When Do Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye Take Place in the MCU?

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has grown into a sprawling story that jumps between years, universes, and even timelines. For many fans, two closely connected projects — Spider-Man: No Way Home and Hawkeye — raise a straightforward but surprisingly complex question: when do they actually take place?

This guide breaks down the key clues, lines them up with confirmed MCU dates, and explains how both stories fit into the broader post-Avengers: Endgame era.

Foundations: The Blip and the Endgame Time Jump

To understand the timeline of No Way Home and Hawkeye, we first need to ground a few fixed points that Marvel has publicly confirmed.

• The Snap: Thanos wipes out half of life in the universe in Avengers: Infinity War, which Marvel places in 2018.
• The Blip return: The Avengers reverse the Snap in Avengers: Endgame, five years later, in 2023.
• Five-year jump: The MCU timeline explicitly advances by five years between the Snap and the Blip, meaning all post-Endgame stories reference 2023 and beyond.

Marvel Studios has even published an official timeline book and streaming order that pegs Endgame at 2023 and locates later Phase 4 projects in the months that follow.

Where Far From Home Fits In

Spider-Man: Far From Home serves as a direct epilogue to Endgame, dealing with the emotional and practical fallout of Tony Stark’s death and the Blip.

• The film explicitly references that it takes place eight months after the Blip, which places it in the summer of 2024.
• Parker goes on a European school trip after finishing a school year disrupted by the Blip, reinforcing that roughly a year has passed since everyone returned.

Why this matters: No Way Home opens immediately after the final moments of Far From Home, so anchoring one film locks in the other.

Spider-Man: No Way Home – From Summer to Christmas 2024

No Way Home is one of the rare MCU entries that quietly drops multiple in-world time hints — seasons, holidays, and background details — that let fans narrow down the dates with surprising precision.

Opening: Directly After Far From Home

The first scenes of No Way Home pick up seconds after J. Jonah Jameson reveals Spider-Man’s identity to the world in a broadcast at the end of Far From Home. That mid-credits scene was already set in the summer of 2024.

From there, we watch:

• Public backlash and media chaos against Peter.
• Legal trouble and interrogation of Peter and his friends.
• The group returning to high school to begin a new academic year.

Because the movie shows Peter starting what is clearly his senior year of high school, this portion lines up with late August to early fall 2024.

Middle Act: Halloween-Adjacent Rejections

A key plot beat comes when Peter, MJ, and Ned receive their college application results. The rejection letters arrive around the time of Halloween decorations both at school and in the Sanctum Sanctorum.

• Visual cues like Halloween decor indicate late October 2024.
• This is when Peter turns to Doctor Strange to cast the memory-erasing spell.
• The botched spell is the doorway for villains from other universes to enter the MCU.

The multiverse chaos — capturing the villains, attempts to cure them, and the climactic battle — all play out over what appears to be only a few days of narrative time.

Epilogue: Christmas in New York

No Way Home closes with a quieter epilogue. New York is blanketed in snow, Christmas decorations are everywhere, and Peter has moved into a small apartment to start a new life.

• Holiday decor and a snow-covered city strongly suggest December 2024.
• Reports within the film’s dialogue imply a short gap (roughly a few weeks) between the Statue of Liberty battle and the final scenes, but still within the same holiday season.

Putting this all together gives a compact but clear window for the film’s events.

Hawkeye: A Ground-Level Christmas Story

The Hawkeye Disney+ series is firmly framed as a Christmas-time adventure in New York City. It follows Clint Barton and newcomer Kate Bishop over a few hectic days as they try to resolve old Ronin business before the holidays.

Marvel’s official timeline placements and tie-in materials locate Hawkeye after Endgame and close to the end of 2024. Key clues include:

• References to the Blip and post-Endgame world rebuilding.
• Clint’s fame from the Battle of New York, turned into the in-universe stage musical Rogers: The Musical.
• Kate Bishop’s age and backstory, which trace back to the 2012 alien invasion in The Avengers.

