Spoilers Marvel Cinematic Universe spoiler-heavy speculation thread

[camdudetenger2018]

But vastly more scientifically valid. The idea of "changing history" is a logical paradox, an impossibility. (Change requires a version before and after the change, and a single moment in time can't come after itself, so if there are two versions of that moment, they are by definition simultaneous, existing in parallel rather than one replacing the other.) It can be more dramatically satisfying if the characters are at risk of losing their whole reality or being erased from existence, but it's complete nonsense. It was refreshing that Endgame chose to adopt a more valid model of time travel, but of course audiences have been so conditioned to expect the nonsensical version that the more reasonable version sounds strange to them.

But while the Back to the Future-style "changing history" model is more common, there's always been plenty of science fiction that used a fixed-timeline model, where any time travel was constrained to be consistent with the original history or create a parallel one without erasing the original. The movie The Final Countdown is a notable example of the fixed-loop model where the time travelers' actions turn out to have caused the history they knew. Most of The Time Tunnel used a fixed-history model, where Tony and Doug only had wiggle room to affect events that were unrecorded by history so that they didn't know in advance how they'd turn out (although later episodes abandoned this). Robert Heinlein wrote some notable time-loop stories like "By His Bootstraps" and "All You Zombies." The TV series Gargoyles used a strict fixed-timeline model, and Red Dwarf usually did too. My own few original time travel stories (outside of my licensed Star Trek work) all use the fixed-history or parallel-timeline model, because it's the only one that makes any sense. (And I tried very hard in my Trek fiction to come up with a remotely plausible model for how a timeline could be "erased," in which it isn't unmade retroactively, but coexists in parallel with the original until the moment the time travelers went back, at which point it undergoes quantum collapse and is subsequently forgotten, creating the illusion that it never existed.)

kinda reminds me of the terminator movies

 

[camdudetenger2018]

Days of Future Past didn't screw up anything. You just clearly didn't understand what happened in that film and what the consequences of it were.

The XMCU (Earth-10009) features a Split Timeline where two events - the assassination of Bolivar Trask and the capture of Mystique in the 1970s - leads to one set of events (Origins: Wolverine, X-Men, X2, The Last Stand, The Wolverine, and the beginning of Days of Future Past), but when Trask's assassination and Mystique's capture are prevented through time travel (as happens in the back half of Days of Future Past), things go in a different direction (Apocalypse, Dark Phoenix, Deadpool, Deadpool 2, Deadpool and Wolverine, Logan, and New Mutants).

It's the same Universe, just different time paths.

time travel is crazy sometimes

 

[Gaith]

Damn, I thought it would be a given [Janssen's Jean Grey] would return. Quite disappointing she wasn't even asked.

Very possibly a question of power levels. The last we saw of her in the "classic" timeline was restored to life at the end of DoFP, which was coded as the best possible timeline, so it would make intuitive sense for that Jean to have mastered her Phoenix powers. It'd feel weird if, after everything she's implied to have gone through and survived in that timeline, she was back to her regular ol' mild telekinesis from X1-2. And if she were at full power, she'd blow all the other X-Men, Fantastic Four, Sam and Friends and the New Avengerz out of the water.

Of course, maybe she's Garfielding us, and she does appear only to get immediately smoked, à la Loki in Infinity War, to establish Doom's threat.

 

[Samurai8472]

Of course, maybe she's Garfielding us, and she does appear only to get immediately smoked, à la Loki in Infinity War, to establish Doom's threat.

I could see that.

Grief Stricken Cyclops here we go again........

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This could lead the remaining X-men and eventually mutants to migrate to the MCU universe because their universe is gone

This could also lead to the mutants being discriminated in an new earth/world by the MCU human population

 

[Set Harth]

which was coded as the best possible timeline

Well, no. Just that it was better than what came before. In fact, X-Men 3 in its day was framed as a happy ending, such that when I suggested it was going to end up as the Sentinel timeline I was initially met with disbelief. There's kind of an 'out of the frying pan, into the fire' thing going on with the X-Men at times, or maybe Final Destination if you prefer. The 'best possible timeline' leads to Logan ( if you believe they're in the same timeline, that is ). With no Jean to speak of, despite her presumed power level. The mutants survive destruction at the hands of the Sentinels only to be taken down by high fructose corn syrup!