Where Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Plot Thread Currently Stands As Phase 5 Kicks Off

While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been a very busy franchise for a long time, its scope expanded dramatically after Avengers: Endgame with a large slate of TV series to go along with the never-ending flow of mega-budget blockbuster films. New characters are flooding the franchise while only a few of our older heroes have exited–and now there’s so much more MCU than anybody could have imagined a decade ago.

This glut of content hasn’t been the best experience for fans, though, because they’ve set up so many things and paid off very little the past few years. Stories have rarely crossed over or even referenced each other, and so we’re left with dozens of dangling, ongoing story threads and no sense of how they might interact with each other in the future. It’s making it difficult to even care about it all, much less actually keep track of it.

But we can help with that. What you’re about to read isn’t a full recap of the MCU’s story so far or anything like that–I have a life beyond writing nerd blogs. Instead, this is just a quick trip around the MCU to give a refresher about where each outstanding plot thread currently stands and what all the major characters were last up to as far as we know. That’s up to and including Ant-Man & the Wasp: Quantumania, so be warned that there will be spoilers here.

Let’s dive right in, starting with the newest film.