Thread:Elledy92/@comment-26838855-20190425183005/@comment-26838855-20190426005618

OK I've got the exact quotes:

Test Run Scene
"Changing the past doesn't change the future [...] If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past which can't now be changed by your new future."

This is hard to follow. If we can manage to dissect this and make sense of it that would be good. It does sound like time is not unchangeable - which is clear from the fact that certain Time Heist events are just incompatible with the original timeline.

Ancient One Scene
"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."

So, removing an Infinity Stone can cause a timeline branch. However, in returning the stones to the point when they were taken (does that mean stolen or when they left that year to return to 2023?). And in returning the stones, that means there can be no timeline branching. The exact method of returning the stones is a bit hard to understand however because it doesn't seem possible to return them in a way that is compatible with the original timeline, yet the timeline doesn't branch. This was how my blip/blister thing came up, because essentially it seems from this that what they are doing is creating a new timeline, and then erasing it for each. So that's why those timelines don't continue, they're just like little splinters that stick out of the timeline but don't extend. While Steve returning the stones cannot always, mainly with Loki's escape and Thanos leaving 2014, lead to the same events as before, they don't have to. Instead, it's just about getting them returned, and that just erases the splinter.

Captain America Scene
"And remember, you have to return the stones to the exact moment you got 'em or you're gonna open up a bunch of nasty alternative realities."

Yeah, so no alternative realities were ever opened up by the Time Heist.

"He blew right past his timestamp."

Not entirely sure what this means. That he jumped again, to the "wrong" year, hence implying it's not 1970? Can they track that? Or does it just mean that he didn't return?

Now, Steve closed off all the alternative realities with the Time Heist, but then there's his interference with Peggy - did it open an alternative reality or not? And ultimately that comes down to the fact that he appears old in 2023, so no, it has to be the same timeline. Plus it wasn't Infinity Stone-related and it's implied that, at least in this set of missions (obviously it's different in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), it's removing stones that causes the split.

My conclusion: No, it's not a new timeline. Everything occurs in one timeline, with a few splinters from the Time Heist that get cut off when Steve returns the stones.