The biggest let down with Endgame was not Fat Thor. (Spoilers)

[80sbaby]

I'm not sure why some are disregarding that Banner and the Ancient One specifically said that removing the stones is what creates alternate timelines, and putting them back eliminates them.

That's not exactly what they said. They weren't speaking of eliminating ALL the alternate timelines. Just the "dark" ones where they didn't have the stones. Hence why the AO referred to it as "her" timeline that needed the stone back.

[AJBopp]

That's not exactly what they said. They weren't speaking of eliminating ALL the alternate timelines. Just the "dark" ones where they didn't have the stones. Hence why the AO referred to it as "her" timeline that needed the stone back.

She specifically said that removing stones creates alternate timelines. No other allowance was given for creating one, and it was said over and over that running around in the past would not create a new timeline, and Back to the Future time travel is nonsense.

[Scott Taylor]

Endgame took real-life observations from quantum fields and extrapolated them to the physical world to explain how time travel could work. In most time travel movies they just take a physical observation from the physical world (Butterfly Effect) and apply it to the physical world in a way that only makes sense if you could find a way to time travel in the first place. But they never actually explain how time travel works.

I appreciated the genuine attempt to tackle time travel in a way other than "magic hottub!" or "flux capacitor!"

[80sbaby]

She specifically said that removing stones creates alternate timelines. No other allowance was given for creating one, and it was said over and over that running around in the past would not create a new timeline, and Back to the Future time travel is nonsense.

No, it was said that traveling to the past wouldn't THEIR past. It WOULD just create a parallel reality. Banner explained that to War Machine. It wasn't just removing the stones that would do it. The only thing removing the stones would do is create a dark timeline for those respective realities.

[WebLurker]

I have no idea what you mean by this?

Basically, with the Stones replaced, the spinoff timelines are basically the same same as "ours" (e.g. the ones that all the movies are set in and that the heroes are tying to fix in the first place). Even if they technically still exist, they might as well have been pruned off.

Doesn't the Time Stone fix things though? Before the Hulk Snap, Tony wanted to make sure they change everything except the last 5 years, to make sure they bring back all the snap victims but don't accidentally un-exist his daughter. Pretty sure that snap fixed any timeline inconsistencies.

They didn't change the past, they just resurrected the dusted in the present five years after the Snap. They didn't change the past; everything still happened exactly as it played out since Iron Man 1.

The one thing left unresolved is that they had one space stone to return, but it was taken from two different places. There's either an alternate timeline starting in the 70s, or in 2012.

Worse case scenario, if they couldn't clip one of those, all it means is that there's another reality out there where Loki escaped with the Tesseract. Not ideal, but it's not going to affect Earth 199999 and the splinter reality isn't going to fall apart.

[Beaddle]

Endgame took real-life observations from quantum fields and extrapolated them to the physical world to explain how time travel could work. In most time travel movies they just take a physical observation from the physical world (Butterfly Effect) and apply it to the physical world in a way that only makes sense if you could find a way to time travel in the first place. But they never actually explain how time travel works.

I appreciated the genuine attempt to tackle time travel in a way other than "magic hottub!" or "flux capacitor!"

The best real life observation for time travel is wormholes and blackholes in space. Star Trek will always be the supreme franchise of time travel stories. Quantum fields can be good like string theories but if it is not good science fiction, you end up with pseudo science. Now you can bring in fantasy and soft ball sci fi like flash running faster than light speed, psychics being able to manipulate time, flux capacitor, building time machines or magic hottubs. How you choose to write the story is what makes or brakes the thrill of time travel.

[luprki]

If putting the stones back at the exact time they taken will erase other timelines and only leaving one, this means younger Thanos alive again, Nat is alive again and half the universe is still gone. Then returning the stones should also erase the events of Endgame.

This what bother me about this movie, the time traveling cop out story. The time traveling explanation and theories are a total mess and a convoluted disaster. This movie contradicts itself a lot with the time travel and timelines. The movie is basically saying, changing the past will not change the present, until it does.

Even the Russo’s can’t fully explain it.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

If putting the stones back at the exact time they taken will erase other timelines and only leaving one, this means younger Thanos alive again, Nat is alive again and half the universe is still gone. Then returning the stones should also erase the events of Endgame.

This what bother me about this movie, the time traveling cop out story. The time traveling explanation and theories are a total mess and a convoluted disaster. This movie contradicts itself a lot with the time travel and timelines. The movie is basically saying, changing the past will not change the present, until it does.

Even the Russo’s can’t fully explain it.

Nat isn’t alive. They explained it. For you your present eventually becomes your past. So Nat lived in a world where the sequence of events was

1. Thanos collects stones
2. Snap
3. 5 years
4. Avengers time travel.
5. Nat does for soul stone.

Putting the stones back only corrected time for the people in the past. For them the stones were never gone or barely gone to the point where it didn’t effect anything. For the present day Avengers, all the events happened. And they will eventually for all those in the past timelines.

Also it’s implied that the soul stone requirements prevent shenanigans.

Only people who escaped the time stream alive were effected. So technically Gamora and possibly Loki exist as time paradoxes. Their timeline was corrected but they were able to escape outside it before it was. Which makes sense because they died anyways so there won’t be a point where two versions of them return.

