Thread:Marvelus/@comment-27496405-20190519011243/@comment-26838855-20190730141110

Time Travel, Again (Edward Zachary Sunrose, Marandahir, DaenerysTheMadKhal58)
Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: But if the branches only start when you remove the stones, and close up when you return the stones, how are we even getting a Loki series focusing on the Alternate 2012 Loki? Steve returned the Mind and Time Stones (presumably) seconds after the Avengers took them. Even if Loki ran off with the Space Stone, Cap returning the other two would reset time, which by the very fact that this Loki is getting his own show, has to be incorrect.

Also, having Steve sit idly by as Bucky is brainwashed, Howard is murdered and SHIELD is infiltrated by Zola and HYDRA is such a character assassination. The man we've followed for the past 8 years would never let any of this go, even if the time loop "prevented" him somehow. He'd also, using the knowledge that Peggy develops Alzheimer's, probably get her addicted to word searches and nuts as snacks. Keep her brain healthy. Again, don't want to open this all up again, was just getting the notes down. I've been saying for a while though that I think the Markus/McFeely interpretation definitely fits the film better (which makes sense, they wrote it that way), but the Russos seem more tapped into where Marvel want to take things in the future, and Marvel seem to be exploiting the grey areas.

That said it's not actually impossible for Loki to fit with the Markus/McFeely interpretation. Considering it looks like he'll proably jump into the past at some point, if he gets out of the splinter timeline before it's erased, like Gamora, he's safe.

Clifford V. Johnson lays it out better than I have in the above clip. Cap just can't do it. It's not in his power. He could try going to Siberia but his plane would always break down, he could walk there but would get caught in a blizzard, he could tell Peggy to warn Howard but he would always ignore her, or she would always forget, or he would always forget. He could try to help her brain but she'll have Alzheimer's by 2014. And if he had tried all these things (which I don't think he would have), then say in Civil War someone had researched the history of that place in Siberia, they would have found out about a blizzard. They could have asked people about Peggy and heard that her husband got her into word searches and nuts. Because Steve wouldn't have been acting and the timeline "fighting back", it would just be the way it always was.

It's the same way Simmons keeps surviving very small odds in Season 5. It's highly unlikely, but it has to be that way because it has always been the way that she survives to 2022, so has always been the way that she survives these things.

I don't think Steve would have tried any of those things, because he doesn't have the opportunity. No point trying, in combination with Markus saying that they intended for it just to be him resting. Steve has not gone to a place with an opportunity to change anything. He's effectively been sent to a cinema with Peggy to just watch the MCU films and have a nice time with her while he does it.

Marandahir wrote: We don’t know that Steve fixed the timeline before the plot of this Loki show. Maybe Steve shows up at the end to return the Tesseract. Maybe he forgot to deal with Loki and only returned the Space Stone to Howard and Zola’s lab. In the latter case, he would have resolved that timeline split but not the one with Loki.

It’s not character assassination. It’s him knowing it’s going to work out because another him has already resolved those issues. I don’t think that Steve is the sort of guy who would change the past if he could. To be able to be selfish for once is his arc. He’s lived for everyone else until now. Its time for him to live for himself. The method of the returning of the stones is definitely a grey area.

I wouldn't even say that there's a question of whether Steve is in some way being selfish. He can't do anything, so he doesn't have a choice.

DaenerysTheMadKhal58 wrote: Well, that's just how the writers wrote the movie, they're not in charge of what happens afterwards in the MCU.

And going by their explanation, no matter how much Steve tried to change things in the future, the outcome would still be ultimately the same. In fact, his interference in the past is what might have caused things to go down specifically like this. Here's a quote from Futurepedia that I think explains it well:

"A time traveler attempting to alter the course of history in this model would only be playing their part in shaping history as we already know it, rather than changing any aspects of the past. This is regardless of the time traveler's intentions or efforts to preserve their personal experience, or knowledge, of events." Agreed with all of this.

And yeah, that's another good explanation of it. An example of that, which I've mentioned before, is 2091 Yo-Yo in Past Life, who keeps trying to say something different to what she heard herself say when she was her younger self, but as she speaks finds that no matter what she does, every word comes out identically (because it is the same conversation). She's trying and trying but nothing she does can change it because they're trapped by the way the time loop works.

Spider-Man Passports (additional)
We now also have MJ's birthday.

Forgot to mention with Ned's, November 2001 makes him 14 in Homecoming. Like how Peter is now retroactively 14 in Civil War, they're pushing credibility...

MJ's date of bitrh is fine, she'd be 15, sure. But having already said these passports are ridiculous sans dates, MJ's doesn't even have a surname😂. I also am yet to see an actual source confirm the "Jones" surname everyone seems to use.