Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[Guy Gardener]

Nothing in that first clip says that you can't travel to your own past. And the second clip explicitly says that the new branch reality would suck not because it's missing a stone but because the Time stone is an all important weapon against the forces of darkness. There is absolutely nothing there to indicate that removing the soul stone or the power stone or any other stone would result in a terrible timeline.




'Time travel doesn't work like in the movies' is not an explicit refutation of every possible time travel conception. Avengers isn't even the first movie which used this alternate universe time travel concept, so it literally cannot invalidate all previous time travel movies. And the hypothetical rules I'm talking about are not 'the usual fictional rules of time travel', the fixed timeline concept is actually quite rare in hollywood and there is not a single fixed timeline time travel movie name dropped in Avengers as being a bad depiction of time travel. The movie does not refute this notion at all.



I literally already said that.



No, it wouldn't. And you have absolutely no clue what he might've been doing with his life.



It is physically possible, it is a happy ending, and he did not have to do nothing but hang in the background. There's a whole world beyond just the tiny fraction of things we've seen in these movies. There is no characterization problem, it's great storytelling and the science presented in the movie does not contradict it anymore than the script also contradicts the alternate universe theory.

The Ancient One said "the infinity stones create what you perceive to be the flow of time" at the mark I told you to start watching from. Stones, plural. Less stones mean the flow of time is wonky like losing wheels off your car on the highway.

"Think about it, if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future"

When Hulk says future, he means timeline. A new future is a divergent timeline, because the old future is still there, there are two futures. One diverged from the other at a point in the past. One future new that you can fuck around in, and one clean, that will hold your original past, so that you can return to the present you left from. It's fucking awkwardly written by a moron, but it's the only way that you can't change the present by changing the past.

It's not really time travel. They're just creating parallel worlds.

 

[Reverend]

Also, what do people think Strange is actually doing in this scene if the universe isn't actually diverging an infinite amount of times at every moment everywhere? If they always won and Cap always went back, then what's this 1 in 14,000,605 talk? You can't have alternate futures AND a fixed loop. If Old Cap was already there in that universe and always had been then it should have been 14,000,605 in 14,000,605. QED

 

[Booji]

But there's NO WAY to get to your own past. If it's physically impossible to have ever gotten there, how can you have ever been there?



2012- 2024... Steve is 12 years older.

Young Peggy would take one look at him and say "Shit, are you Steve's dad?"

Or Steve didn't go back at the exact same time his plane went down.

 

[Booji]

Because he could. Maybe he found out that S.H.I.E.L.D. or someone had found a way to jump between realities, and decided he wanted to go to his original timeline to be at Tony's funeral and see his friends one more time.

I don't really see where Steve came from another reality, is really that much harder to understand than, Steven went back in time and lived another life in secret.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Or Steve didn't go back at the exact same time his plane went down.

In Captain America One, Steve and Peggy are talking about going to/having a dance, as he is crashing the plane. In Endgame they have that dance, at probably exactly the same moment he said he would when that flying wing was plummeting.

Bookends.

 

[Tosk]

In Endgame they have that dance, at probably exactly the same moment he said he would when that flying wing was plummeting.

Or close to. It looks a little earlier in the day than eight o'clock. Some things can't wait.

Y'know, here's a thought for the "Steve was always there behind the scenes" people...do you think Nick Fury knew the truth? Because when he hides in Steve's apartment in Winter Soldier, he plays the same song that Steve and Peggy dance to at the end of Endgame. (Okay, so yeah it was a big end-of-WWII hit but still!)

 

[Reverend]

do you think Nick Fury knew the truth? Because when he hides in Steve's apartment in Winter Soldier, he plays the same song that Steve and Peggy dance to at the end of Endgame. (Okay, so yeah it was a big end-of-WWII hit but still!)

Somehow I don't think Nick Fury perused Steve's vintage record collection and selected that particular one. More likely, he just switched on the record player with whatever Steve had been listening to last still on the turntable.
So the more likely connection between those scenes is that it was a favourite of Peggy's and Steve was playing before or after visiting her that day. I mean he also visited his own exhibit at the Smithsonian before seeing Peggy, so clearly he was feeling nostalgic.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

"Ted, don't forget to wind your watch!"

That movie was 100% about predestined paradoxes. Rufus always went back to help them, Ted always stole his father's keys and left them under a bush and they always gave their love to the princesses.

They really can't. Specific explanation was quite specific.

Bill and Ted was 100% a flexible timeline, just like Back to the Future. They did a whole movie about a future bad guy trying to terminator the guys to prevent his society from ever existing. And there's nothing specific in those explanations.

The Ancient One said "the infinity stones create what you perceive to be the flow of time" at the mark I told you to start watching from. Stones, plural. Less stones mean the flow of time is wonky like losing wheels off your car on the highway.

She does say that. She never says anything about what you're assuming about that, though. One would think it would be a bit more relevant for her to mention if removing a stone could seriously damage time instead of complaining about being deprived of her great weapon. But she never says a word about it.

