Explaining the time travel in Avengers Endgame 

I feel so bad for 2014 Thanos. He just wanted to have a fun day out with his daughters, but then a bunch of people from 9 years in the future come in and mess up all his travel plans and he has to fight them

The only diverging timeline I care about is the one where Spiderman is played by one Michael Joseph Jackson

SUPPOSEDLY joe russo said that cap lived his married life in a different timeline and then returned to the original timeline to give sam the shield. what do i know tho im just a guy yknow edit: don’t go yelling at me im just a man. not a koala or something of that nature. a human.

If anybody’s wondering why Thanos’s army was bigger in 2014 than in 2018, I have a theory. A. He didn’t need all of it for Earth. B. He used most of it to decimate Xandar.

So theres a Loki timeline A cap living with Peggy timeline A timeline where nothing changed (Dark World) A timeline where Thanos and co. disappeared, in which Xandar is still intact. And I dont think the soul stone need to be put back in place because there is no Thanos and Gamorra in that timeline. Maybe Cap still has the stone. In memory of Nat.

Imagine all the spinoff shows they can make thanks to the time travel rules

In civil war captain America kisses Sharon Carter. Imagine being the captain America we saw in endgame and he goes back in time to be with Peggy and somewhere down the road Peggy introduces him to her baby niece....Sharon! Aawwwkkwwaaarrdd😬😅

Joe Russo has now said in a Q&A in China that James’ theory about Cap going in the past in the correct one. So Cap created a different universe to live with a Peggy from that universe, then jumped back to the MCU timeline,when he’s old to pass the mantle of “Captain America” to Sam Wilson.

Captain America as an old man back to his original timeline won't be a problem right? Bruce Banner accidentally invented anti aging machine when they tried to use Scott Lang as a test subject. 😂😂😂

It’s Dragobball Z time travel. Not Back to the Future time travel.

Cap going back creates a diverging timeline, then he travels back to the original timeline using the time travel thing on his hand when he gets old. The Russo bros confirmed this

End result of Endgame's time travel shenanigans? A live action Sonic the Hedgehog. #THANOSWASRIGHT

at the end where cap hands over the shield, Sam says "guessing you won't be needing this" "nah" says cap as he holds up his flaming hand. It's a fantastic 4 crossover, the MCU is now 2005's fantastic 4 universe. Parallel universe phase completed

5:52 Mason's laugh fit too well with that Joker clip it freaked me out

I watched winter soldier last night. On Peggy’s bed side table, there are pictures of her children but no father. And Peggy talks about him returning but doesn’t say it was in the modern day.

So there’s a universe where mr Sunday movies uploads on Sunday?

Cap also told 2012 cap that Bucky is still alive something he wouldn’t think is even possible till a few years later and him saying hail hydra in the elevator opens new conversations with hydra members 2012 cap will be confused about later on

I still can’t believe how many timelines the Avengers messed up.

But Mason's theory means he kissed his great niece in civil war

The way Time travel works in marvel is that it doesn’t change your past but creates an alternate timeline where whatever took place when you went back happens. This is why when nebula killed past nebula she didn’t disappear because she just killed a different timelines version of her Cap going back in the past to live with Peggy is confusing because he returns not on the time pad but having lived out his life. So I assume that it works in the way of If you go back in the past and live out a life you are in a different timeline but once you get back to the point in time you left the timeline autocorrects itself and returns you to the timeline that you left in. If Loki does come back (I know he has a tv series) it wouldn’t make sense unless it is in the other timeline, he finds a way to the main universe, or a prequel.

I'm glad you're doing this, cause at the end with Steve, I was just going "whaaaaaaa....."

