Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[Guy Gardener]

Banner was wrong in his understanding of the mechanic functionality of time travel.

Its really that simple, and Steve doing what he did is the proof.

1. Oldman Steve is not the Steve we watched, he is from a different timeline, and his arrival 70 something years ago created this Branch. Our Steve who left to take back the stones, created many other branches, and lived with Peggy in one of those, and we never see him again as a young man or an old man.

(Or... )

2. Our view pivots, and we start following a different universe for the last 5 minutes of the movie. Some new Hulk we've never seen before trying to recover some new Steve who we have ever met before, who is trying to take the stones back is never to be seen again, because he's off in a new timeline, however Old man Steve is our Steve Rogers who we followed for ten years at the movies, and this is the new branch, the last 5 minutes of the movie, he created to live with Peggy in.

3. How Banner explained the rules, it's impossible to return to the timeline you started off in, except they seem to do that effortlessly, unless, they really-really don't know what they are doing and want to eat their cake and have it too. The obvious fix for this is that the platform they land on and take off from, is a beacon/homing device, and they can all travel diagonally in time to get back to it, no matter what they do to the past of another branch, and however far from home they stray.

 

[Christopher]

You're just wrong on this. You've chosen to see it through a particular narrative lens and refuse to accept that there are other possible interpretations.

I've explained how my conclusion is based on the evidence explicitly given within the film. There are always multiple ways to interpret something, but they aren't all equally valid. The way to decide between them is by reasoning based on evidence. Once a conclusion is reached based on the preponderance of evidence, it is not necessary to reconsider it unless new evidence is provided. No new evidence has been offered here, since we are simply rehashing a debate about a years-old film.

 

[Set Harth]

Steve had just enough Pym Particles to return the 6 Stones and return to the present. The Russos' interpretation requires him being in possession of Pym Particles that he simply wasn't, and is also unnecessarily convoluted.

He can get as many Pym particles as he needs ( and he went to the past instead of returning to the present as they assumed he would ).

one that is wholly at odds with the storyline that Markus and McFeeley were explicitly setting up across 5 movies.

The problem with this idea is that only one of those two possible interpretations - the one intended by Markus and McFeeley - actually makes sense based on what were shown and told onscreen both in Endgame itself and in the four Markus/McFeeley-penned films that preceded it.

That's not true, and there is nothing in any of those other films to contradict the notion that Rogers was in a branch timeline.

Banner was wrong in his understanding of the mechanic functionality of time travel.

Its really that simple, and Steve doing what he did is the proof.

Steve 'does what he does' in either interpretation, and as such it proves nothing. Banner's position is in essence merely a repudiation of the concept (in UssGlenn's words) that "you were always there." But you weren't always there!

And to add that, in that interpretation, the events in the past such as Gamora being kidnapped from the timeline are "repaired" in every reality.

Even though that same Gamora is still running around in GOTG 3?

Except if that is the rule then it's impossible to ever visit the same timeline twice because every act of time travel automatically creates a new timeline.

Not when you have "timeline GPS" as establshed in the film.

Some aspects of The Winter Soldier arguably go against this, but Peggy had advanced Alzheimer's at that point, and just might have forgotten at that moment that they had spent an entire life together.

bwahaha

How Banner explained the rules, it's impossible to return to the timeline you started off in, except they seem to do that effortlessly, unless, they really-really don't know what they are doing and want to eat their cake and have it too. The obvious fix for this is that the platform they land on and take off from, is a beacon/homing device, and they can all travel diagonally in time to get back to it, no matter what they do to the past of another branch, and however far from home they stray.

Anyway here's a handy diagram

 

[UssGlenn]

Not when you have "timeline GPS" as establshed in the film.

You aren't grasping what we are saying. If time travel inherently creates a new branch timeline, then when Steve returns to (for example) the Ancient One he creates 2 branched timelines, one where he gives her back the stone, and another "undisturbed" timeline where he doesn't appear. So there will always be a doomed timeline, something the movie made clear they were avoiding.

Banner's position is in essence merely a repudiation of the concept (in UssGlenn's words) that "you were always there." But you weren't always there!

If it's impossible to change the past of your own timeline then "you were always there" fits with Banner's rules just fine. They can't kill baby Thanos because they know he lived, but Clint's son always lost that baseball glove.

 

[Guy Gardener]

He can get as many Pym particles as he needs ( and he went to the past instead of returning to the present as they assumed he would ).


That's not true, and there is nothing in any of those other films to contradict the notion that Rogers was in a branch timeline.

Steve 'does what he does' in either interpretation, and as such it proves nothing. Banner's position is in essence merely a repudiation of the concept (in UssGlenn's words) that "you were always there." But you weren't always there!

Even though that same Gamora is still running around in GOTG 3?

Not when you have "timeline GPS" as establshed in the film.

bwahaha

Anyway here's a handy diagram

I understand what they said, and I understand what they did.

What they did however is not what they said.

Steve shouldn't be able to travel diagonally in time to other specific timelines, already diverged from the scared timeline, and even if he could, he would split that pre-exiting alt time line again, creating a universe where he returned the stone, meanwhile leaving the original stoneless divergent timeline where he did not, untouched.

 

[Guy Gardener]

You aren't grasping what we are saying. If time travel inherently creates a new branch timeline, then when Steve returns to (for example) the Ancient One he creates 2 branched timelines, one where he gives her back the stone, and another "undisturbed" timeline where he doesn't appear. So there will always be a doomed timeline, something the movie made clear they were avoiding.