"Think about it, if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future"

When Hulk says future, he means timeline. A new future is a divergent timeline, because the old future is still there, there are two futures. One diverged from the other at a point in the past. One future new that you can fuck around in, and one clean, that will hold your original past, so that you can return to the present you left from. It's fucking awkwardly written by a moron, but it's the only way that you can't change the present by changing the past.

It's not really time travel. They're just creating parallel worlds.

Again, you're not reading the quote. You're filling in what you want to hear to make your argument right. All Hulk actually says here is that you can't change your past. Whether that means you can change something (but then it isn't your past) or you literally can't change anything (because it is your past) cannot possibly be proven based on that quote.

Or close to. It looks a little earlier in the day than eight o'clock. Some things can't wait.

Y'know, here's a thought for the "Steve was always there behind the scenes" people...do you think Nick Fury knew the truth? Because when he hides in Steve's apartment in Winter Soldier, he plays the same song that Steve and Peggy dance to at the end of Endgame. (Okay, so yeah it was a big end-of-WWII hit but still!)

It's a possibility that's occurred to me. It would make sense if Steve and Peggy were trying to check Hydra's growth but were prevented from destroying it completely that they might at least consider reaching out to the man they knew would be the most trustworthy and would wind up with their job someday to warn him (and Fury keeping a big secret under his hat is 100% believable). But I have no particular opinion whether it actually happened that way or not and I agree the music probably doesn't mean anything, since he's in Steve's apartment.

 

[JD]

I think we've reached the point where we all just agree to disagree and move on. At this point neither side is going to change their minds until we get a movie or TV show that explicitly lays this all out one or the other, so we might as well just stop. We seem to be closing in on the point where things might start getting ugly, and I think it'd be best if we all just step back and take a breath before that happens.

 

[Guy Gardener]

We did get a movie that stated the rules.

You can't change the present by fooling around in the past.

Loki escaped with an Infinity Stone and none of my DVDs have changed.

 

[Turtletrekker]

We did get a movie that stated the rules.

You can't change the present by fooling around in the past.

Loki escaped with an Infinity Stone and none of my DVDs have changed.

Likewise, I watched the first Guardians of the Galaxy last night and don't recall seeing Quill getting decked by War Machine.

 

[Turtletrekker]

The first Iron Man is on TV and I can't help but think about the journey that all these characters went on. Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, Coulson, even JARVIS!

the "proof that Tony Stark has a heart" scene, which always made me smile before, made me genuinely misty-eyed this time.

And Tony never was able to rest, even back then...

"There is nothing but this! There is no benefit, no art opening. There's nothing to sign. There's the next mission and nothing else!"

I think I want to do a rewatch of the Tony Stark centric MCU movies, including the usually skipped Iron Man 2 and 3, just to map out the character's journey.

 

[Reverend]

Bill and Ted was 100% a flexible timeline, just like Back to the Future.

Name one thing that was explicitly altered by time travel. The movie begins with the utopic future they created, which we find couldn't have happened without assistance from said future. It's a closed loop. Even killing them didn't alter things at all. Indeed, predeterminism even dictated the defeat of the villain in the second movie: they set up the key, they set up the gun!

 

[theenglish]

The Ancient One said "the infinity stones create what you perceive to be the flow of time" at the mark I told you to start watching from. Stones, plural. Less stones mean the flow of time is wonky like losing wheels off your car on the highway.

"Think about it, if you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can't now be changed by your new future"

When Hulk says future, he means timeline. A new future is a divergent timeline, because the old future is still there, there are two futures. One diverged from the other at a point in the past. One future new that you can fuck around in, and one clean, that will hold your original past, so that you can return to the present you left from. It's fucking awkwardly written by a moron, but it's the only way that you can't change the present by changing the past.

It's not really time travel. They're just creating parallel worlds.

I don't take this dialogue to mean that at all. I take it to mean that time travel works more like in Harry Potter. In TPoA traveling to the past simply means completing the series of events that already happened, not creating something new. The conversation with the Ancient One to me implies that it is removing the stones that create the alternate timelines--and that returning them simple eliminates those alternate timelines that were never meant to exist in the first place.

More simply, traveling to the past does not in itself create new timelines but removing the stones does.

 

[theenglish]

Also, what do people think Strange is actually doing in this scene if the universe isn't actually diverging an infinite amount of times at every moment everywhere? If they always won and Cap always went back, then what's this 1 in 14,000,605 talk? You can't have alternate futures AND a fixed loop. If Old Cap was already there in that universe and always had been then it should have been 14,000,605 in 14,000,605. QED

He's using the timestone to explore possible futures not visit alternate timelines.

 

[Guy Gardener]

What do you think a possible future is?

A future is your life forward from now in time to the end.

A timeline is your life forward (and backward) from now in time to the end (and beginning).

