This article contains spoilers for the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special.The MCU's Phase 4 timeline has been even more confusing, not helped by a number of stories that explore the multiverse.
The Disney+ MCU timeline places the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special at the very end, meaning it's the latest event in the timeline to date. While it's true this Disney+ timeline is far from perfect, in this case it makes sense; it's possible to date Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which releases next year, and Marvel surely won't want to mess up the timeline even more.
Groot's Growth Fixes Thor: Love & Thunder's Place In The MCU Timeline
This actually helps with deciding Thor: Ragnarok, which kicks off in 2017, and so argue for a later date.
There must be a fairly substantial time-gap between Thor: Love & Thunder and the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, however. Groot does grow inconsistently throughout the timeline; he matures from baby form to teenager in just a couple of years. But he is still in teenage form in Thor: Love & Thunder, while he's changed substantially in the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. It's difficult to imagine such a radical change occurring in just a couple of months, thus suggesting Thor: Love & Thunder should be set in late 2024, and the Holiday Special at Christmas 2025.
Why The MCU Timeline Has Become So Difficult
From an out-of-universe perspective, there's a simple reason the MCU timeline has become so difficult; it's because Marvel is producing more content than ever before, often in siloed teams, and the order of release seems to be flexible. Even showrunners have itted to having no idea where their stories will fit into the Moon Knight, explicit scenes that would have helped date the show in relation to other events were deliberately cut, although there are still clues in - of all places - the phases of the moon.
The Disney+ MCU timeline hasn't really helped matters. In general, it tends to place the latest release at the very end of the sequence - even when such placements can't possibly be right. The problem is most notable in the case of Shang-Chi & the Legend of the Ten Rings, where Disney+ completely ignores the date of the Chinese festival of Qingming - a crucial part of the plot. Still, in this case, Disney+ does seem to have gotten the Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special right, even if Thor: Love & Thunder is in the wrong place.
