Werewolf by Night’s on the Marvel timeline, but explores a totally new world

Marvel Studios’ oddball Halloween horror special Werewolf by NightThe opening scene shows a stylized fresco depicting the Avengers. A voice-over explains that we’re all familiar with certain events in the world of light, but no one ever talks about the world below, where Werewolf’s story takes place. Next, it tells the story of monsters that were never before seen in Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The fresco method is an incredibly elliptical approach to addressing the question of whether You Werewolf at Night’s story takes place within established MCU canon — especially since visually and narratively, it looks nothing like the rest of the MCU. This hour-long Disney Plus minimovie, shot mostly in black & white with stylized performances. The goofy violence and extremely stylized performance feel like something out of Hammer Horror. MCU has been working for the past few years to establish the existence of the multiverse. There are other worlds that could be home to any kind of event.

Polygon asked Michael Giacchino director to clarify the following: You Werewolf at NightTake place on Earth-616 in the familiar MCU timeline

According to him, the answer is definitively yes.

“Oh, we tried for a long time to just say [in the intro], This is part of MCU.” Giacchino says. “But it felt like we also needed to show it as well. And I said, ‘Well, what if we just showed it in the same illustrative way that we’re showing these other images up front?’”

Like other recent MCU stories — Eternal, for instance — You Werewolf at NightIntroduces some new ideas into the MCU like the MacGuffin key, which is a magic item known as the Bloodstone. Elsa Bloodstone is a new character, and she’s the heir to Bloodstone. Nevers’ Laura Donnelly, and Jack, a contender for the Bloodstone, played by Gael García Bernal. It also shows viewers that all of these people and other things are there. In this instance, these ideas could include werewolves, vampires and other strange monsters such as Man-Thing. The Bloodstone is used to kill them.

“There’s this whole corner of the Marvel Universe that no one knows anything about,” Giacchino says. “It’s a very underground sort of area. And these hunters and these monsters, they all kind of exist in the shadows, in a place the rest of the world won’t admit to, or doesn’t pay attention to.’ That [intro]That was how we said it. All of that other stuff is still there, it’s all good. You don’t need to worry. [laughs]”

Btu is where You Werewolf at NightHow does the MCU timeline fit in? Giacchino isn’t saying.

“People tend to want this connectivity to everything,” he says. “They’ve been sort of trained in the MCU to know that everything is connected in some way, everything is going on in some similar timeline. This [story] does happen in the MCU, during all of that, we just don’t show you where, when, how. And it’s not important to show that, because what’s important are these characters. This is going to be a story — one night in the life of [protagonists] Jack and Elsa, that’s what you’re going to get. And then where we go from there, we’ll see. We’ll see. Who knows?”

Giacchino’s special does seem like it’s helping to set up the story of vampire hunter Blade, but he says that was never part of any conversation about You Werewolf at Night.

“We never had any mandate to queue up anything,” he says. “It was really just Let’s tell this story. I guess by default, we’re saying, The MCU has monsters. This was one thing that we wanted to emphasize. Look, yes, these things exist, they’re here, we’re gonna show them to you. From there, it’s easy to go wherever you wish. […]Where? BladeIt is already happening, and people are prepared for it. However, there wasn’t a mandate.ThisIt is an easy way to connect with others ThisConnecting to That. That was never a part of it.”

However You Werewolf at Night establishes Elsa and Jack in the grand MCU continuity, the special doesn’t offer much about their pasts or futures. Giacchino intended this to be all.

“I was able to just go in and tell the story I wanted to tell without worrying about Was Jack there before? OrWhat is his next move?” Giacchino says. “If I were a kid and I saw this, I would make it all up in my head. This was part of the fun. That’s what was fun about this stuff as a kid, was wondering what’s going to happen, or where it’s going to go. It’s more fun to not know than it is to be sure. It’s like horror — what you don’t see is more frightening than what you do see. That was our rule of thumb all along the way.”

It is not clear where Jack or Elsa will go next. This could be a possibility. You Werewolf at NightGet a spinoff or sequel?

“I mean, I love these characters. I would hate to just abandon them,” Giacchino says. “I would love to do more with them, of course. Up until now, though, we’ve been just working our butts off to get the film done so we could get it out into the world. Maybe now we’ll have some time to reflect and look at it and figure out what happens.”

You Werewolf at NightOn Oct. 7, Disney Plus will debut the first Disney Plus video.