It's been an exciting few days for Marvel fans. Yes, Madame Web might have been a shocker (it's not an MCU movie, anyway), but we've had the first Deadpool 3 trailer and Valentine's Day saw an equally huge reveal.
We now know the Fantastic Four cast after months, if not years, of rumours and theories. Marvel chose to announce the casting of Marvel's First Family in a unique way by surprisingly dropping the first poster for The Fantastic Four in the form of a Valentine's Day card.
If you just focused on the confirmation of Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby as Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm and Ebon M0ss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, we wouldn't blame you. Maybe the appearance of HERBIE even distracted you the most.
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However, if you look closely at the poster, it's not just the casting that proves of interest.
The first image features two versions of Ben Grimm: as an astronaut in a frame on the wall and as The Thing chilling on a chair.
Eagle-eyed fans have spotted that The Thing is reading an issue of LIFE magazine from December 1963 with Lyndon B Johnson on the cover. If the aesthetics of the overall image didn't already scream Swinging Sixties, this all-but confirms the time setting of the movie.
Whether it's late 1963 or February 1964, this would give some distance between the events of The Fantastic Four and the majority of the rest of the MCU.
We've had movies and TV shows set almost entirely in the past, such as with Captain America: The First Avenger and Agent Carter, as well as various flashbacks taking place across the 20th Century.
However, it's still the exception rather than the rule and could hint at how the new movie will avoid a common MCU 'plot hole'.
As the MCU has expanded, we've been introduced to countless new powerful individuals. Since we've also seen multiple world-threatening events, the common issue is why that particular character didn't help out when the Avengers were in need.
The obvious answer is just that Marvel might plan out their Phases, but they can't account for everything they're going to do years in advance. But if we decide to skip the logical response, there will have to be an in-universe reason for the absence of the Fantastic Four up to now.
Confirmation of the 1960s timeline (assuming it's not all some massive red herring) gives Marvel an easy route to follow.
It's entirely possible that, like Captain America before them, the Fantastic Four get involved in something in the 1960s that results in them disappearing from the world for an extended period of time.
Maybe some issue leads to them being stranded in the Void at the end of time, which was introduced in Loki. They could have become lost to history or misremembered as Doctor Strange jokes to Earth-838's Reed Richards: "Didn't you guys chart in the '60s?"
It felt like a throwaway joke at the time in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but maybe one that can now be retconned as evidence that they disappeared from the world. We could then see them brought into the present-day MCU in time for the events of Avengers: Secret Wars, whether at the end of their movie or in another MCU movie.
Of course, an even easier option would be to set The Fantastic Four in a different universe and then, like in Deadpool 3, use the TVA as a way to bring them into the main timeline for Secret Wars.
Maybe it's even a universe that's never stylistically left the 60s and is retro-futuristic, which certainly would match director Matt Shakman's comments that the movie is "certainly unlike anything at Marvel that you've seen before".
Either way, The Fantastic Four will hopefully easily avoid this perennial MCU issue so we can just focus on enjoying (hopefully) the first good Fantastic Four movie.
The Fantastic Four is released in cinemas on July 25, 2025. You can watch almost every MCU movie and TV show on Disney+.
Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
