Where Does ‘Secret Invasion’ Take Place in the MCU Timeline? What to Watch to Understand the Show

Secret Invasion is Marvel Studios’ most intense foray into the spy thriller genre yet. With shapeshifting aliens poised to take over the Earth, only one man stands in their way: Nick Fury. Finally, after 15 years in the MCU, Samuel L. Jackson is taking the lead. This is the Marvel moment that lots of fans have been waiting for, and it’s only just begun.

But as with every Marvel property, there are plenty of questions worth asking — especially regarding the show’s timeline. How continuity-heavy is it? Will you need to rewatch all of the MCU before diving in? And how does Secret Invasion fit in with all of the other Marvel content that’s come out in the past year? If these questions sound familiar, then we’ve got some answers for you.

What you need to watch before Secret Invasion:

Luckily for everyone out there who isn’t an obsessive Marvel devotee, you only have to watch one movie in order to understand what’s going on in Secret Invasion: 2019’s Captain Marvel. That’s it. Not only does that film serve as the closest to a Nick Fury origin story as we’ve gotten in the MCU, it also details the Skrulls’ arrival on Earth, introduces Talos, and kicks off his partnership with Fury.

If you’d like to watch two movies to prep for Secret Invasion, you can follow Captain Marvel up with 2019’s Spider-Man: Far From Home. That movie will tell you everything you need to know about The Blip and, if you watch all the way through to the end credits, you’ll get a good idea of what Nick Fury was doing post-Blip. Plus, you get more of Talos.

It really is that simple! There are other movies you could toss in for fun, like 2012’s The Avengers (for Maria Hill’s introduction), 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier (its a tonal predecessor to Secret Invasion and has some damn good Nick Fury scenes in it), or 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War (just so you can see the Blip happen, and also find out where the Skrulls found all that alien DNA on Earth). Those movies all feel way more optional, though. Your call!

Where does Secret Invasion take place in the MCU timeline?

This is actually confusing since Secret Invasion lies to you in its very first scene. The series opens up by setting it in “MOSCOW. PRESENT DAY.” As has been broken down in a previous explainer, “present day” actually means November 4, 2025. Why? Because the Russian holiday Unity Day takes place on November 4, and because that infamous Blip pushed us into the future a little. And since we know Secret Invasion takes place after Spider-Man: Far From Home thanks to a comment from Sonya Falsworth, that means it’s most likely that Secret Invasion takes place in 2025.

In fact, “present day” was revealed to really just mean “in release order.” The MCU has been so chaotic timeline-wise over the past four years, what with the time travel and dimension-hopping and reshuffling of release dates, that it makes sense for Marvel to come up with a phrase that means “this takes place after the last thing we released and before the next thing we will release,” a.k.a. in order.

So with that in mind, Secret Invasion takes place after She-Hulk: Attorney at Law and it takes place before The Marvels, which opens in theaters on November 10.

Does Secret Invasion take place after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3?

Oh, so you remembered that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was actually the last Marvel thing to come out. The answer is… kind of no? James Gunn has talked about this on Twitter and it actually looks like The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special happened in December 2025 and Guardians Vol. 3 happened in early 2026, probably January or February.

So, where does Secret Invasion fit in the timeline? The short answer is, Secret Invasion takes place after all the other Marvel stuff that you’ve seen, roughly the same time as The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, and probably before all the Marvel stuff that hasn’t come out yet. Got it? Yeah, that’s as simple as an explanation gets when it comes to the MCU timeline.

New episodes of Secret Invasion premiere on Wednesdays on Disney+.