Avengers: The time travel from the end of the game explained – Does this make sense?

Are you still trying to understand Avengers: The rules of time travel of Endgame? So you are in the right place!

As we have suspected for a long time, yes, the Avengers use the time travel to cancel the Thanos attack heard in the universe. And while the circumstances of this time travel may be different from what many fans theorized, the end result is the same: the Mad Titan is defeated and all those who have been lost in the Decimation are fired, although After five years of non-life. -existence.

But how exactly does the journey in time in Avengers: Endgame? Basically, it's very confusing – no, we're not going to start explaining what's a Mobius band – and it seems that filmmakers have deliberately avoided Fully explain in the film, preferring instead to point fingers does not work . That said, let's put on our quantum realm suit, adjust our time GPS and stick to the time!

The Quantum Kingdom

The key to time travel is revealed when Scott Lang escapes from the quantum realm, where he has been stuck for five years since the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp. Here, time works differently and, for Scott, it seemed only five hours ago. He therefore pbades this information to the Avengers because he is better at the "hold-up" part of a period than sometimes, and needs a big brain to understand the "time" part of things.

In the beginning, Tony Stark is not interested. in pursuing the case, thinking that it was a foolish chance that Scott managed to break out of the quantum realm. So, Captain America and Black Widow appeal to Ant-Man for Hulk, who agrees to give it a go … even if it's not exactly his area of ​​expertise.

Time travel does not work that way!

"Professor" Hulk steps in to help understand how to use Scott's discovery to fend off the Avengers in the past. And while everyone has their own idea of ​​how to carry out their mission, Banner reminds the group that time travel does not really work like it does in movies such as Back to the Future or The Terminator Time or Timecop … ). War Machine suggests going back in time and killing Baby Thanos, a variation of the old Baby Hitler concept, but again, it's a "cinematic journey back in time". That's what we are told.

According to Banner, you can & # 39; Do not just go back in time and change the past to change the future. Because the future is already ! You can not change the future, because if you did, you would not be the same version of yourself as you traveled back in time to make that change. You see, it's confusing.

Instead, any change in history will create an alternative or divergent scenario. Say you killed baby Thanos. This will not affect the Thanos in the timeline of the MCU that has already seen it cause decimation. Instead, it would only create a parallel reality in which Thanos would have died baby. But the world of our heroes would remain unchanged. So, what to do then?

Time Heist!

Here's where we get to the time of the hold-up, Tony Stark can not stop himself and determining the operation of the trip in time when he has a few hours of free time at night. He joins his former teammates, who have already arrived there a bit, although Scott Lang increasingly avoids becoming permanently a child / baby / old man, and gets wet permanently along the way. The Hulk is smart, but Stark is necessary for this one.

Quite early, the plan is designed to return three teams at different times in time and space in order to recover each Infinity Stone dating from an earlier era than Thanos. The Avengers will take them back to their time in 2023 (five years after the break) and use them to cancel the Decimation with a new break. But as Ancient Ancient explained to Banner at the Battle of New York in 2012, removing one of the stones from their timeline would result in a split of the timeline into the aforementioned divergent realities. The fact that the stones are together, probably at the same time, if they are not in the same specific place, keeps the chronology intact. That's why, once the Avengers finish decommissioning in 2023, they'll have to give back to the Stones the exact moment they took it. In this way, the Stones will not really leave their respective past points and will not change the timeline.

And that's apparently what Captain America apparently does with each of the Stones at the end of the movie, bringing them back to their proper place in the movie. past. Although it makes a break of about 70 years along the way. Speaking of …

Splintered Timelines

Despite the goal of not altering the story, it seems that's what happens anyway, while the nebula of the present and its memory mingle to those of the nebula of the past. This allows the Thanos of the Guardians of the Galaxy 1 (in 2014) to see the future, including his own death at the start of Endgame and the Avengers' poisoning plan. And so, he travels into the future for Endgame's "present" in 2023, which leads to the film's final confrontation and the death of Iron Man as he destroys Thanos and his army.