Across multiple episodes we see that:

• The countdown to Christmas is a central plot device — we repeatedly hear how many days are left.
• Snowy New York locations and holiday markets align with the same season as the No Way Home epilogue.

These story and visual elements, combined with Marvel’s published viewing order, point strongly to late December 2024 for Hawkeye.

How No Way Home and Hawkeye Overlap

Although the two projects never directly reference each other on screen, their timing appears to be nearly concurrent.

• No Way Home finishes around December 2024 in New York.
• Hawkeye runs over several days leading up to Christmas in the same city.

No characters in one project acknowledge the events of the other — there is no mention of a multiversal battle at the Statue of Liberty in Hawkeye, and No Way Home does not nod to tracksuits, crime families, or a certain returning crime boss. This absence can feel odd, but there are practical reasons:

• Marvel Studios often develops films and series on overlapping schedules, which can limit the ability to coordinate fine-grained crossover details.
• Both stories are deliberately focused on personal stakes: Peter’s identity and loneliness, and Clint’s attempt to retire peacefully and mentor Kate.
• Large-scale global consequences (like those shown in Eternals) are also downplayed or omitted in both, suggesting a storytelling choice to keep each narrative self-contained.

Nevertheless, in the MCU’s broad chronology, both sit very close together at the end of 2024, with No Way Home likely wrapping up days or weeks before the climactic showdown in Hawkeye.

Relation to Other Phase 4 Stories

Marvel’s official timeline and statements from creatives help place these two stories relative to other Phase 4 titles.

• WandaVision — Set just a few weeks after Endgame, so early 2023.
• The Falcon and the Winter Soldier — Takes place months after Steve gives Sam the shield, still in 2023.
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings — Occurs after Endgame and before No Way Home; context suggests 2024.
• Eternals — Set after Endgame with a story spanning centuries but concluding in the modern MCU era, likely 2024 as well.
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness — Confirmed by Marvel to be set after the events of No Way Home.

Positioning these projects gives a simplified snapshot of the post-Blip mainstream timeline:

Why the Exact Year Matters to Fans

For casual viewers, whether a story happens in 2024 or 2025 may not change much. But for long-time fans, the MCU’s internal clock is more than trivia — it affects how character arcs, crossovers, and world-building are interpreted.

• Character age and growth: Knowing No Way Home is set just over a year after the Blip highlights how little time Peter has had to process his mentor’s death and the pressures of being a superhero.
• Overlap opportunities: Recognizing that Hawkeye and No Way Home share a December 2024 backdrop helps explain fan theories about potential unseen encounters between heroes in New York.
• Multiverse continuity: Because No Way Home directly sets up multiversal instability that feeds into Multiverse of Madness, its timing relative to other magical or cosmic events is important for future plotlines.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Q: In what year does Spider-Man: No Way Home take place?

A: The main events of Spider-Man: No Way Home occur between roughly October and December 2024, with the story beginning immediately after the summer 2024 ending of Far From Home.

Q: When is the Hawkeye series set in the MCU?

A: Hawkeye is set during the Christmas season in late 2024, after the events of Avengers: Endgame and around the same general timeframe as the end of No Way Home.

Q: Does Hawkeye happen before or after Spider-Man: No Way Home?

A: Evidence points to No Way Home starting earlier in 2024 and ending shortly before or partially overlapping with Hawkeye, which takes place over a few days immediately leading up to Christmas 2024.

Q: Why don’t Hawkeye and No Way Home reference each other’s events?

A: Marvel tends to keep many Disney+ series and films narratively self-contained, especially when they focus on specific character arcs. Production timing and the desire to avoid overcomplicating plots likely contributed to the lack of explicit cross-references, even though the stories are set in the same city and season.

Q: Where in the timeline is Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness?

A: Marvel’s official ordering places Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness after Spider-Man: No Way Home, continuing the multiverse storyline that began with Loki and escalated when Strange’s spell unraveled in No Way Home.