Spoilers The Falcon and Winter Soldier discussion

[UssGlenn]

Combining the Banner's explanation with The Ancient One's (who knows more about time travel than Bruce) this is how I think it works:

Going back in time without interacting with an infinity stone is a predestination paradox, you were always in your own past. Nothing you do will change your future.

If you remove an infinity stone you create a new timeline. These timelines will continue to exist after you return the stone to them. The movie says that if you return the stones to the exact time and place you removed them the new realities would merge back into the original, but it's impossible for Steve to put all the stones back exactly the same way, especially the reality stone (into Jane Foster), and the Power Stone, whose reality is now permanently missing Thanos and crew, and the Time stone, where Loki is on the loose. He might be able to merge the Space stone Timeline back in, so Tony actually talked to his "real" father.

So the new branch realities keep existing, now safe with all their stones. Then Steve travels back to the 1940s, a common past for all the branched timelines. Since no Stone is removed, he is in his original timeline. (In fact, all the Endgame Branch realities now have their own old Steve Rogers). He then lives to the present, any actions he takes merely causing the MCU timeline to unfold as we saw. At some point he has Wakanda make a new shield for him on the down low. There are no moral quandaries about leaving young Steve on ice, and Peggys in all realities get to have a life with their Steve, not just one.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Combining the Banner's explanation with The Ancient One's (who knows more about time travel than Bruce) this is how I think it works:

Going back in time without interacting with an infinity stone is a predestination paradox, you were always in your own past. Nothing you do will change your future.

If you remove an infinity stone you create a new timeline. These timelines will continue to exist after you return the stone to them. The movie says that if you return the stones to the exact time and place you removed them the new realities would merge back into the original, but it's impossible for Steve to put all the stones back exactly the same way, especially the reality stone (into Jane Foster), and the Power Stone, whose reality is now permanently missing Thanos and crew, and the Time stone, where Loki is on the loose. He might be able to merge the Space stone Timeline back in, so Tony actually talked to his "real" father.

So the new branch realities keep existing, now safe with all their stones. Then Steve travels back to the 1940s, a common past for all the branched timelines. Since no Stone is removed, he is in his original timeline. (In fact, all the Endgame Branch realities now have their own old Steve Rogers). He then lives to the present, any actions he takes merely causing the MCU timeline to unfold as we saw. At some point he has Wakanda make a new shield for him on the down low. There are no moral quandaries about leaving young Steve on ice, and Peggys in all realities get to have a life with their Steve, not just one.

Except that it isn't the act of removing the stone that creates the new timeline, it's the time-traveling itself that creates the timeline.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Except that it isn't the act of removing the stone that creates the new timeline, it's the time-traveling itself that creates the timeline.

That's explicitly not what the Ancient One says.

 

[UssGlenn]

Except that it isn't the act of removing the stone that creates the new timeline, it's the time-traveling itself that creates the timeline.

I don't think so, if mere time travel was all it takes to make a branch reality then the Ancient One wouldn't need to explain that removing a stone makes a branch reality.

Since the Writer and Directors disagree on how this all works we might never get a definitive answer. Bruce Banner just doesn't completely understand how time travel actually works, so his explanation is incomplete. He know they can't mess us their own personal timelines, he's just wrong about why.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Also, the explanation that time travel in and of itself creates the alternate reality has been the standard explanation in the Marvel Comics for 50 years.

 

[Turtletrekker]

Besides, as has been mentioned earlier, the timeline in which that Ancient One spoke to Banner can NEVER line up with the original timeline because Loki stole the Tesseract from it.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

Besides, as has been mentioned earlier, the timeline in which that Ancient One spoke to Banner can NEVER line up with the original timeline because Loki stole the Tesseract from it.

Unless you invent technobabble about the stones or some other thing which solves the issue. Which you also have to do to solve the issues of claiming that all time travel creates an alternate universe because NEITHER interpretation is actually truly consistent with the entire movie.

 

[wayoung]

Breaking: The time travel in Endgame is a mess

 

[Ovation]

As always, no time travel story survives close scrutiny. I long ago abandoned any effort to resolve inconsistencies within and across time travel stories and just take the rules as presented at face value (and if they're not especially comprehensible or consistent within a given story, my usual response is "meh" and then I roll with it). It's done wonders for my blood pressure over the years.

(Not coincidentally, I arrived at this perspective around the same time when I started caring a lot more about performances and grand themes than "plot holes" [much rarer than people think] and having everything fully resolved in a story)

 

[Skywalker]

I prefer to think Steve went back to his past and lived out his life there because any Peggy he meets in an alternate timeline wouldn't be his Peggy, and he'd basically be stealing that alternate Peggy from her Steve who he knows is still trapped in the Arctic.

 

[Saul]

 

[LaxScrutiny]

As always, no time travel story survives close scrutiny...

They survive my scrutiny just fine.

