canon event

What it means

An unavoidable, often embarrassing or painful life experience that you supposedly must go through to become who you're meant to be. The joke is that you shouldn't interfere with someone's canon event, since it's a necessary part of their story.

Examples

• Getting your heart broken at 16 is a canon event.
• Don't warn him, that bad haircut is a canon event.
• Crying in a college bathroom is a universal canon event.
• Let her text the ex, it's a canon event, we can't intervene.

Where it comes from

Borrowed from comic-book 'canon' lore and supercharged by 'Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse' (2023), then memed on TikTok as a framework for inevitable life moments.

Related slang