I don't take this dialogue to mean that at all. I take it to mean that time travel works more like in Harry Potter. In TPoA traveling to the past simply means completing the series of events that already happened, not creating something new. The conversation with the Ancient One to me implies that it is removing the stones that create the alternate timelines--and that returning them simple eliminates those alternate timelines that were never meant to exist in the first place.

More simply, traveling to the past does not in itself create new timelines but removing the stones does.

Removing a stone splits the timeline in two, one where it's taken, and one where it is not. A timeline with less infinity stones is unstable/weak.

Above I just noted that there can be a new timeline created from NOT taking a stone.

2013 Thanos was murdered in the present (2024), so (2013) Thanos is never going to collect the Stones and blink the universe, even though the present (2024) is a universe where that exactly did happen.

Old Nebula killed her youngself.

Changing the past does not effect the present.

Doctor Strange checked Fourteen million six hundred and five timelines. Was every one of those timelines the result of an infinity stone being stolen away to a neighbouring timeline? Or can new timelines be generated by any and every choice and NOT just only taking a stone elsewhere?

 

[Reverend]

He's using the timestone to explore possible futures not visit alternate timelines.

That sentence was utter nonsense. Those are both the same thing; Future and past are just a matter of shifting perspective.

 

[Set Harth]

Put it this way: if Steve Rogers was Peggy's unnamed husband then it wasn't the Steve Rogers we know; it'd have to be some Steve Rogers from another universe, one that for some inexplicable reason sat out the 20th century with his thumb up his arse, sitting back and watching his wife struggle against forces in utter futility. So fuck that Steve Rogers.

Or as KRAD put it:

If this is an alternate timeline, it’s way more fun. It has so many more story possibilities than turning Peggy Carter into a trophy for Rogers to win at the end, albeit at the expense of her life’s work being destroyed by Hydra while her husband stood by and did nothing about it.

If he goes full-on let’s-change-this-for-the-better—which is actually in character for the guy we’ve seen played by Chris Evans in more than half-a-dozen movies, not to mention in character for the 80-year-old comics character he’s based on—then there’s all sorts of fun to be had. First, he’d tell Peggy about Zola’s plan and lock him down, keep him from destroying S.H.I.E.L.D. from within. Next, he’d go to Siberia (or wherever) and free Bucky, keeping him from being the Winter Soldier. He’d use his wife’s status as a S.H.I.E.L.D. director to do things like tell President Kennedy to have a canopy instead of driving in the open air and suggest that Dr. King have stronger security and that President Bush actually pay attention to his briefings about al-Qaeda.

He’d also make sure that Henry Pym doesn’t quit S.H.I.E.L.D. in a huff (especially since there won’t be a Hydra mole pissing him off, as seen in Ant-Man), and work with him to be able to jump through the quantum realm to his original timeline so he can give Sam Wilson the shield in 2024.

And then he’d still be Captain America, instead of a lying, indolent, murdering sack of shit.

https://www.tor.com/2019/06/05/aven...assassination-of-steve-rogers/comment-page-2/

The same people who penned that time travel explanation scene (which I don't think is as absolute as people think it is) have unequivocally said that Steve was always Peggy's husband, so I don't think people are analyzing those two truths correctly insofar as what ultimately happened with Steve.

The problem is that, whether the writers realize it or not, these things are in opposition. It seems fairly clear, for example, that the events of 2012 NY and 2014 Morag happen differently in Endgame than they did originally. Or do you think it was the writers' intent that Quill was always knocked out on Morag, that Loki always escaped with the Tesseract?

He could spend his entire life trying to root out Hydra, but something would always happen to protect them at least in such a way that the specific elements of hydra which existed in TWS would still exist during TWS. Because that's how the timeline happened.

So when Steve goes back to 1948 and tells everyone "Hydra has infiltrated SHIELD", what happens? Their eyes glaze over? They start wobbling unsteadily back and forth, muttering "timeline... timeline... I do not hear you... I must not listen..."?

We're talking about someone who goes back in time equipped with 75 years of foreknowledge of coming events, yet somehow this changes nothing? I find the whole notion of a temporal recursion somehow ratcheting into a fixed state of this sort hard to believe generally, but it seems particularly indefensible in this case.

And that's definitely not in the movie.

So why, then, does Cap have to return the stones?

( As an aside, what if Cap had collected all the stones and been like, "Ha! You fools! The good guy thing was all an act! Now I have the ultimate power in the universe! Mwahahahhaaa!!!" How great would that have been? )

 

[JD]

It turns out that Tom Hiddleston already knew about the Loki series and what happened in Endgame since just a few weeks before Infinity War came out, so whenever his death came up in interviews he had to lie about it being the end of his time playing him.

 

[theenglish]

That sentence was utter nonsense. Those are both the same thing; Future and past are just a matter of shifting perspective.

A potential future would differ from an alternate timeline is that one actually happens in a different reality whereas the other doesn't happen. It is like saying two different realities are created when I flip a coin vs. the flip of the coin has two potential outcomes.