Hahaha This is like the third or fourth, "Endgame time travel definitively explained once and for all!" video that ends up devolving into a confusing discussion and then argument lol finally ending up creating a thousand new questions and explaining absolutely nothing! But, it's the most entertaining of them all lol so Well done, guys! 😂👍

Anytime they went back, that created a diverging timeline. Even if Cap was always supposed to marry Peggy, that’s not his Peggy he’s marrying. Even if that was always supposed to happen, she’s not the girl from his timeline. I also doubt he’d leave Bucky to continued to be a brainwashed assassin or Hydra to grow under Peggy’s nose while he’s in the past. So again, divergent timeline.

How do you return the Soul Stone? Are you just supposed to drop it off that cliff? Did Steve run into Red Skull?

Ugh, I was just livin' my life and Captain America stole my wife!

The Russos confirmed that when Captain America went back in time at the end he was in an alternate timeline. Also I think every time they go back it creates a diverging timeline

ENOUGH with Tony Stark! Let the guy rest!

I’m glad you made a video on this. And I appreciate you bringing up the timeline gap between Endgame and Spider-Man. I was wondering about that as well. Thanks for putting my thoughts at ease! Keep it up!

I think the loki show will reveal that present day loki is alive and that he was the rat that let ant man out

Captain America returned the stones in stone form. They were taken in completely different forms, i.e. scepter, tesseract, aether sludge, orb.

The second they go back in time it creates an alternate timeline.

I like to think of it this way. As we were told by Ancient One, only changes in the past create alternate timelines (i.e. alternate universes). So paraphrasing it, if you went back and didn't change anything, then you and your actions have always been a part of your past in the future. So Steve going back and staying with Peggy could be simply interpreted as him always being there for her and with her. No matter the timeline, no matter how the events have unfolded, Steve always goes back and stays with the love of his life. For me, this is the most fitting and fulfilling way to wrap up his story in MCU.

I think that since Cap ages slower he was able to go live 3 lifetimes with Peggy, each time going back to branch a new reality. Once he is finally very old age he uses the device/suit to come back to the main reality an hour before he leaves to take the stones back so he can sit at the bench.

Loved your explanation of how Cap appeared at the end of the movie after potentially creating a new branch in time when he joined Peggy in the past. Using the example of how they jumped from the events of the first Avengers movie back to the 70s clarifies that you can jump without the platform. Thank you!

I guess Kang the Conqueror wont be happy about The Avengers changing the timeline in the future ( I HOPE )

I think 2023 Cap wiped the memory of 2012 Cap with the Mind Stone, so that specific Cap will not remember the encounter with his future self.

Here's my theory: Cap goes back in time, catches Loki when he escaped with the cube since captain also has the space stone and then returns Loki next to the incapacitated captain america so that when he wakes up everyone thinks he was the one who caught Loki (who he believed was the one transformed to captain america), then he returns the stones and then he goes back to live a happy life with Peggy. Oh and also when Peggy mentioned her husband in that tape recording I just always thought or hoped at least that it was Steve who somehow managed to go back in time and it looks like it was actually true.

