Avengers: Endgame (2019)

Originally posted by -Pr-

Spoiler:
My understanding was that:

-Cap leaves our time/universe to return the stones to the timelines that were created when the stones were taken.
-Cap goes and puts the stones back where they were, but when it's time to come back, he doesn't let himself be brought back, instead staying in this parallel universe. He marries Peggy and settles down.
-At the end of the movie, Cap uses his GPS bracelet to finally come back to our time/universe.

That was what I got from it, at least.

Okay, but personally I didn't really get that impression given that

Spoiler:
he was an old man. I thought they were quite clearly suggesting he went back to the past, and has lived there and now met up with the Avengers as an old man. All within the same reality/timeline.

Edit- Read ares response after I posted. Don't mean to be ganging up on you or anything lol

Originally posted by ares834
Not only is that not implied by the film but it would have been impossible.

Spoiler:
Every time a character returns to the main timeline involves the "time machine" calling them back. In other words, the only time Steve could have returned was when Hulk was activating the machine and he would have returned to the machine. He didn't. The implication was Steve has been living his life in the main timeline all along which makes no sense and contradicts the earlier time travel rules.

Spoiler:
Twice in the movie saw them make jumps of their own. Tony and Cap when they jump from New York in 2014 back to the 70s? And when they all tell the machine to bring them back from the past to the present. That's the bracelets telling the machine to do so, which leaves an absolutely massive window for old Cap to hop over when he wants to.

Either he lives in a parallel universe that stays parallel, or got folded in to the main one like I originally thought. It works either way.

Originally posted by Darth Thor
Okay, but personally I didn't really get that impression given that

Spoiler:
he was an old man. I thought they were quite clearly suggesting he went back to the past, and has lived there and now met up with the Avengers as an old man. All within the same reality/timeline.

Edit- Read ares response after I posted. Don't mean to be ganging up on you or anything lol

Spoiler:
I was suggesting that he waited until he was old to use the bracelet, as we were shown that they function as homing beacons.

Either that or, like the Ancient one said, everything gets folded back together, creating multiple versions of people in the same, now-combined universe. It works either way without breaking any rules, imo.

Originally posted by -Pr-

Spoiler:
Twice in the movie saw them make jumps of their own. Tony and Cap when they jump from New York in 2014 back to the 70s? And when they all tell the machine to bring them back from the past to the present. That's the bracelets telling the machine to do so, which leaves an absolutely massive window for old Cap to hop over when he wants to.

Either he lives in a parallel universe that stays parallel, or got folded in to the main one like I originally thought. It works either way.

Spoiler:
They can jump back in time but they need the machine to pull them back to the main timeline. That's pretty blatantly how it works. This is why Nebula needs to activate the machine for Thanos to appear rather then him just appearing on his own.

And the timeline being "folded" back in makes no sense. If that was their intent, then their version of time travel is even more nonsensical then I imagined. Either way, the movie bungled time travel.

Originally posted by -Pr-

Spoiler:

Either that or, like the Ancient one said, everything gets folded back together, creating multiple versions of people in the same, now-combined universe. It works either way without breaking any rules, imo.

This would make most sense IMO.

All that Star Trek pays off lol

Originally posted by ares834

Spoiler:
Either way, the movie bungled time travel.

Spoiler:
Honestly was a mistake to use it. Unlesss it was going to be based on a very solid set of rules, like can't change the past, and everything needs to be put back exactly where it was extracted from. Which was the principle they set out, but then unfortunately they just broke it in multiple ways.

That said I actually enjoyed the second hour of the film with the time hopping through past films.

Originally posted by Darth Thor
Wait, wait, wait...

What are the rules for

Spoiler:
time travel here?

Can the past be changed or not? Let's start there. Because Bruce suggested they could not. Yet Cap seemed to have changed his at the end.

So lets address that first. Then we can get into the convolutions of randomly pulling out Gamora, Thanos and Nebula from history, and doing what we like with them with zero repercussions to the timeline.

