While three Marvel films are set to come out this year, only one of them is really set to follow-up on any of the fallout from Captain America: Civil War, but in order to know what's happening in that storyline, we first need to know when it is happening. While Spider-Man: Homecoming will be released more than a year after the character was introduced in Civil War, not nearly that much time has passed. Producer Eric Carroll says that the movie will only take place a few months after the Avengers collapsed. According to Carroll...
There will be some awkward chronology in that the movie comes out almost two years after Civil War, but we're playing it like it's a few months after Civil War. It hasn't been years since Tony called him back. It came down to one of things we wanted to do was keep him in high school as long as possible. Let's have him do something fun and different. Sony came to ourselves when we sat down and we thought, 'Why do this version?' And it is because we can really do a high school. Show that this is a young hero. Otherwise you have seen it all before.
Ultimately, Eric Carroll shows just how important it was to Spider-Man: Homecoming that Peter Parker be a high school student, though he does exaggerate how long it's been since we last saw the Spider-Man character on screen. They could have set the movie years after the events of Captain America: Civil War, but doing so would have put Peter out of high school or close to it, and it's clear, based on these comments made during a Spider-man: Homecoming set visit by our own Sean O'Connell, that they see the high school age of the character as the key differentiation between the MCU version of Spider-Man and every other version that we've seen over the last few years.
Of course, as a side effect of that, odds are that we'll get at least a bit of information dropped into the dialogue that will give us an idea where some of the current and former Avengers are and what they're currently doing. One assumes that Tony Stark is still working alongside the government and that they are still interested in the whereabouts of Steve Rogers as well as the others that he broke out of prison. We certainly don't expect the movie to dwell on that info much, it's still going to be a Spider-Man story first and foremost, but Marvel movies have always been good about including that sort of worldbuilding detail while telling other stories.
With only Thor: Ragnarok and Black Panther set to take place between Spider-Man: Homecoming and Avengers: Infinity War there won't be many more opportunities to set the stage for when the big Phase 3 finale gets going. While Captain America: Civil War was still some time ago for us, the fact that it was much more recent for these characters means they will still be dealing with its repercussions.
