As Marvel Studios’ Phase Six officially commenced late last month with The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) on the big screen, another key change has happened in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. After 14 years, a shake-up has happened involving one of the studio’s earliest movie entries.
Captain America: The First Avenger–The First Entry on the MCU Timeline?
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) is the fifth film in the MCU and serves as the origin story of Steve Rogers, a frail young man from Brooklyn who becomes the iconic superhero Captain America.
Set during World War II, the film follows Steve (Chris Evans), who volunteers for a top-secret experiment called Project Rebirth. He is transformed into a super-soldier and becomes the symbol of American hope against the Nazis. However, he soon discovers that the true threat is Hydra, a rogue Nazi science division led by Johann Schmidt, AKA the Red Skull (Hugo Weaving), who wields the powerful Tesseract—an artifact containing the Space Stone.
As Captain America, Steve leads missions to stop Hydra and ultimately sacrifices himself to crash a Hydra aircraft into the Arctic. He is presumed dead but is later found frozen in ice and revived decades later, setting the stage for his involvement in The Avengers (2012).
The film introduces key MCU elements, including the Tesseract, Hydra, and characters like Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), and Howard Stark (Dominic Cooper), establishing crucial foundations for the broader MCU storyline.
New 2025 Release Changes the MCU Forever
Despite being animated, the new Eyes of Wakanda show on Disney+ is canon to the MCU and expands the Black Panther corner of the universe by spotlighting the Hatut Zeraze, an elite group of Wakandan warriors tasked with tracking down Vibranium across centuries. Eyes of Wakanda is helmed by creator Todd Harris under the Marvel Studios Animation banner, further building on the mythos established in Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther (2018) and its sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022).
The series boasts a stacked voice cast, led by model and actress Winnie Harlow as Noni and Cress Williams as the Lion. Jona Xiao also appears, with additional talent including Anika Noni Rose, Patricia Belcher, Gary Anthony Williams, and Adam Gold.
2011’s Captain America Officially Replaced
With the debut of Eyes of Wakanda, the Marvel Cinematic Universe just underwent a major chronological shake-up. Disney+ has officially placed Eyes of Wakanda, the latest animated entry from Marvel Studios, at the very beginning of the MCU’s in-universe timeline, dethroning Captain America: The First Avenger as the oldest story in the Sacred Timeline.
Dropped onto the streaming platform in the early hours of August 1, 2025, Eyes of Wakanda now leads the “Timeline Order” row on Disney+, effectively pushing the events of The First Avenger down the list. While Steve Rogers’ origin tale has long held the title of earliest MCU installment with its 1940s World War II setting, this newly released series jumps much further back—featuring episodes set in 1260 B.C., 1200 B.C., 1400 A.D., and 1896 A.D.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe timeline begins with Eyes of Wakanda, followed by Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain Marvel, Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, and then the team-up event The Avengers. After that, the story continues with Thor: The Dark World, Iron Man 3, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
The animated shorts I Am Groot follow, before the timeline shifts to Marvel Television’s street-level heroes, including Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. From there, it continues with Ant-Man, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Defenders, leading into Captain America: Civil War, Black Widow, and Black Panther. The vigilante series The Punisher fits next, followed by Spider-Man: Homecoming, Doctor Strange, Thor: Ragnarok, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame.
Post-Endgame entries include Loki, What If…?, WandaVision, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Eternals, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Hawkeye. The supernatural and grounded arcs expand with Moon Knight, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Echo, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Ms. Marvel, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Ironheart.
Seasonal and cosmic events follow with Werewolf by Night and The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, before returning to the Quantum Realm in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and closing out that trilogy in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. The larger Multiversal conflict deepens in Secret Invasion, The Marvels, and Deadpool & Wolverine, with the saga continuing into Agatha All Along, Daredevil: Born Again, Captain America: Brave New World, and Thunderbolts*.
With Phase Six officially underway, the next time audiences will visit the big screen will be on July 31, 2026, when Tom Holland returns as the popular wallcrawler Peter Parker in Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026). Following that, Robert Downey Jr. will officially return to the MCU in the Russo Brothers’ Avengers: Doomsday (2026). He made his debut as Victor Von Doom/Doctor Doom in the post-credits scene of The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
How do you feel about Captain America being usurped as the first entry in the MCU’s timeline? Let Inside the Magic know in the comments down below!
The post After 14 Years, Marvel Officially Replaces 2011’s ‘Captain America’ in MCU appeared first on Inside the Magic.
