Stones at the same time. However, the metal glove has had a tumultuous history in the MCU that involved retconning. We first see it inside Odin's vault on Asgard from 2011's Thor. So people were understandably confused when the post-credit scene in Avengers: Age of Ultron saw the Mad Titan donning what apparently was the real Infinity Gauntlet.
Marvel Studios addressed this continuity error by saying that one of gauntlets was fake - a detail that even crept up in Thor: Ragnarok where Hela (Cate Blanchett) explicitly said that the Infinity Gauntlet inside Odin's vault was only a replica. Subsequently, Infinity War clarified the origins of the genuine Infinity Gauntlet. As it turned out, Thanos and his minions went to Nidavellir, sought the help of legendary blacksmith Eitri (Peter Dinklage) and forced him to create the metal glove.
Gamora's Not The Last of Her Kind
Introduced in James Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora (Zoe Saldana) is known to be the adopted daughter of Thanos. When the Nova Corps ran her profile after being caught, it was revealed that she was the last of her people - the Zehoberi - because Thanos wiped out the entire race. Infinity War, however, went back on this, as we saw what went down during the Mad Titan's invasion of her home planet. Instead of killing everyone on the planet, viewers learn that Thanos and his people only slashed half of the population to deal with potential resource scarcity that bogged down Titan. Thanos even made a reference to how her planet has been thriving since he brought balance to it. It's essentially the same concept behind his deadly snap at the end of Infinity War, only on a much smaller scale.
Thor's Not Nick Fury's First Alien Contact
During the events of The Avengers, Nick Fury said that S.H.I.E.L.D.'s very first encounter of extraterrestrials was with the Asgardian Prince, Thor. The Avengers Initiative proponent argued that the God of Thunder's arrival on Earth and his subsequent fight in New Mexico forced them to amplify their weaponry and prepare in case more of him made their way to the planet. "We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously outgunned," he said, recalling what he had to deal with in the aftermath of the events of the first Thor movie. Fury's statement stuck for a considerable amount of time - until Captain Marvel. Carol Danvers' (Brie Larson) origin story was set in 1995, more than a decade before the events of Iron Man. There we met young Fury and Phil Coulson who were already operatives of S.H.I.E.L.D.. Their encounter with Carol exposed them to the Kree-Skrull war, meaning they both had interactions with people from both alien races prior to the arrival of Thor in 2011.
Goose's Scratch Was Actually How Nick Fury Lost His Eye
Nick Fury's eye patch has been synonymous with the character even from his comic book days, so it's only fitting that Marvel Studios adapted that detail when Samuel L. Jackson made his debut in Iron Man. Throughout the years, there were comments regarding how he injured his left eye - it was even a big narrative element in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where he sternly told Steve Rogers that the last time he trusted someone, he lost an eye. This gave fans some ideas on how he really lost his eyesight, but none of those theories came close to what actually happened.
Captain Marvel revealed that the hard-nosed former S.H.I.E.L.D. director got too obsessed with Carol Danvers' pet, Goose the cat - a Flerken disguising as a feline. Unfortunately, the feeling wasn't mutual and when the young operative got too close, Goose attacked him and accidentally scratched his eye, resulting in him permanently losing sight in his left eye. It was obvious that Fury didn't want to share how he really damaged his eye when he told Coulson that the Kree did it when he refused to give up the Tesseract.
S.H.I.E.L.D. Wasn't Really New in Iron Man
Long before Nick Fury's introduction in Iron Man's post-credit scene, the film already had a subtle clue of the world building that would follow the Favreau-directed flick, with the involvement of Phil Coulson. When he returned to the U.S. from his Afghanistan debacle, Tony Stark was hounded by the agent who's apparently from "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division." As Coulson repeatedly mentioned the organization he belonged to, Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow) couldn't help but make a comment about their name being a mouthful, to which he simply replied that they're "working on it." This gave fans the impression that the organization was fairly new, but it's eventually revealed that not only has it been around for decades (Howard Stark was even a founding member), it has always gone by the acronym S.H.I.E.L.D. Captain Marvel pretty much disregarded Coulson's banter with Pepper when he and Fury casually referred to the organization as S.H.I.E.L.D. several times throughout the prequel film.
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Admittedly, as the Marvel Cinematic Universe enters Phase 4, with a string of new movies and connected TV shows in the pipeline, it would be more increasingly difficult to preserve a flawless continuity. And it will be interesting to see how Marvel Studios rights their missteps as they continue to grow the franchise.
Key Release Dates
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Black Widow
Release Date:2021-07-09 -
Eternals
Release Date:2021-11-05 -
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
Release Date:2021-09-03 -
Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness
Release Date:2022-05-06 -
Thor: Love and Thunder
Release Date:2022-07-08 -
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
Release Date:2022-11-11
