Battle of New York (Marvel Timeline 29)



The Battle of New York is the name given to an alien invasion of Earth in Marvel Timeline 29 aka the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It occurred during the Avengers in 2012.

Background
Loki Laufeyson of Asgard had his eyes set on conquering Earth after having been driven from his Asgardian home and thought dead by his family. After announcing himself to Nick Fury and SHIELD along with his intentions and the taking of a powerful item known as the Tesseract, Fury brought together a group of extraordinary individuals to defend Earth against the invasion. SHIELD agents Clint Barton aka Hawkeye and Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow would be teamed up with Steve Rogers aka Captain America, Tony Stark aka Iron Man, Dr Bruce Banner aka the Hulk and Thor Odinson, Loki's angry Asgardian brother. Loki would lead the invasion of Earth over Manhattan, New York City with the Chitauri and their forces with him.

The Battle
On May 4, 2012 Loki began his invasion proper with the Chitauri. SHIELD and the group eventually known as the Avengers teamed up to defend against the invading force. Members of the New York Police Department and US National Guard also joined in to save citizens from the destruction the battle would cause.

Realizing that the waves of foes would continue to enter through a portal above Earth, Iron Man volunteered to have the portal closed. A new wrinkle however presented itself in the form of a nuclear missile under the orders of the World Security Council being fired towards the battle, in the hopes of ending the threat for good though at the cost of countless lives.

Iron Man would intercept the missile and fly it up through the portal to the Chitauri mothership where it would detonate on impact. Between this and Hulk viciously slamming Loki unconscious, the battle would be won, but at the destructive cost of Manhattan. Along with lives lost, the estimated cost of cleaning up and rebuilding from the damage was approximately $160,000,000,000.

Fallout
While the incident did lead to the official formation of the Avengers, it also came at the cost of many lives. The first casualty of the battle was Phil Coulson, agent of SHIELD before he was privately resurrected using previously banned methods involving Kree DNA.

For SHIELD, the Battle was an indicator that the Hydra infiltrators now had their incentive to become known, which would occur two years later. SHIELD would never fully recover though it would survive in a much smaller form for a time. Meanwhile, another group called SWORD would be formed essentially replacing SHIELD.

Another formation was the Department of Damage Control, created by Tony Stark. Damage Control took over much of Lower Manhattan's rebuilding efforts.

The Hell's Kitchen section of Manhattan would be affected with Wilson Fisk looking to seize the opportunity to run this section of Manhattan as its Kingpin.

On a global scale, the Battle alerted all people of Earth to the reality that they were definitely not alone and that hostile forces existed elsewhere in the universe.

On a galactic scale, it introduced Earth as a possible new player, gaining the attention of other alien powers. Among those was the mighty Thanos who had his own gambit in play for the Infinity Stones.

Return to the Battle
In 2023, five years after Thanos has gained all of the Infinity Stones and literally snapped half of the universe to death, the plan for those who remained involved time travel via the Quantum realm, an area that Scott Lang aka Ant-Man had become familiar with. With the plan being to retrieve the stones in specific time periods so they could use them together in the present to undo Thanos' damage, different members of the heroes traveled back to different times.

Traveling back to the Battle of New York were Ant-Man, Captain America, the Hulk, and Iron Man to retrieve three of the stones that were present during that time. While Hulk was able to obtain the Time Stone from the Ancient One after a conversation about why it was needed, the other members looked to obtain the Mind and Space Stones. They were able to gain the Mind Stone, but the Space Stone slipped from them, winding up in the possession of 2012 Loki who used it to escape and cause another timeline situation altogether. As a result, Captain American and Iron Man would travel back to 1972 for the Tesseract.

Further Fallout
The Loki of 2012 had escaped his fate, creating a timeline situation that would draw the attention of the Time Variance Authority and Loki finding himself to be one of many alternate versions of himself all in hiding from the TVA. Loki and another variant, Sylvie Laufeydottir would encounter a variant of Kang, known as He Who Remains with Sylvie striking him down and presumably causing a multiverse to form and a Council of Kangs along with it.

Danaverse Connection
Though other major conflicts and battles have come along since, the Battle of New York was the first significant Earth battle of modern times and became a separation point in the universe's timeline, similar to the Battle of Yavin in the Star Wars Universe or the Death of Dana Fairbanks in the L Word Universe.

Adding to its importance is the time heist visit from the 2023 versions of the timeline's characters, leading to the resurrection of the population snapped away by Thanos in 2018, but also leading to the Loki and Sylvie variants of this timeline's encounter with He Who Remains and the resulting formation of the Council of Kangs from it.

In reality, there was no single timeline in the Marvel sector of the Multiverse, but the other timelines had been hidden away from what He Who Remains had referred to as the Sacred Timeline which he was fighting to preserve until his killing by Sylvie. With He Who Remains' death, those timelines were now not only visible, but travel between them now became possible, though not necessarily probable or without cirumstance.

The different timelines that have alternated from Marvel Timeline 29 will become vital in the Crisis War.

Information
The Battle of New York occurred in the Avengers in 2012. The movie itself acted as the make-or-break moment for Kevin Fiege's Marvel Cinematic Universe concept as previous movies had been used to build to this. A resounding success, the Avengers (2012) became one of the most important in the genre, opening up to new possibilities of storytelling with Marvel properties and Disney, Marvel's parent company eventually making more of an effort to acquire rights to Marvel characters that belonged to other studios, including purchasing entire studios themselves as they would with Fox to have rights to the X-Men and other mutant characters.

The success of the MCU would inspire DC Comics to try and build a shared universe out of their 2013 Man of Steel movie, which in the Danaverse is listed as DC Timeline 39. In 2023, this universe is essentially to be replaced with DC Timeline 62 due to events that occur during the Flash (2023).

This battle shared the name of a series of battles that took place during the American Revolution between British soldiers and American defectors between 1776 and 1777.