Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-100762-20160301113532

This is not a new theory, but I believe it has a bit of a new twist on it that Deadpool supports. There has been at least some casual suggestion lately that Fox and Disney have been in negotiations about the X-Men Universe television series and/or Fantastic Four. While many have suggested that Fantastic Four may be coming to the MCU in Phase 4, I believe something much more fundamental is occurring. Deadpool had two direct references to the MCU included within it: Hydra Bob and a helicarrier (it also has a reference to Kevin Feige and multiple references to Spider-Man, who is now MCU). Granted both were rather mild and neither explicit, but it's something.

I've been a fan of both franchise for years — since 2000 with X-Men and since Iron Man 2 with the MCU. Days of Future Past, however, took X-Men on a divergent reality: Earth-TRN414. Everything up to 1973 was Earth-10005, but that's no longer the case. I suggest that Earth-199999 (the MCU) and Earth-TRN414 are the same thing and here's my evidence:

Except for one flashback to Magneto's Holocaust childhood in First Class, everything in that film takes place in 1962-3. Meanwhile, the Earth-TRN414 portion of Days of Future Past is all in 1973-4. And the upcoming Apocalypse film takes place in 1983. (X-Men sure likes it's decade gaps.)  The only other universe films planned in the near future – Wolverine 3 and Deadpool 2 – are stand-alone films.

You know what happens cinematically in the MCU/Earth-199999 from 1962 to 1983? Pretty much nothing vital. There are no Avengers. SHIELD is still forming. HYDRA is up to no good but being so quietly. Zola is turned into a computer. A lot of people are born and a lot die. Really almost nothing has been depicted in film for this entire period even in flashbacks and even references to the decades is extremely rare and mostly isolated to Agents of SHIELD.

While this timeline gap may not have been intentional originally, I believe it is now and that the X-Men Prequel trilogy is placed precisely where it is to help bring X-Men back in line with the MCU. No mutants in the MCU? Well perhaps there are but the crisis was dealt with in 1973, or 1983, and is now either underground or just kept quiet. There certainly are a lot of people running around the MCU with somewhat unexplained powers (or very questionably explained powers). I'm not saying the merger of these two franchises was intentional from the start, only that Fox and Disney perhaps worked out their differences a few years back and have been slowly ensuring that their two continuities don't conflict. Even if X-Men is working on a whole new cast of characters – the young X-Men that will appear in Apocalypse – the 1980s and 1990s are barely touched by the MCU leaving plenty of room for more stories. The Avengers only Assembled in 2012, after all, and pretty much everything before Iron Man in 2008 is free game.

Lastly back to Deadpool. Currently that and Fantastic Four are the only X-Men (or possibly X-Men) Universe films that take place in the 2010s. Conveniently, though, neither of them contradict anything in the MCU. Deadpool is very much a two-day adventure with a flash-back that runs, what, 18 months or less? And most of that took place in some top-secret facility. No conflicts at all. And Fantastic Four was some top secret government project. The Earth was imperilled, but nobody knew about it except them and Doctor Doom and a few scientists. Plus there was no time for the Avengers to come and deal with it and since it was a summer film release, the Agents of SHIELD was on holiday anyway (those slackers). I don't see old-man-Logan or Deadpool 2 adding anything to the conflict and I think X-Men will be going pretty slowly until MCU Phase 3 ends anyway, making it all the more perfect when Earth-199999 and Earth-TRN414 merge officially and publicly after Infinity War, Part 2, in 2019.

One last caveat, I am not saying this is a good or a bad thing (although I think it may save both franchises from exhaustion after Phase 3 by ending the Marvel film civil war), all I am saying is that the evidence suggests there is no cinematic conflict currently between the two universes which is highly suggestive that something is going on between the two.

Oh, and Quicksilver. Yeah, it's a nickname. More than one person can have it and there is a 42 year gap between 1973 and 2015 so I'm going to say they're two different people with the same ability who took the same name. Only conflict: resolved. 