Okay, so a LOT of people are misunderstanding this. It goes like this:

Spoiler:
Cap didn't change his past. You can NOT change YOUR individual past. What you experience is always going to be a linear perception of time, meaning there is no vanishing photo like in Back to the Future.

Cap simply went back to the past, and stayed there- making that his present, at the time. He then lived in that timeline until it became the current timeline, and showed up on that bench, by just... Idk, walking there, lol. He didn't use the watch/time machine at all, to return.

THEN, the reason they can pull Gomorrah from the past, is because she traveled from the past, into the future, which became the present for her, and consequentially the present for the mainstream timeline. Meaning that Gomorrah from the past essentially just traveled into the future. The timeline where she existed during the GOTG movies is therefor made no longer accurate, because if they were to travel into the past NOW, from their present(where past Gomorrah is in the future[i.e. the new present]), she would no longer be there and would instead be in the future, from their perspective. The same goes for Nebula. Nebula is now dead in the mainstream timeline, but the ORIGINAL Neblua exists in the mainstream timeline, because she was present in that timeline before the Nebula from the past was killed(in fact, she was the one that killed her/herself).

That might be a lot to take in, but does that clear it up?

Originally posted by ares834

Spoiler:
They can jump back in time but they need the machine to pull them back to the main timeline. That's pretty blatantly how it works. This is why Nebula needs to activate the machine for Thanos to appear rather then him just appearing on his own.

And the timeline being "folded" back in makes no sense. If that was their intent, then their version of time travel is even more nonsensical then I imagined. Either way, the movie bungled time travel.

You're really just not understanding it. It's really not that complicated, refer to my comments directed to DT, I hope it helps.

I think the issue is that everyone is overthinking it, and when you heard

Spoiler:
"You can't change the past", everyone thought that meant that the past cannot be changed at all, which isn't the case. Your INDIVIDUAL past can't be changed. Like Wolverine in Xmen DOFP. Even though he changed the past and woke up in a different timeline, he still remembered everything that happened, because he DID experience it linearly.

Originally posted by ares834

Spoiler:
They can jump back in time but they need the machine to pull them back to the main timeline. That's pretty blatantly how it works. This is why Nebula needs to activate the machine for Thanos to appear rather then him just appearing on his own.

And the timeline being "folded" back in makes no sense. If that was their intent, then their version of time travel is even more nonsensical then I imagined. Either way, the movie bungled time travel.

I accounted for that in my post.

The

Spoiler:
bracelet tells the machine to send them where they want to go, whether it's back to the present, or to another time period. We see this when they go back in time to the 70s to get more Pym particles. He had more than one way to get back to the present, whether by simply coming back using the bracelet, or just waiting it out in the new timeline.

Originally posted by Darth Thor
This would make most sense IMO.

All that Star Trek pays off lol

lol, it does indeed.

Originally posted by SSJGGogeta
You're really just not understanding it. It's really not that complicated, refer to my comments directed to DT, I hope it helps.

I read it and you're wrong.

Spoiler:
They can't change the past, not merely their personal past but the past in general. If they could then going back in time to kill Thanos would have worked. Yes, in their personal past Thanos would have wiped out half of all life, but when they returned to the future his snap would have been undone. However, Hulk directly says that killing past Thanos would not solve anything. And we see this is the case as they change "the past" and it has no impact on the future.

Originally posted by -Pr-
I accounted for that in my post.

The

Spoiler:
bracelet tells the machine to send them where they want to go, whether it's back to the present, or to another time period. We see this when they go back in time to the 70s to get more Pym particles. He had more than one way to get back to the present, whether by simply coming back using the bracelet, or just waiting it out in the new timeline.

No, you didn't.

Spoiler:
Everything suggests the machine is required to return to the present. Every time they return is shown requiring the use of the machine. It's just the same as how Ant-man requires someone to press a button to recall him from the Quantum Zone. The bracelets can be used to go further back, but the machine needs to be used to recall them.

Originally posted by ares834
I read it and you're wrong.

