Thread:Elledy92/@comment-26838855-20190425183005/@comment-25521424-20190728135407

Elledy92 wrote: Simply, timelines can't be erased. They are just put back on track on a similar course of the original timeline, and moves on their own from that point. Just like you can't change your own past, by the same rule it's not physically possible to cancel an entire reality simply by putting a Stone back. This is probably one of the weakest aspect of the Russo explanation and one of the thing that makes me regrets that they connected time travel rules with the Stones in the first place. Honestly, I've never really got your assertion that timelines can't be erased, Elledy92. That's word for word what they say and show in the film, and the Infinity Stones have control over all of space-time beyond any real physics, it's certainly in their capability. Thanos nearly destroys the entire universe and starts a new one with them. There are workarounds for it being branch timelines on branch timelines that get erased, but no matter what some timelines got erased in this film. My apologies, didn't want to imply that erasing a timeline wasn't physically possible within the MCU (the Infinity Stones clearly have the capability to do that), but i was refering to the fact that some of the time-travel theory seems to stand to the fact that time can only be changed by moving the Stones, which is ridicolous, and that simply every other action don't "fix". The follow-up of the discussion was that "erasing" branches was kinda a paradox.

Elledy92 wrote: Technically, traveling in the timeline will simply alter the course of the timeline itself, preventing to fall into caos without a Stone. Except if every jump creates a branch, he would be creating branches off of those branches which are nicer, but doing nothing about the other split from that split, still Infinity Stone-less and chaotic. This is definitevely a trickier matter. You could say that traveling to a timeline in the past before the events that lead to the present happens prevent those event from happening, but as we said before there is no "past" and "future" in a time-travel situation. There are definitevely infinite timeline where the Stones where never returned and fell into chaos, or maybe this was the only possible resolution since its the only future where Strange gave up the Stone willingly, inducing the Ancient One of the past in giving up hers. The only far-fetched solution is that "main timeline" and "altered timeline" works in different way in terms of time-travel, but i don't buy it either.

Banner didn't say time can be altered by a traveller with any action, he only says that when you're changing the past it won't affect your past "future". Therefore it doesn't exist in the main timeline, but in a parallel one. As simple as that.