As long as he doesn't decide to kill everyone it's still a net gain. The multiverse isn't conquered under Ultron, it's exterminated.
Spoilers What If...? discussion thread
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As long as he doesn't decide to kill everyone it's still a net gain. The multiverse isn't conquered under Ultron, it's exterminated.
No - they clearly state alternate universes - not just alternate timelines. I think you're the one a bit confused here. What Thanos did in Endgame was time travel. What Ultron and Uatu were doing in this What If episode was Universe hopping as they fought. In fact at the end, Uatu went to the Universe remnant that contains the Doctor Strange from a previous What If episode to enlist his aid. <--- That is NOT just an 'alternate timeline'.
You're confused if you think labels define reality. Labels don't make things what they are, they just describe what they are, and sometimes they describe them misleadingly or ambiguously. Labels are merely the starting point for understanding things, not the end goal. They're vague at best and you have to look beyond them to understand what it is they're really describing. So saying "It's different because the label is different" is just not a meaningful counterargument. Is Germany a different country from Deutschland? Is salt a different compond from sodium chloride? No. It's the same thing under two different labels.
Again, the entire premise of this show is explicitly to explore versions of reality that were the same until a specific event happened differently and changed all subsequent events. That is exactly what alternate timelines are, no matter what word they use to describe it. You have to look beyond the label to understand what something truly is.
Yes, you can create an alternate timeline with time travel, but that is physically the same thing as an alternate timeline that happens spontaneously, and it's bizarre to me when people assume otherwise. The origin doesn't alter the physics. A fire started by an arsonist is not a fundamentally different phenomenon from a fire started by a lightning strike. They're both still fire.
The gem's powers weren't always "on". Thanos generally had to have his fist closed for the powers to work, the exception for some reason being the time stone. When he sicced his Cloak of Levitation on him, Strange told it not to let him close his fist.
I don't think it's a special gesture that activates a stone, it's the wearer and his will that controls the stones. Thanos closing his fist is just a visual way of saying shit is about to go down, him just staring and something happening is far less appealing.
Then why did Strange instruct his cloak to keep him from closing his fist, and why did that temporarily styme Thanos?
In the same clip, we also see Spider-Man attempt to web his fists open and Strange uses the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to keep his fist open.
That always annoyed me, the way the movie treated the snap as a necessary activation gesture rather than just a flourish. I mean, as we see in this episode, Ultron doesn't need to snap his fingers to use the Stones.
Maybe Thanos just had a mental block about it, and needed the snap as a focusing gesture.
Hm.. it seems you're right. Still it makes no sense that it needs a special gesture to activate them.
The premise of this show is that the Watcher is looking at another UNIVERSE where someone made a different choice/an event had a different result. In Endgame, It was pretty clear (via what was going on with Nebula's mind), that Thanos didn't travel to an alternate timeline. That was also reinforced by the appearance of the 102-year old Steve Rogers near the end of the film.
But no I don't think I'm the one who's actually confused over what the premise of the series is. It's not exploring alternate timelines it's exploring alternate universes where the beings within said universe made different choices at a given point in the timeline of said universe.
But he did travel to an alternate timeline, one which does not include his time travel back in 2014 or the retrieval of the Soul and Power Stones by the Avengers.
No it wasn't an alternate timeline because he did get those stones and do what he did. Thor just killed him, and that's why there weren't two have him. As illogical as it sounds; given the way they defined submolecular time travel, It fits. And it's also backed up by the events in the Loki series, because what 2014 Endgame Thanos did, did not create a variance.
No it wasn't an alternate timeline because he did get those stones and do what he did. Thor just killed him, and that's why there weren't two have him. As illogical as it sounds; given the way they defined submolecular time travel, It fits. And it's also backed up by the events in the Loki series, because what 2014 Endgame Thanos did, did not create a variance.
Do I need to make a Back to the Future Style chalkboard drawing? Lets keep this simple and just talk about 2 timelines/universes. The two terms are interchangeable because of the style of time travel the MCU uses.
Timeline A is the Main MCU that we have been watching. The Avengers A travel to 2014 and create Timeline B. In Timeline B, Quill B gets knocked out, there is a dead body of Black Widow A at the bottom of the cliff, and Thanos B leaves to travel to Timeline A. None of these things happen in Timeline A. If Thanos B didn't travel to an alternate universe (Timeline A) then when Thanos A went to collect the Soul Stone with Gamora A the Soul Stone wouldn't have been there.
Thanos B didn't even know who Wanda A was.
But he found out
But he found out
Submolecular Time Travel in the MCU doesn't work like "Back To The Future" -- don't you remember Banner's speech?
(Look, I get what you're saying; but the writers of the MCU hve their time travel 'working' as I described.
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No, they really, really don't.Submolecular Time Travel in the MCU doesn't work like "Back To The Future" -- don't you remember Banner's speech?
(Look, I get what you're saying; but the writers of the MCU hve their time travel 'working' as I described.