Spoiler:
They can't change the past, not merely their personal past but the past in general. If they could then going back in time to kill Thanos would have worked. Yes, in their personal past Thanos would have wiped out half of all life, but when they returned to the future his snap would have been undone. However, Hulk directly says that killing past Thanos would not solve anything. And we see this is the case as they change "the past" and it has no impact on the future.

Okay, so again, you're misunderstanding this.

Spoiler:
Killing Thanos before he did the snap would have created an alternate timeline. Which is why it wouldn't have changed their current present. In which case, they would have simply created a NEW timeline, which the only way to fix it would be to travel back AGAIN and STOP themselves from killing Thanos. Which is why they went to the past to simply take the stones, and then after they used them in the present, they took them back to IMMEDIATELY after they took them from the past, to patch the timelines.

See? It really isn't that complicated.

Originally posted by SSJGGogeta
Okay, so again, you're misunderstanding this.

Spoiler:
Killing Thanos before he did the snap would have created an alternate timeline. Which is why it wouldn't have changed their current present. In which case, they would have simply created a NEW timeline, which the only way to fix it would be to travel back AGAIN and STOP themselves from killing Thanos. Which is why they went to the past to simply take the stones, and then after they used them in the present, they took them back to IMMEDIATELY after they took them from the past, to patch the timelines.

See? It really isn't that complicated.

So what you’re saying is that

Spoiler:
messing with past creates alternate timelines. Good. Then when Steve travels back to the past to live with Peggy he should have created another alternate timeline. But he didn’t.

That's because

Spoiler:
Thanos destroyed the stones in 2018, remember?

The stones controlled the uniform flow of time, and were responsible for the creation of alternate timelines. This is essentially how order was maintained throughout the concept of time travelling. However, since there were no infinity stones, the mainstream reality existed separately from the rest of the realities, which is why they needed to use the stones from the past to undo the snap, instead of simply stopping it from happening. Then, when the stones were returned to the correct points in time, it stopped the timelines from branching into alternate realities, and since Cap had just replaced the last stone, the realities merged together since all the stones were back in their new mainstream reality at the correct times.

So basically, the fact that the stones were no longer IN the original mainstream reality is what made the time travel mess as convoluted as it was. They couldn't change the past, because the original reality in which Thanos killed half the universe no longer had a linear past that could be changed, which is why removing the stones simply made new branch realities.

Think of it like this- Thanos destroyed the stones. Meaning they couldn't simply go into the past and kill him as a baby, because that would simply turn that new past into a new branch reality, since it was separate from the reality where Thanos did the snap- because they no longer had the infinity stones. The only way they could have changed what happened, was by bringing everyone BACK with the IG. Once they went and retrieved the stones, they couldn't just stop the snap from ever happening- because that would have created a paradox, since they had to retrieve the stones in the first place to stop the snap from happening, in which case they wouldn't have ever gone to retrieve the stones in the first place, thus not stopping the snap from occurring.

So the only way they could have undone the snap was by undoing the effects of it in their own reality, and then taking the stones back to their places of origin, to restore the balance in the timeline- and merge the realities all together again.

This is what stopped Cap from creating a new branch reality. All the stones were in their rightful places, and the time he was in was one in which all 6 stones existed at once. Meaning he was able to effectively change the past in that small way, since he was already IN the past, and all 6 stones were present at the time.

Yeah I need to watch this again.

Originally posted by SSJGGogeta
Okay, so a LOT of people are misunderstanding this. It goes like this:

Spoiler:
Cap didn't change his past. You can NOT change YOUR individual past. What you experience is always going to be a linear perception of time, meaning there is no vanishing photo like in Back to the Future.

Cap simply went back to the past, and stayed there- making that his present, at the time. He then lived in that timeline until it became the current timeline, and showed up on that bench, by just... Idk, walking there, lol. He didn't use the watch/time machine at all, to return.

