Thread:Elledy92/@comment-26838855-20190425183005/@comment-26838855-20190430070120

Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: All putting the Stones back does is ensure the survival of these timelines in the case that the Stones are needed to prevent calamity. And it also puts them back on the general path of the MCU, since the Stones "never vanished" in these timelines, but being nearly identical to the MCU is not the same as being the MCU. Most timelines in the comics are identical to 616 save for some small thing or another.

Howard still got parenting advice from Tony that he didn't originally have. And the Tesseract has been replaced by a shiny blue (Space) Stone. While it could end up in the same destination as the MCU, Howard may have taken that advice to heart and spent more time with Tony than he did in the MCU. That's speculation, but it's reasonable and logical speculation that can't just be ignored.

The Ancient One's path is completely unchanged as she recovers the Time Stone and even says in Doctor Strange that she's peered through time for centuries so there's no paradox with her, but Loki escapes with the Tesseract in his time, and HYDRA believe Cap is one of them, while Cap himself discovers Bucky's alive two years earlier than he should. Not to mention the Scepter is replaced with the Mind Stone. Putting the Time and Mind Stones back cannot possibly erase this timeline, and it's certainly not putting it on the same it's already radically diverged.

As for Asgard, Jane was already attacked by Rocket before the Dark Elves even showed up. Surely the protection around her would be intensified rather than let her wander around the palace like she did in the actual movie. And Frigga is a sharp woman, if she can tell Thor is from the future just by looking at him, surely she can tell by his pained and emotional comments that something bad will happen to her. Again, it's speculative but she could've easily avoided death in this timeline, resulting in Jane having no need to leave Asgard with Thor and Loki on their Revenge Quest. Not to mention the Aether has disappeared and a solid, red Stone is in its place.

And 2014 is in the same boat as 2012, there's no way putting the Stones back could reset the timeline or set it along the same path as the MCU. Quill is passed out. He barely beat Korath to the Stone in the original timeline, he was probably found and killed by him in this one. And whether or not this timeline's Gamora survived Tony's snap, she's gone. Her selling the Power Stone to the Collector is what got the Guardians to form in the first place. With the Guardians out of the way, and all of Thanos' forces gone, Ronan can decimate Xandar with no resistance.

And then there's Vormir. After Infinity War, the Russos confirmed that the second Thanos got the Soul Stone, Red Skull was no longer tied to Vormir. Even if Cap gets there and chucks it off the cliff as Clint is waking up in the pond... Red Skull is gone. He up and left, just like he did in the MCU after Gamora died. Unless the Soul Stone re-enslaves him, which is very unlikely since it was the Space Stone that condemned him to that fate. I agree with pretty much all of this. That's why I was saying that it would be impossible to just return the stones and have everything be as it was in each splinter timeline. But this:

"The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one of the stones and that flow splits. Now this may benefit your reality, but my new one, not so much. In this new branch of reality, without our chief weapon against the forces of darkness, our world would be overrun, millions will suffer. So tell me doctor, can your science prevent all that?" "No... we can erase it. Because once we're done with the stones, we can return each one to its own timeline at the moment it was taken, so chronologically, in that reality, it never left."

All while demonstrating the branch being got rid of and the timeline becoming whole again. In returning the stones - even if logistically it's not identical to the way it was - you allow the six to work in union again and correct the flow of time/reality, scrubbing out the split reality.

Edward Zachary Sunrose wrote: And then we come to the 1940's. I'm still very firm on the fact that this is also an alternate timeline. I just came back from seeing the movie again last night. The Time Machine lights up when Steve is supposed to return. And Bruce even says that Steve missed his timestamp. He was registering a trip, a trip Steve was making from another timeline. And the way the scene is framed, Bruce and his tech set-up is facing Steve's bench. He never mentions someone being there, and the first ones to notice are Sam and Bucky, almost as if Steve appeared there suddenly.

Not to mention there's the extra shield. Assuming Steve was living in the MCU all this time, in secret, when and where would he have gotten another Vibranium shield, if he was meant to be hiding in secret until this very moment? Isn't it just as likely that he went to an alternate 1940's identical to that of the MCU, lived his life with Peggy for decades, waited until she died, somehow got his frozen counterpart's shield, went back to the MCU when Bruce registered his jump and appeared on the bench? The "timestamp" thing I'm fairly sure is just that he made the four necessary jumps, and then his fifth jump was supposed to be 2023, but was instead to 1947 or whenever. He completely missed his intended timestamp. It lights up because Hulk is attempting to collect Steve as he comes back - but he doesn't. He's registering a trip, but why should it be to an alternate timeline? When they travelled to the Time Heist spots they didn't travel to alternate timelines, they travelled to that point in time and created a new timeline from that point.