Here is the best I can do at A) understanding the time travel and B) rationalizing the apparent discrepancy of having Old Cap appear on the bench. A) When you Travel backwards (through time) in the MCU, you create a "new" timeline. Any actions you take affect the new timeline, but not the on you originated in, or any others. e.g., Taking all of Thanos' forces from the past of a timeline does not undo the actions Thanos' forces made in yours. On a separate note, I understood the Ancient One to be saying the removal of one or some stones from a timeline throw it off balance/into some mystical darkness. In that interpretation, returning the stones to their timelines in soon enough, in any condition, in their vessels or not, would restore the timeline to balance/mystical protection. I hadn't thought of her meaning that they needed to be wielded for future purposes to ward off evils, but I can see that being a viable interpretation from what I remember. (Really considering watching it again for this.) I also didn't understand her discussion with Hulk to be suggesting the timelines would go away once the stones were returned. It was my understanding that all created timelines remain once created (hopefully leading to some Phase 4 Fantastic visitors, some Phase 5 universal/timeline incursions/collapse back to a single merged timeline, and some Phase 6 resulting mutants), and does not merge back with the main timeline, just avoids darkness. What implication this conversation and the destruction of all the stones has for the main MCU timeline, should be handy for writers of future phases. B) Since living out your life in one timeline, shouldn't impact another if timelines cannot spontaneously merge, by my understanding, Cap that traveled back in time shouldn't be able to be back in the main MCU continuity without returning via the time platform. The only ways I can reconcile this is if this is if Cap returns to the time platform later on, in a day or in decades, after growing old and then traveling back to around the funeral and heading to the bench. A trip to the main MCU's "future" can explain the new shield as well. Alternatively, he could perhaps not land on the platform if in the timeline where he grew old he got a new time platform built for him. These are both contingent on whether or not the time platform sends someone back along the timeline of the time platform, itself, or back along the timeline of the user. If it's along the path of the user, these can both work (I think? My head hurts). It it is along the path of the time platform, only the first option can work. Miscellaneous thoughts: Does it help if we think of all timelines as already existing, each created at the point of every new decision, running in parallel to one another, and think of the time platform as a vehicle by which one can be pushed to the past of a parallel track and return to their platform? We make decisions everyday, and every instant has different quantum possibilities, each possibility can lead to a branch timeline. Does anyone else think of time traveling in the MCU as removing or adding something/matter/energy from/to a given timeline and shifting it to/from another? Mjolnir just popped out of existence in Thor's universe for a little bit and then popped back in. Like a 3-dimensional object that passed out of then back into their local 4-dimensional space-time.

There is exactly a 0% chance that Cap travels back in time to the same reality. Time travel with Pym particles is just dimension hopping end of story.

See, what I thought from the Hulk conversation with The Ancient One was not only that it would create another timeline but that her main concern was that not having a stone would doom that alternate timeline. So that other changes from time travel could create branching timelines but that the reason it would be doomed/dark would be because they no longer would have the time stone in that new timeline.

Kang The Conqueror is the next Marvel Big Bad and also Doctor Doom.

Thank you to MrGoatMan's little boy for his big sandwiches! I've had them almost every day since he brought them into this world...

Yeah, I think they will explain it by having SOME time travel be self repairing (putting the stone back), and SOME having branching Universes (loki's getting away with th tesseract, one universe having no thanos, Nebula etc).

I think caught on some Easter eggs that weren’t in any of the videos I’ve watched so far. 1) opening scene tony says “it’s day 21, no 22” referring to the movies how endgame is the 22 movie, but can be jumbled up with the 21st movie cuz it’s about the same story line. 2) when cap goes to put all the stones and hammer back when they belong Bucky says “I’ll miss you” as if he already knew cap was gonna spend his life in the past 🤷🏽‍♂️

My theory is that we’ve been watching Old Man Steve Rogers’ timeline this whole time.

How the hell did Captain America return the soul stone. That's the only question I have.

The time jump feels like a plot device they’ll use to add more characters to the mcu

Timelines are the MCU version of Earths. Just a less silly way of incorporating the multiverse.

dude ur my favorite youtuber, please keep bringing the great content ! 🔥

5:00 Loki didn't travel through time, just in space

When Captain America had to put the aether back I like to think he seduced Jane. Not with good looks but with talks of distaste for sand and sandpeople.

Multi-Universe all the way. It's no coincidence that Disney+ has a 'What If' TV show coming out soon. Also, anyone sacrificed to the Soul Stone doesn't die, they still live within the Soul Stone. So....Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will probably have something to do with Adam Warlock (remember him?) and the Soul Stone and rescuing Gamora & Black Widow

5:09 So you're saying it's like Quantum Leep but with Loki? Quantum Loki.. Doctor Loki :o

Remember dr strange, remember that one scene where he’s learning how to use the time stone with the apple. Could he have not used the time stone that was on Tony’s hand and done the same to him as he did the apple. Just bring him back to life. No time travel needed, no confusing time paradox, no stealing someone else’s tony, just use the time stone that is currently in his gauntlet. But nope, they put it back in its proper place before doing that. Just an idea

Unfortunately, simply travelling back in time creates a separate reality itself.