Young Thanos died. He is alive again in his past because the timeline was corrected but he’ll grow to be the Thanos that was killed by Thor. A cycle will repeat where a version of Thanos briefly becomes a time paradox before a Tony Stark snap

[Powerboy]

The best real life observation for time travel is wormholes and blackholes in space. Star Trek will always be the supreme franchise of time travel stories. Quantum fields can be good like string theories but if it is not good science fiction, you end up with pseudo science. Now you can bring in fantasy and soft ball sci fi like flash running faster than light speed, psychics being able to manipulate time, flux capacitor, building time machines or magic hottubs. How you choose to write the story is what makes or brakes the thrill of time travel.

The only thing with Star Trek is it's not consistent from story to story about whether time travel changes the past or creates an alternate reality. I think Back to the Future 2 may have been the ultimate movie for consistent time travel that makes sense. In fact, the whole series was.

I guess in Endgame they were trying to say that they temporarily created an alternate reality every time they took a gem but then erased the other reality by putting it back? Again, that leaves only one anomaly. Cap staying in the past with Peggy. I assume he started from the 1970s and she had so immersed herself in her work after his "death" in 1945 that she never married. So he stayed there in secret. We don't have enough information and maybe never will so it's a reasonable assumption to explain that it is an anomaly but one few people knew about. But, somehow, it's not an alternate reality.

[Powerboy]

Nat isn’t alive. They explained it. For you your present eventually becomes your past. So Nat lived in a world where the sequence of events was

1. Thanos collects stones
2. Snap
3. 5 years
4. Avengers time travel.
5. Nat does for soul stone.

Putting the stones back only corrected time for the people in the past. For them the stones were never gone or barely gone to the point where it didn’t effect anything. For the present day Avengers, all the events happened. And they will eventually for all those in the past timelines.

Also it’s implied that the soul stone requirements prevent shenanigans.

Only people who escaped the time stream alive were effected. So technically Gamora and possibly Loki exist as time paradoxes. Their timeline was corrected but they were able to escape outside it before it was. Which makes sense because they died anyways so there won’t be a point where two versions of them return.

Young Thanos died. He is alive again in his past because the timeline was corrected but he’ll grow to be the Thanos that was killed by Thor. A cycle will repeat where a version of Thanos briefly becomes a time paradox before a Tony Stark snap

You may well be right in every detail and yet it is still probably a classic example of a convoluted mess. And I'm not saying it's not logical just because most people don't follow it but because one can argue validly that some of it may or may not be correct.

[Jokerz79]

If putting the stones back at the exact time they taken will erase other timelines and only leaving one, this means younger Thanos alive again, Nat is alive again and half the universe is still gone. Then returning the stones should also erase the events of Endgame.

This what bother me about this movie, the time traveling cop out story. The time traveling explanation and theories are a total mess and a convoluted disaster. This movie contradicts itself a lot with the time travel and timelines. The movie is basically saying, changing the past will not change the present, until it does.

Even the Russo’s can’t fully explain it.

Branch realities are created when you change history hence like taking the stones but if you return the stone moments after taking it history isn't changed and no branch reality unless you also changed other events.

1970: No Branch Reality because they simply returned the stone and that was the only notable change.

2012: Created a branch reality because Loki escaped with the Space Stone they returned the Time Stone to stop further damage to that new reality like facing Dormammu with no Time Stone.

2013: They returned the Reality Stone and Mjlonir so no branch reality.

2014: Created a branch reality because Thanos and crew went to 2023 and got dusted like but they returned the Power and Soul Stones to again stop further damage to that reality.

Cap living in past Russo's believe he created a new reality and returned to 2023 MCU as an old man to give Sam the Shield and writers say Steve was always Peggy's husband and lived in secret with her and it was a time loop. Basically pick which version you like better.

The MCU past wasn't changed because anytime a big changed happened it created branch reality which would be a timeline parallel to the MCU timeline as I just listed the film really spelled this out pretty well.

[luprki]

Like I said, a messy convoluted disaster. Even the filmmakers can’t make any sense of it. Making this a time traveling movie is lazy writing.

[Arsenal]

Like I said, a messy convoluted disaster. Even the filmmakers can’t make any sense of it. Making this a time traveling movie is lazy writing.

The writers & directors having different interpretations of an intentionally ambiguous scene doesn’t make the film a messy convoluted disaster.

[Jokerz79]

Like I said, a messy convoluted disaster. Even the filmmakers can’t make any sense of it. Making this a time traveling movie is lazy writing.

The time travel plot make perfect sense the only disagreement in it is about the fate of Cap and both interpretations make sense.

[WebLurker]

If putting the stones back at the exact time they taken will erase other timelines and only leaving one, this means younger Thanos alive again, Nat is alive again and half the universe is still gone. Then returning the stones should also erase the events of Endgame.

No, the movie clearly states that the past can't be changed and every time they go back, they're just creating a side timeline, until they returned to the main timeline at the very end to rebuild the Gauntlet. The core timeline was never altered.

This what bother me about this movie, the time traveling cop out story. The time traveling explanation and theories are a total mess and a convoluted disaster. This movie contradicts itself a lot with the time travel and timelines. The movie is basically saying, changing the past will not change the present, until it does.

Even the Russo’s can’t fully explain it.

Seriously, we were spoon-fed everything about how the time travel works and they followed the rules to the letter (excusing the Cap bit at the end, which works for Rule of Drama). There is nothing messy about the movie. Were people not paying attention or something?