They don't mention anyone on the bench because older Steve knows he cannot appear until younger Steve has gone. The moment younger Steve has gone and they're distracted, older Steve sits on the bench.

I honestly just took the shield as having been fixed by Wakanda since the final battle.

And how would he have got back to the timeline? He would have to come out through the machine and he doesn't. The only possibility would be if he came out of the machine at a time when no one was manning it in some way, but we've never seen a character come back at any time other than 5 seconds after they left because that's the programmed time when they're yanked back to when they choose to, and Steve's programmed time was also 5 seconds later, he just decided not to use it.

I've also seen another suggestion: That the 2012-to-1970 jump (and Steve not having to return after replacing each stone) proves that if you're going back in time, you don't need to arrive back at the machine between, you can just jump further back. I agree with that. But the suggestion from this is that Steve lives out in an alternate timeline to 2023 until he's past the day he left, so then the point he left is in the past, and then he can just jump back to come out in main 2023 elsewhere, not in the machine.

But this has missed the point of the test run scene, where it specifically talks about how your personal past, present, and future shifts when you time travel. This suggestion is not the same as the 2012-to-1970 jump. In that case, you are simply going back, along that diagonal offshoot alternate timeline line and up back into the main stem and further back in the timeline. It's all just a backwards movement. But this case would be going back up a (very long) diagonal offshoot right back to 1947 or whenever the divergence point is, and then forwards again to 2023.

Imagine it like they have a cable and harness attached to them, and like the timeline is a series of pipes. If you go up to 2012 and down a new offshoot pipe, you can then go up to 1970 without returning to the point of origin - just go back up to the point where the offshoot pipe splits and continue up the main pipe. But in this case, to get to main 2023, you have to go right up the offshoot pipe back to the divergence point c. 1947, and then all the way back down the main pipe to main 2023. It's exactly the same as all the return trips from Time Heists, so it has to come out where he left.

There's no advantage to being in Splinter January 2, 2023 to allow you to go back to Main January 1, 2023 (not saying those are the actual dates, they're not, just demonstrating one being after the other), which the test run scene lays out. It's not about being at a later date in one timeline, wherever you are in the new timeline your main timeline is still in your past.

Teen Titans Forever! wrote: Steve Rogers was always married to Peggy Carter. The unnamed husband mentioned in Winter Soldier was actually Steve the whole time but kept a secret. When they traveled in time the Avengers made alternate timelines (Loki in the original timeline is still dead but the alternate timeline Loki that escaped with the Tesseract is still alive) but when Steve did it at the end and didn't return via the time machine Sharon Carter and all of Peggy's children and etc. have to still be alive. Thus, Sharon is Steve's Great Niece. I know creepy right? It's like Luke kissing Leia all over again! Time Travel rules are very different in Endgame. So at the end Steve didn't make two of himself but when the Avengers did the time heist there are alternate Steve's. Look it up on the MCU wiki. Everything actually makes since and it only seems complicated at first but in truth it's quite simple. The rules are very different the Back to the Future and other films with time travel. In the MCU simply put they don't go back to their time but in the past or future of another reality (that's why things can happen differently but it can never affect their MCU timeline). When Steve goes back to return the stones where each team took them from (The Ancient One for example) the other timelines still exist (if he didn't do it several "nasty timelines" as Professor Hulk worded it would happen and destroy all of them). If you agree I hope this helps you understand how "time travel" works in the MCU IMO of course. If you think I'm incorrect then please tell me your theory. I agree on most of this, thank you for your understanding. I'm just not sure that those timelines continue to exist, but maybe they do.

If Markus and McFeely say that the timelines continue to exist, sure, it wasn't worded in the script to suggest that but we can just assume Banner didn't word things well.

And if they say Steve lived in an alternate timeline and returned to the machine at a different time when it was unmanned, OK - but currently there is no precedent for that, and we can only use what we have precedent for.

The fact is, the Ancient One says, "The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one of the stones and that flow splits." She doesn't say, "Travel in time and that flow splits."