If Captain America went back in time to live with Peggy and it's somehow still in the main MCU timeline rather than a divergent reality (which isn't the case because of the rules of the movie), then for the timeline to also somehow not be affected, Cap would have to live with and ignore the fact that Bucky is still alive and suffering greatly at the hands of HYDRA while the world is also slowly being destabilized by HYDRA.

The Russo's confirmed Peter's friends were snapped, and that's why Ned and the rest will appear in SM:FFH

One thing i don't get tho- Wouldn't there be TWO Caps? Like obviously old man steve but the Captain America that sacrificed himself should have gone about his regular journey OR that cap was nevr found because they never looked for him becasue they never needed to because they had a Steve Rogers right there soooooo technically they could pull a Gamora and bring Cap back but just not have him remember anyone or anything that happened (because this cap frozen in ice never experienced it)

shoutout for the clip from Primer! possibly the most thought out and believable, as well as confusing portrayal of time travel in sci fi movies?

So that means that captain america is twice the age pre-time travel, when he looks like an old man?

The bigger question is WHY didn't they just travel back to Thanos's garden planet before he destroyed the stones? They could just get the gauntlet then.

What if captain america was always meant to travel back in time and his life is sort of like a paradox. When he met peggy in winter soldier it shows her kids and her in pictures, but not the husband, maybe because he couldn't show his face or reveal that he was alive and the cover up was that she married someone who was saved by captain america. So cap is looking at his kids that he hasn't had yet. Also I feel like the reason the end scene in endgame had cap and peggy dancing in their house instead of a party was because he can't let anybody know that he is alive as the younger steve is still in the ice. So it's not that he went back and had to do as little as possible to avoid altering the timeline but the fact that he was always there in the first place so whatever he did didnt matter because it's already happened, up until the bench scene obviously

Joe Russo just debunked Maso's Old Captain America theory btw

There are 4 timelines now. 5 if you count the last season of Agents of Shield 1- Main MCU timeline 2- 2012 Loki escapes with Tesseract after the events of the first Avengers movie 3- 2014 Thanos and his army die after traveling to the main timeline and the his infinity war snap never happens. 4- Captian America after returning the stones goes to live out his life with Peggy Carter. 5- With Agents of Shield there is a timeline were Daisy/Quake becomes the Destroyer of Worlds and the Kree have enslaved the remaining humans by the year 2091

I think that a diverging timeline is only created when the actions of time travelers prevent events from happening as they normally would. For example 2014 Thanos travels to the future and is killed, meaning he can't cause the events of infinity war, that would create a new timeline, but taking the stones and then putting them back to the moment they were taken, would not prevent history from unfolding normally and thus it actually happened in the past all along.

They could resurect TONY by passing time through him. just like the movie showed us.

Russo's confirmed that Cap lived on an alt. reality and came back once he got old.

What if Captain America died somehow before he traveled back to the future

Loki: Fucking with people through time. That's got a nice ring to it, maybe the name of his upcoming show...?

