Marvel Studios confirms Disney+ MCU timeline as "our medium to define the canon"

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We here at Popverse have been following the swinging pendulum of what is in (and out) of the Marvel Cinematic Universe canon for a while. With all of the changes following the possible re-introduction of the Netflix Marvel series into the MCU, and then the subsequent expelling, and then re-re-introduction, it felt like we would never get a finalized answer on the matter.

Now we have one.

Or at least, we have a finalized place to look for answers on the matter. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Marvel Studios' head of streaming, television, and animation Brad Winderbaum officially confirmed that Disney+ is the place to go to find out what exactly is in MCU canon (and ironically not the official MCU timeline book), stating that part of the solidifying of the new timeline had to do with the "redevelopment" of Daredevil: Born Again (which is drawing from the Netflix Daredevil show) as well as setting up the timeline on the Disney+ streaming service.

Winderbaum said that, as Marvel Studios was prepping the end of the Infinity Saga, everyone found themselves a little pre-occupied with making sure everything wrapped up in a satisfying manner. "To say it was a challenge is not even correct. It was one of the most challenging creative endeavors the studio ever undertook. I’m not sure there will ever be anything like it again in cinema," he explained. "It took so much to get all that stuff to galvanize in that one place and in that one time so that people could have that experience in the movie theater."

The casualty of that challenge, however, was merging what Marvel Studios was doing with movies with what was being done on television at the time. "At the time, to say, 'Alright, we’re also going to take this television show and wrap our heads around that,' it would’ve been too much, even though we were communicating back and forth," Winderbaum said. "The references do line up, but it was just too much for us to wrap our minds around at the time."

Things are different now that the dust has settled, however. Winderbaum said, "Flash forward now to Disney+, where we are actually laying out the timeline with tiles on a screen, all of a sudden we’re like, 'We should just do it. Let’s do it.'... So we were able to do it fairly quickly, and it’s interesting that the service of Disney+ actually became the statement just by rearranging those tiles. That’s our medium to define the canon now, which is wild to think about."

It certainly is wild to think that an arrangement of tiles on a streaming service is officially the place to catch up with MCU canon, but at least there's a single official place to look the next time we have a question (or something seems to change again in the ordering of the MCU).

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