...(Not coincidentally, I arrived at this perspective around the same time when I started caring a lot more about performances and grand themes than "plot holes" [much rarer than people think] and having everything fully resolved in a story)

Hence my name.

 

[Noname Given]

Everything work out for the best? His best friend spent decades being tortured. And what kind of a shitstain would he have to be spend all those years with Peggy while she was the head of SHIELD and not tell her that the organization has been corrupted from within and not say anything? That would be despicable.

If that's how Steve truly felt at that point he wouldn't have done what he did (remain in the past and live with Peggy). Once he finished returning the Infinity Stones to their places in time, I think he decided that he had 'done enough', and he decided to go have a life. Yes he did so knowing how the future would unfold - but at that point he also knew that to change it might make things worse - so again he just decided to finally do what Tony told him to do: 'get / have a life'.

He was obviously okay with how everything turned out for Bucky in the end.

Of course the interesting thing is: Things would have been a lot simpler in endgame if the entire team had just gone back to a couple of days before Thanos used the stones to destroy the stones - fight Thanos on that planet with Captain Marvel, have Thor chop his head off again, and then return to the present with the Infinity Gauntlet, and have Banner-Hulk wish everyone back.

In that way they could have gone forward from that point and still have the infinity stones and the infinity gauntlet. Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff would still be alive, and only Gamora would have been a casualty.

I mean given the way that the ancient one explained the function of the infinity stones, one would think that once Thanos destroyed them, Time/reality itself would have ceased to exist

 

[DEWLine]

And there is no way Steve is going to leave the "local" version of himself locked in the ice like that either. Whatever timeline he ended up shunted into "creating".

 

[wayoung]

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[Xerxes82]

Of course the interesting thing is: Things would have been a lot simpler in endgame if the entire team had just gone back to a couple of days before Thanos used the stones to destroy the stones - fight Thanos on that planet with Captain Marvel, have Thor chop his head off again, and then return to the present with the Infinity Gauntlet, and have Banner-Hulk wish everyone back.

They were, rightfully, petrified by the thought of facing Thanos again, so that was never going to be their choice. When they confronted him at the beginning of the film, he was not only weakened by using the stones a second time, but had completely won and had no real motivation to fight them. His life didn't much matter, his great purpose was fulfilled.

But go back to a time when he still had the stones? He wiped the floor with the team once, why take that chance? Even if they weren't all traumatized by the man? They would have lost. Again. And rationally they all knew it. Like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That's kind of the entire point of the climax. Sure, they got the stones and brought everyone back. But to make it last they have to overcome the one being in the universe that pantsed them and utterly broke their spirits. That's not something they dove into by choice, it was forced upon them by circumstance (and the film's themes, but hey).

 

[theenglish]

I don't think so, if mere time travel was all it takes to make a branch reality then the Ancient One wouldn't need to explain that removing a stone makes a branch reality.

Since the Writer and Directors disagree on how this all works we might never get a definitive answer. Bruce Banner just doesn't completely understand how time travel actually works, so his explanation is incomplete. He know they can't mess us their own personal timelines, he's just wrong about why.

Bruce gets his schooling from the Ancient One--and realizes that he wasn't entirely correct in his initial hypothesis as it didn't take into account the effect removing the time stones has on the timeline. UssGlen is correct in his summary of what the movie says. I think a lot of people are just conflating their own preconceptions of movie time travel with what was actually shown on screen.

 

[Anwar]

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I kind of like Zemo's logic there.

 

[Turtletrekker]

If that's how Steve truly felt at that point he wouldn't have done what he did (remain in the past and live with Peggy). Once he finished returning the Infinity Stones to their places in time, I think he decided that he had 'done enough', and he decided to go have a life. Yes he did so knowing how the future would unfold - but at that point he also knew that to change it might make things worse - so again he just decided to finally do what Tony told him to do: 'get / have a life'.

He was obviously okay with how everything turned out for Bucky in the end.

Of course the interesting thing is: Things would have been a lot simpler in endgame if the entire team had just gone back to a couple of days before Thanos used the stones to destroy the stones - fight Thanos on that planet with Captain Marvel, have Thor chop his head off again, and then return to the present with the Infinity Gauntlet, and have Banner-Hulk wish everyone back.

In that way they could have gone forward from that point and still have the infinity stones and the infinity gauntlet. Tony Stark and Natasha Romanoff would still be alive, and only Gamora would have been a casualty.

I mean given the way that the ancient one explained the function of the infinity stones, one would think that once Thanos destroyed them, Time/reality itself would have ceased to exist

We will have to agree to disagree on this because there's no way in any Universe anywhere can I picture Steve Rogers doing what you just said.

 

[UssGlenn]

I mean given the way that the ancient one explained the function of the infinity stones, one would think that once Thanos destroyed them, Time/reality its

The stones weren't destroyed they were "reduced to atoms". They still exist in the universe, just not in a form anyone can harness.