Submolecular Time Travel in the MCU doesn't work like "Back To The Future" -- don't you remember Banner's speech?
(Look, I get what you're saying; but the writers of the MCU hve their time travel 'working' as I described.
I didn't mention Back to the Future to say the time travel worked similarly (it doesn't). I was asking if you needed a visual aid.
Your difficulty seems to be that you seem to think alternative timelines and alternative universes are different things, when, in the MCU, they are the same thing. An alternative timeline will become an alternate universe if the TVA doesn't prune it before the Red Line. And none of the Endgame timelines got pruned because the TVA wanted the Avengers plan to work.
If you want a working distinction between different timeline and different universe, then how about this:
1. alternate timeline: shares a causal origin with the “prime” timeline with a specific divergent event in the past
2. Alternate universe: a causally unconnected reality that may or may not share similarities with the “prime” reality or may even be functionally identical (exactly parallel)
Stark’s time travel method would assume that traveling to a share pre-divergence point of an alternate timeline is not possible, thus travel is “only” possible to an already divergent timeline as they would no longer have a causal connection.
Or it’s just traveling to an earlier point in a causally unconnected parallel universe.
Both would work with what depicted in Endgame.
I think Stark considers it travel between parallel universes.
The Ancient One had their bets on the first version.
Loki and the TVA exclusively deal with version one.
I am not sure what What If…is going for exactly. I would tend toward version 1, because of the thematic elegance of it as a consequence from events in Loki.
No Way Home will be opening a whole other can of worms imo. Because that sounds more like altering a reality wholesale, not having it diverge.
1. alternate timeline: shares a causal origin with the “prime” timeline with a specific divergent event in the past
2. Alternate universe: a causally unconnected reality that may or may not share similarities with the “prime” reality or may even be functionally identical (exactly parallel)
Stark’s time travel method would assume that traveling to a share pre-divergence point of an alternate timeline is not possible, thus travel is “only” possible to an already divergent timeline as they would no longer have a causal connection.
Or it’s just traveling to an earlier point in a causally unconnected parallel universe.
Both would work with what depicted in Endgame.
I think Stark considers it travel between parallel universes.
The Ancient One had their bets on the first version.
Loki and the TVA exclusively deal with version one.
I am not sure what What If…is going for exactly. I would tend toward version 1, because of the thematic elegance of it as a consequence from events in Loki.
No Way Home will be opening a whole other can of worms imo. Because that sounds more like altering a reality wholesale, not having it diverge.
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We have already seen one of those worms appear in a rather unexpected place. I can't really say where the spoiler comes from without revealing what the spoiler actually is, so just know that there is a spoiler in the box.
Venom Let There Be Carnage midcredit shows the characters experiencing a mysterious flash of light and being transported to a new place. At this new location, we see JK Simmons and Tom Holland as Jameson and Parker on TV from the end of Far From Home.
I think the implication is that Venom is being pulled into the MCU along with Doc Ock, Green Goblin and Electro.
I think the implication is that Venom is being pulled into the MCU along with Doc Ock, Green Goblin and Electro.
Episode 1 with Captain Carter wasn't a divergent timeline; It was a completely separate universe where Steve Rogers was shot before he could take the super serum treatment.
Again I'm not saying I like the way they set up time travel in Endgame but with respect to the Thanos from 2014 traveling to 2025; or Steve Rogers traveling back to post 1945 and living out the rest of his life as a 'regular citizen' - neither Thanos or he created an alternate timeline. It was all part of the same MCU timeline that we've been observing since Iron Man in 2008.
From what I've observed in the What If series; The watcher is showing us distinct different Universes not alternate timelines.
I understand completely where you're coming from and what you're saying I just don't agree that that's the case with respect to what we've seen in What If - and as far as Endgame is concerned I've also stated my position above.
This point I'd say we have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.
That doesn't even make sense. There's no way a causally unconnected universe would coincidentally have exactly the same planets, people, and events. That's like going to Mars and expecting to find your street and your car and your next-door neighbor there. It's a contradiction in terms to say it's both the same and causally unconnected. If it has the same people and things but events just happened differently, that is an alternate timeline by definition. If it has Earth and humanity and the United States and Tony Stark, then its history was the same for long enough for those things to come into existence, and only started to diverge recently. If it were causally unconnected, then the things that caused Sol and Earth and DNA and multicellular life and vertebrates and so on to come into being would have happened differently and none of those things would exist, though similar things might.
And it doesn't matter whether you call it a timeline or a universe. There is no formally defined, systematic difference between the two, because this is make-believe and people just use the words that sound good to them, so different creators use them interchangeably with no rhyme or reason. What matters is how something behaves, not what you call it.
No, that's not it. The makers of Endgame researched real physics and went with a scientifically plausible model, in which traveling to the past could create an alternate timeline but it would coexist with the original timeline, rather than the usual nonsensical fantasy model where it somehow "erases" the original a la Back to the Future. The time travel does create the alternates, but the original still exists. That's the way it should happen, the conceits of decades of fantasy to the contrary.
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