But! How could the Thanos of the past be killed in Endgame, since he will never be able to find the Infinity Stones again, place them in the glove of the infinite and erase half of all life in Infinity War, which will lead the Avengers to the planned time accordingly? Unless this Thanos originated from a divergent chronology, created by the fact that the story was changed when the Avengers traveled in the past (and that Nebula inadvertently revealed the future to Thanos). In the end, Endgame told us that this should not happen until the Infinity Stones leave their place in the timeline. Either this, or the dialogue of the Old for this purpose was too vague or unclear on the possibility of creating divergent chronologies …

The same question applies to the Gamora of the past, which does not are not dead on Vormir and are apparently alive and well at the end of Endgame, while Star-Lord was preparing to fetch her in space (Guardians plot Vol.3?). If she lives in the present, how could her future self be dead in the past when Thanos sacrificed her for the Stone of Souls?

The Loki who escapes with the Tesseract just after the Battle of New York is another big question raised by the Avengers' time travel shenanigans because not only has he disappeared into a portal at points unknown. but he also took the space stone with him. That's why Cap and Iron Man had to go back even further in the 1970s to find another example of the Tesseract they could fly. But at the end of the film, when Captain America brings all the stones back to their place (off camera), he would have no chance to find the one that Loki had removed. We may learn more about it in the Disney + Loki show, but it seems that this is another divergent chronology.

And then there is Cape, who ends up living life with Peggy Carter in the past. This contradicts what we know to be Peggy's story in the MCU, because she married a man Cap saved during the Second World War, a man she had children with. If Cape and Peggy met in the past, this aspect of her story should be changed … creating a different timeline. (Although, yes, it can be said that Steve Rogers has always been the type with which she married, and that Peggy and he have hidden this information for 70 years.) But, in reality, it is a stretching.)

Update # 1: Avengers filmmakers: Endgame, Joe and Anthony Russo, talked about time travel in the film while talking to EW. According to the couple, Captain America actually lived his days with Peggy in another scenario. "If Cape Town were to go back to the past and live there, it would create a diverse reality," said Joe Russo at the site. "The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield [to Falcon at the end of the film]?"

The brothers insinuate that there may still be much to tell in the history of Cape Town. "Maybe there's a story out there," said Joe, "There are a lot of layers built into this movie and we spent three years thinking about it, so it's fun to talk about this and, hopefully, fill in the gaps so that people understand what we're thinking about. "

It's also worth asking how Cap Aged found its" main "timeline at the end of the film if he lived his years in a different reality.Has he come across a technology that allows him to cross realities and time?

The Russo also confirmed that Bucky knew what Cape would do before leaving for her time travel, looking for Peggy.And the Falcon did not know .EW also raises the question of where does the shield come from? he gives the Falcon when he pbades him the torch Captain America (remember that the Cape Shield has was destroyed by Thanos.) Could it be that he knew a hawk become Captain America in the reality where he lived all his life with Peggy, and that's where the shield comes from? Of course, there's a Falcon and Winter Soldier show (let's just call Captain America and Bucky) that comes on the Disney + cast. It seems that clues have been left here that will be collected here …

Update # 2: The writers of Russos and Endgame, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, do not seem to be on the same page. In a recent separate interview with Fandango, the authors rejected the theory proposed by the Russos. IGN has contacted Disney for clarification on which party has the final say in the matter. As Hulk pointed out, it is clear now that changing the past will not change the future of the characters. But beyond that, it seems that despite the best efforts of the team, at least different calendars were formed. All this brings us back to the beginning, when we said that traveling back in time in the MCU was confusing. But apart from what might well be an unnecessarily misleading dialogue of the Old, and thanks now to a confirmation of the Russos, everything fits perfectly … while leaving the door open to be explored further in future properties of the MCU. Make mine a multiverse!

What do you think of what the MCU takes in time? Chat with Scott Collura, editor, on Twitter, at @ScottCollura or listen to his podcast Star Trek, Transporter Room 3 . Or do both!