I agree with you guys. To understand this movie you first have to accept, the MCU time travel rules do not alter the past "main timeline". It goes full circle, everything still happens. When Banner & the Ancient One talked on the roof in 2012, The Ancient One said, removing a time stone would open a new timeline, but Banner said if the stone were put back that would erase the new timeline. Banner explains the MCU time travel rules like this, "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", which is different from previous time travel movies. Capt. knew Loki escaped with the tesseract & he had extra pym particles. So Capt. returns the tesseract in 1970, then returns the mind stone in 2012 & grabs the 2012 tesseract before Loki, puts it back in the briefcase & Loki returns to Asgard with Thor, erasing Loki's new 2012 timeline. Loki still dies by Thanos. Endgame glossed over the specifics of how the stones were returned, but following the time travel rules this is plausible. Capt. returns to Peggy, so from 1945-2023, there are 2 Capt. America's. His life comes full circle when he appears at the funeral, an old man, at the exact time he was suppose to return from the time travel. Gamora & Vision are dead. Just because 2014 Thanos dies in 2023 doesn't cancel what happened, because he died in 2023 not 2014. That's how Nebula is still alive even though she killed her 2014 self in 2023. A soul for a soul, Gamora is still dead because of Thanos. The real questions is, when Capt. America returned the stone was Red Skull still there & if so, does that give an option to release Black Widow or Gamora's souls? I would say no, because if it was reversible one of them would have been at the funeral with old Capt. America. Vision is also still dead because of Thanos & even if they tried to rebuild him Tony & his genius mind is dead. So, following the rules, presently in 2023 the stones are destroyed, because Thanos destroyed them in 2019. So will that cause chaos? Also, how did Capt. return all the stones in one jump when it took 3 teams to retrieve all of them in different place in different years?

How did Captain get the Soul Stone back? That is one of my personal biggest questions.

I assume the time platform gets you back to your original timeline. If you time travel without it you go to that timelines past and future.

Marvel is going to keep somethings as part of the main reality and somethings as a branch. Whatever fits the story they want to tell on that particular day. According to Endgame, every time-travel should cause a brand new timeline while taking an infinity stone away from a time line just dooms that time line. However, if captain America travels back in time to Peggy in EVERY universe, then maybe that's just how the time line works. It's destined

Guys. Great job on the production of these videos. These little inserts are great. Professional, even. Kudos.

Thank you for clearing this up. There's so many people out there who clearly don't understand that this is dimension hopping rather than time travel. In the film the only part that really annoying me was how cap could have done what he did when two things were established: 1: you can't travel back into your own past. You'll be in a different dimension. 2. The need to return to the present via that return pad. As you mention in the video, they jump to 1970 with no pad, so I guess number 2 is invalid. But in that case what is the point of it in the first place? But if 2 is invalid that means, that cap would've lived out his life in an alternate timeline and came back via pym particles (like the 1970's jump) rather than via the pad. In which case, if peggy was married to another guy in this timeline, it doesn't matter. Great video btw

I believe Cap forgot the fight with his future self because future cap touched him with the staff

In Cap 2 the writers didn't know he'd go back in time.

Oh my underrated ant man no one is talking about you 😪😢

My questions: 1. Cap went back to return the stones, bringing Mjolnir with him, but when he returned he brought his shield. Where's the hammer ? Did he give it back to Thor ? 2. The Soul Stone, "in order get it you must lose that what you love, a soul for a soul". So, when Cap gave it back to Red Skull, did he get a soul back as an exchange ? Did he ask for Nat ?

Watching this in the future (in relation to the release date of the video) I can confirm that you have indeed correctly identified some elements of things that will and have come to pass. Well done

So what of the2014 Ronin? With Thanos and company gone, would he still go to Morag and go after the stone? There anything with that ya think? Does 2012 Loki go back to Thanos or out on his own? Does 2013 Frigga pull a Doc Brown and do something to change her future? So many things

I like Mason's theory. All he would have to do is grow a beard, which we already know he can do. IT'S CANON. He works with Peggy and SHIELD from behind the scenes, then secretly drops Nick Fury a note that Captain Steve Rodgers may still be alive under some arctic ice somewhere.

