Marvel Studios’s new Halloween special, Werewolf By Night, evokes the black and white monster movies of the 1930s and ’40s, and although the special’s prologue firmly places the story within the Marvel Cinematic Universe by showing us an illustration of the Avengers, there are no connections to the wider MCU. With its enclosed setting of the Bloodstone family labyrinth, the special seems to take place in its own world.
But when does Werewolf By Night take place? For most of the special, the vintage aesthetic lulls you into believing that it actually does take place in the ’30s or ’40s. In an interview with Collider, director Michael Giancchino was coy about Werewolf By Night’s timeframe, saying that “the one thing we all agreed on [in discussions about the special’s MCU connections] is it takes place within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yes, it’s in there. We never say when, how or why.”
There are some clues, though, that indicate that Werewolf By Night might take place much later in the MCU timeline than you think.
Here lies Beverly
About halfway through the special, Jack Russell (Gael Garcia Bernal) and Elsa Bloodstone (Laura Donnelly) find themselves locked in the Bloodstone mausoleum, where various members of the family are commemorated with backlit plaques. As Elsa climbs the wall to get the mausoleum key out of her overly optimistic aunt Frances’s tomb, we briefly see the plaque for someone named Beverly. Beverly’s date of death? May 12, 1986.
Thanks to that detail, we know that the earliest Werewolf By Night could possibly take place would be the late ’80s. But there’s another clue that might put it even later in the timeline.
Jack and Ted share some coffee
The next morning, safe and sound in a makeshift camp out in the woods, Jack and Ted (A.K.A. Man-Thing) share some freshly made coffee. Behind them we see some junk, including a broken payphone (definitely modern-looking), and in front of them, there’s a small carafe of coffee sitting on a rock.
I love coffee almost as much as I love combing through Marvel movies for hidden details, so I immediately recognized that carafe as the Bodum French press. It’s not Bodum’s original design from the ’70s, though. Jack and Ted are using the same modern press that you can pick up at Target. That means that Werewolf by Night most likely takes place concurrently with everything else that’s been going on in the MCU, although it’s hard to pin down a specific year. It could be as far back as the ’80s or ’90s (sorry, my knowledge of coffee maker design history is limited, so I don’t know what French presses looked like back then), or it could be post-Blip.
What does this mean for Jack, Ted, and Elsa? At Disney’s 2022 D23 Expo, Kevin Feige announced that the world of Werewolf By Night “will become quite important to the future of the MCU.” He might have just meant that the MCU will continue to explore the supernatural—but he might have been hinting that Jack and the others will be showing up in other MCU projects. With characters like Doctor Strange, Agatha Harkness, Moon Knight, and Blade either established or on their way, the MCU is a very friendly place for things that go bump in the night.
(featured image: Marvel)