If it's impossible to change the past of your own timeline then "you were always there" fits with Banner's rules just fine. They can't kill baby Thanos because they know he lived, but Clint's son always lost that baseball glove.

Thanos was never a baby.

He's a Robot.

 

[Set Harth]

If it's impossible to change the past of your own timeline then "you were always there" fits with Banner's rules just fine. They can't kill baby Thanos because they know he lived, but Clint's son always lost that baseball glove.

Except he didn't. Just like Quill didn't always get punched by Rhodey on Morag. Someone with access to this kind of time travel could easily disprove the "the time travel always happened" line of thinking.

 

[UssGlenn]

Except he didn't. Just like Quill didn't always get punched by Rhodey on Morag. Someone with access to this kind of time travel could easily disprove the "the time travel always happened" line of thinking.

When the power stone was removed from the timeline that caused the timeline to split back to the moment of entry of the time travelers responsible. It tears back to the initial hole. If they were going to fail to retrieve the stone they wouldn't have been able to punch out Quill in the first place. This retroactive split doesn't happen when Clint tests it, or when Steve goes back to 1948 because no infinity stones are involved.

 

[Mage]

Am I seriously the only one who could give a flying f*%& about all the timetravel bullshit and just enjoyed the f*%&ing movie??

 

[Jayson1]

Am I seriously the only one who could give a flying f*%& about all the timetravel bullshit and just enjoyed the f*%&ing movie??

People do both. They enjoy the movie but then love to pick them apart as well.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Am I seriously the only one who could give a flying f*%& about all the timetravel bullshit and just enjoyed the f*%&ing movie??

I love the time traveling but I'm not going to get hung up on the minutia.

 

[eschaton]

Am I seriously the only one who could give a flying f*%& about all the timetravel bullshit and just enjoyed the f*%&ing movie??

Time travel logic almost never makes sense in fiction, because there's only one of two ways to do it:

1. All time travel is a closed loop, and there are no alternative timelines. All of your travel to the past has already happened. This is the most logical stance, but it implies a lack of free will, and few narratives, unless they're nihilistic ones which stick to strict determinism, want to go there.

2. Every time you travel back in time, you generate an alternative present, either destroying your base reality of creating an alternative one. This immediately creates a paradox, because you can also cancel out your own past as a time traveler, which negates you traveling back, which should then negate your changes. Often, this is dealt with by some sort of "shielding" whereby the traveler is protected even if they destroy their uptime reality. So say because you went to the past, you became part of that past, so even if the future is overwritten, your physical status within that past (and the time machine) are real things that cannot just poof into non-existence.

The problem is that writers want to do "a little from column a, a little from column b." They want to effectively treat the past as similar to the present - giving the protagonists agency in the past which is equal to the present, without causing the "actual present" to be erased from existence. You can't construct a narrative like this which makes any rational sense. Which is why it's best that no one take TV/movie time travel logic seriously.

 

[Mage]

Which is why it's best that no one take TV/movie time travel logic seriously.

I loved your entire post, but honestly, I think this is the best part.

We have people that 'read some articles' in this thread pretending they are university graduated professors on the topic of quantum mechanics. FFS guys, it's a superhero movie.

Steve and Peggy ended up being happy. THE END.

 

[DigificWriter]

But by getting involved with Peggy he already is going to change things. I mean he wasn't around for her tv series so that is already a big change to the timeline.

The Agent Carter TV series isn't Canon to the Sacred Timeline, so it doesn't matter.

 

[theenglish]

I've explained how my conclusion is based on the evidence explicitly given within the film. There are always multiple ways to interpret something, but they aren't all equally valid. The way to decide between them is by reasoning based on evidence. Once a conclusion is reached based on the preponderance of evidence, it is not necessary to reconsider it unless new evidence is provided. No new evidence has been offered here, since we are simply rehashing a debate about a years-old film.

You've made a conclusion based on selectively Cherry picking evidence from the movie. Your conclusion still leaves open realities where Thanks wins. The realities split off only at the points where the Infinity Stones are taken. The Ancient One didnt have a problem with Banner being in the past. She had a problem with him taking the stone.

 

[Set Harth]

When the power stone was removed from the timeline that caused the timeline to split back to the moment of entry of the time travelers responsible. It tears back to the initial hole. If they were going to fail to retrieve the stone they wouldn't have been able to punch out Quill in the first place. This retroactive split doesn't happen when Clint tests it, or when Steve goes back to 1948 because no infinity stones are involved.

Let's say you use this technology to go to an incident in your own past when you were alone in a certain location for a certain amount of time and you interacted with no one ( and no infinity stones were involved ). And then time-traveling you shows up and confronts past you. How did this "always happen"?

 

[UssGlenn]

Let's say you use this technology to go to an incident in your own past when you were alone in a certain location for a certain amount of time and you interacted with no one ( and no infinity stones were involved ). And then time-traveling you shows up and confronts past you. How did this "always happen"?

It can't happen, something will prevent it. Or it did always happen and you just erased your past self's memory of it when you leave.

 

[theenglish]

Let's say you use this technology to go to an incident in your own past when you were alone in a certain location for a certain amount of time and you interacted with no one ( and no infinity stones were involved ). And then time-traveling you shows up and confronts past you. How did this "always happen"?

That's a general time travel question. In Endgame, we only know what we see on-screen.