THEN, the reason they can pull Gomorrah from the past, is because she traveled from the past, into the future, which became the present for her, and consequentially the present for the mainstream timeline. Meaning that Gomorrah from the past essentially just traveled into the future. The timeline where she existed during the GOTG movies is therefor made no longer accurate, because if they were to travel into the past NOW, from their present(where past Gomorrah is in the future[i.e. the new present]), she would no longer be there and would instead be in the future, from their perspective. The same goes for Nebula. Nebula is now dead in the mainstream timeline, but the ORIGINAL Neblua exists in the mainstream timeline, because she was present in that timeline before the Nebula from the past was killed(in fact, she was the one that killed her/herself).

That might be a lot to take in, but does that clear it up?

excellent post. very well said

Originally posted by SSJGGogeta
That's because

Spoiler:
Thanos destroyed the stones in 2018, remember?

The stones controlled the uniform flow of time, and were responsible for the creation of alternate timelines. This is essentially how order was maintained throughout the concept of time travelling. However, since there were no infinity stones, the mainstream reality existed separately from the rest of the realities, which is why they needed to use the stones from the past to undo the snap, instead of simply stopping it from happening. Then, when the stones were returned to the correct points in time, it stopped the timelines from branching into alternate realities, and since Cap had just replaced the last stone, the realities merged together since all the stones were back in their new mainstream reality at the correct times.

So basically, the fact that the stones were no longer IN the original mainstream reality is what made the time travel mess as convoluted as it was. They couldn't change the past, because the original reality in which Thanos killed half the universe no longer had a linear past that could be changed, which is why removing the stones simply made new branch realities.

Think of it like this- Thanos destroyed the stones. Meaning they couldn't simply go into the past and kill him as a baby, because that would simply turn that new past into a new branch reality, since it was separate from the reality where Thanos did the snap- because they no longer had the infinity stones. The only way they could have changed what happened, was by bringing everyone BACK with the IG. Once they went and retrieved the stones, they couldn't just stop the snap from ever happening- because that would have created a paradox, since they had to retrieve the stones in the first place to stop the snap from happening, in which case they wouldn't have ever gone to retrieve the stones in the first place, thus not stopping the snap from occurring.

So the only way they could have undone the snap was by undoing the effects of it in their own reality, and then taking the stones back to their places of origin, to restore the balance in the timeline- and merge the realities all together again.

This is what stopped Cap from creating a new branch reality. All the stones were in their rightful places, and the time he was in was one in which all 6 stones existed at once. Meaning he was able to effectively change the past in that small way, since he was already IN the past, and all 6 stones were present at the time.

another good post

I like SSJ Gogetas answer the best so Im gonna go with that one but we coukd all be wrong. **** time.

I’m legitimately curious to see where they go from here and Wondering if they’ll revamp the MCU formula. Elements of Venom had body horror, Logan was a Neo Western, even the Spiderverse films had elements introducing a multiverse which Marvel has only hinted at. It’s definitely not in Disney’s playbook to go outside the box (even GOTG has the same formula), it’d be nice to introduce directors like Noah Hawley, Dennis Villenueve, Darren Arronofsky, or hell even Sam Raimi to make the movies seem less of a carbon copy and more unique. Barring the Russos I’d like for the Xmen and FF to not get origin stories, and villains to last longer than a single film. I have all the faith Disney will continue to make decent films that continue the saga, but there’s no shame to tweek the product or do something else or even do a mini-event

The prevailing theory is that he was always married to her in the main timeline and because she was an awesome spy she managed to keep it a secret and that's why the ending can be the same timeline and his staying in the past and not returning via the machine doesn't mess things up.

Originally posted by jaden_2.0

Spoiler:
The prevailing theory is that he was always married to her in the main timeline and because she was an awesome spy she managed to keep it a secret and that's why the ending can be the same timeline and his staying in the past and not returning via the machine doesn't mess things up.

Spoiler:
I assumed that because they never told us who Peggys husband was.

That said, its still effecting the past through time travel. Given old Cap waits for that exact moment to explain to Sam what happened when he went back.