If you grab Black Widow or Tony from the past, those realities would be doomed because of those characters’ roles in saving everyone in the universe. Cap goes back to return the stones, preventing the now branched off realities from getting messed up or whatever. Then, Cap decides to go back to the 40’s to live out his days with Peggy. This then creates an entirely new reality which is identical to the MCU, EXCEPT that there are two Captain Americas, the og one and the one in the ice who will become an Avenger. And THAT’s the MCU we’ve been watching since day 1, and the one we see at the end of Endgame. So it is a lot to do with the multiverse theory.

i agree with Mason on the Cap theory - same timeline, just living his life out in the past; keeping his head down and staying quiet saw the film again yesterday ☺️💛

James you’re right, the only way for Cap to live in the same timeline is for there to be a loop in the timeline. But for the that loop to exist then it must start somewhere, which would’ve altered the present. Hence this will breaking the rules set by the Hulk and is impossible. Cap had to come back to the original timeline using the quantum realm.

The Russo's confirmed that Cap created a new timeline with going back in time and living his life with Peggy

Don't forget Cap also returned each of the stones as stones, not as the form in which they originally took them. This creates all kinds of diverging timelines. Like how is he gonna infuse Jane with a little red rock? (.. please don't answer that)

I know how to make Captain America young again. Remember in endgame. Move time through cap instead of moving him through time.

Four possible divergent timelines created that come from Endgame: 2014 from where Thanos left (GotG don't meet), 2012 Loki taking the Tesseract/Space stone, one from where Thor took Mjnoir from 2013 Thor-Dark World, and one Captain America created.

thank you for explaining the multiverse timetravel theory, it makes more sense to me now than it used to

There's a theory called a causal loop where you travel back into your own past and participate in events that you were always there for. When Bucky looks around the time machine for Cap and finds him sitting on a bench, it's blatant that he lived in our timeline and just sat there the day he knew we'd be waiting.

Yes Mason, Steve staying in the original timeline somehow and then convincing people he has Steve's face (but isn't Steve) is simpler.😂😂😂 P.S. Mason does not understand the movie's time travel rules at all.

wish we could bring back tony 😭

7:45 the moment he goes back in time too is his timeline, until he begins to interact within it. It immediately branches a new timeline. If he popped in for a micro second, this alternate branch would be considered identical to the original because nothing has been affected. But the longer he spends there the more divergent the universe becomes from the OG timeline. Or possibly every moment he is there creates even more branches. Where the timeline was once a singular stream, it is now ever expanding cracks on the ice.

People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff.

Mr. Sumbag movies back at it again with the spoilers!!! Jesssshh..

So if it's a multi-verse it means the snap stayed and in another place, Clint is still Ronan and all those people are still dead.

It could also be that alternate timelines with minor changes (like Howard Stark meeting "Howard Potts" or Cap possibley secretly living life with Peggy) could end up just looping back onto the regular timeline. Also I agree with the Cap being Peggy's secret husband theory.

I’m mostly with Maso with respect to the Where/When is Cap situation. If this iteration of time travel is more dimensional, I think then they smartly allow themselves freedom from common time travel paradoxes with the lawlessness of a Multiverse. If the only “rule” the movie lays out is that your meddling in your past cannot change what you experienced as the present, it would seem that the mere presence of the avengers into the past immediately creates a branching timeline. That would go against The-Cap-was-there-the-whole-time Idea but why assume that a second copy of Tony, Cap, Scott, and Hulk didn’t always exist in that moment in the timeline. In a multiverse, there are infinite timelines/realities based the combinations of events and decisions, so there for sure could exist one (emphasis on one) where the avengers went back to 2012 to get the stones and did so quietly (though this isn’t the version we saw). In theory, Cap could have gone back in time and stayed there and lived in the shadows as Peggy’s husband because he’s been there the whole time. Everything that we have seen in the MCU so far could have happened in exactly one timeline/reality AND cap could have been there since there’s not definitive proof Peggy’s husband wasn’t Cap this whole time. Is it likely? No, based on a multiverse, this timeline is just as likely as a timeline where Steve jumps to the past and then keeps that Steve Rogers on ice saying “stay away from my wife, you son of a bitch”

I totally agree with maso about the cap and peggy stuff. If its such a minor change then surely the timeline wouldn't diverge much at all and may even slip back into the main timeline.