Avengers/New Avengers: Time Runs Out (with spoilers)

[vitruvian]

I think time being "broken" is behind that. Age of Ultron messed stuff up pretty badly. Rifts in realities, Wolvie's time travel affecting the 616 at a later point. The time where young cyclops got hurt and old cyclops disappeared for a moment seems to imply that the time stream is now much less malleable than it used to be. I'd say the /likeliest/ scenario, based purely on the simplest explanation that would explain most of this, is that the AoU changed how backward time travel affects faster offshoot realities. 2099 is then very likely a direct offshoot, parallel future of the 616, meaning that while previous changes would have created another offshoot reality, changes are now directly affecting the 2099 reality. Is essence, this could mean that possibly the universe it not only actively shrinking as realities are destroyed, it is actively /preventing/ any new realities from being created. The alteration of parallel futures would thus be the the universe's way of preventing more damage from occurring thru paradox.
My brain hurts.

No, the simplest explanation for things done in 2014 changing the 2099 future is that it's really the future of the 616 universe. If it's in another reality entirely, there's no reason anything done in the 616 should affect it at all. Tiberius Stone starts vanishing Marty McFly style because his ancestor more than eight decades before in his world's actual past history nearly buys it, not because an alternate version of his ancestor in an already alternate reality is in danger of death.... because even if the alternate ancestor had died, that has no impact on his actual family history.

And the reason for Tyke's near-death experience messing with the present is supposed to be that the O5 are from the real, true past of the 616 universe, not any alternate either... which means if they don't at some point return to their original time with their memories of the future erased, a lot of the 616's history gets completely altered and erased, in a likely greater mess even than the time travel shenanigans in Age of Ultron. Not least the adventure where Scott and Jean (or a Jean duplicate, depending on your interpretation of Phoenix) were instrumental along with newer X-Men in keeping reality from being destroyed by the M'Krann Crystal.

Hmmm... maybe the reason Black Swan was marginally nicer to Hank was because the Great Destroyer is actually an alternate version of him. We've seen his alternates can be pretty Dark before this....

[vitruvian]

Great point. But I don't see it written anywhere that every alternate earth has to have the seed. And the explanation you gave is what Odin said. Galactus said something different in FF 600. He said the seed is a celestial mistake and anamoly. If born it would replace Galactus. It would lack restraint and everything would end sooner. Also when born it will tumble through time and space to places less accessible. I am paraphrasing Galactus but that is the description he gave. To me that sound like it could be Rabum Alal. :-)

I think we have to accept the origin of the Seed given by Odin, where Bor and his sons found it and used it to plant the World Tree some credence, at least, though... and don't many, if not all or most, of the universes with Earths also have their own versions of Odin and the Asgardians and so on? Certainly all the What If? worlds where any of the Asgardians appear do.

Even though Bor and sons finding it before the beginning of time doesn't fit well them having at least some of the Nine Worlds to live and fight in already, since there needs to be a place for Bor to have lived and a wife to find and Frost Giants to fight and so on. And it goes even less well with the whole cycles of Ragnarok thing, according to which the current iterations of the Asgardians have only been around for a few millennia.

Now, the thing that might be rare, though, is universes where Loki or somebody else was sent into the roots to retrieve the thing, from which point it was prone to being activated if Earth is destroyed.

[Darkmythology]

No, the simplest explanation for things done in 2014 changing the 2099 future is that it's really the future of the 616 universe. If it's in another reality entirely, there's no reason anything done in the 616 should affect it at all. Tiberius Stone starts vanishing Marty McFly style because his ancestor more than eight decades before in his world's actual past history nearly buys it, not because an alternate version of his ancestor in an already alternate reality is in danger of death.... because even if the alternate ancestor had died, that has no impact on his actual family history.

And the reason for Tyke's near-death experience messing with the present is supposed to be that the O5 are from the real, true past of the 616 universe, not any alternate either... which means if they don't at some point return to their original time with their memories of the future erased, a lot of the 616's history gets completely altered and erased, in a likely greater mess even than the time travel shenanigans in Age of Ultron. Not least the adventure where Scott and Jean (or a Jean duplicate, depending on your interpretation of Phoenix) were instrumental along with newer X-Men in keeping reality from being destroyed by the M'Krann Crystal.

Hmmm... maybe the reason Black Swan was marginally nicer to Hank was because the Great Destroyer is actually an alternate version of him. We've seen his alternates can be pretty Dark before this....

Well, that would be the simplest explanation, but only if we discard everything about time travel and the multiverse published prior to Age of Ultron. Which works just fine by me. Locking in a definitive future which has, really, very few threads of connection to maintain with the current MU would certainly give writers something fun to play around with.

And I'm all for Dr. McCoy, the great destroyer. Basically an extreme offshoot of the Here Comes Tomorrow crazy Beast idea.

[exiled]

I think we have to accept the origin of the Seed given by Odin, where Bor and his sons found it and used it to plant the World Tree some credence, at least, though... and don't many, if not all or most, of the universes with Earths also have their own versions of Odin and the Asgardians and so on? Certainly all the What If? worlds where any of the Asgardians appear do.

Even though Bor and sons finding it before the beginning of time doesn't fit well them having at least some of the Nine Worlds to live and fight in already, since there needs to be a place for Bor to have lived and a wife to find and Frost Giants to fight and so on. And it goes even less well with the whole cycles of Ragnarok thing, according to which the current iterations of the Asgardians have only been around for a few millennia.

Now, the thing that might be rare, though, is universes where Loki or somebody else was sent into the roots to retrieve the thing, from which point it was prone to being activated if Earth is destroyed.

I agree with everything you said. :-)

[TresDias]

Well, that would be the simplest explanation, but only if we discard everything about time travel and the multiverse published prior to Age of Ultron.

Wow, you literally took the words from my mouth when I saw vitruvian's comment about what amounts to the simplest explanation. That is exactly what I was going to say.

And no offense, intended, vit, 'cause I like you and have especially appreciated your comments related to Namor's choice to blow up worlds -- but this post Darkmythology made earlier is the accurate line of reasoning:

I think time being "broken" is behind that. Age of Ultron messed stuff up pretty badly. Rifts in realities, Wolvie's time travel affecting the 616 at a later point. The time where young cyclops got hurt and old cyclops disappeared for a moment seems to imply that the time stream is now much less malleable than it used to be. I'd say the /likeliest/ scenario, based purely on the simplest explanation that would explain most of this, is that the AoU changed how backward time travel affects faster offshoot realities. 2099 is then very likely a direct offshoot, parallel future of the 616, meaning that while previous changes would have created another offshoot reality, changes are now directly affecting the 2099 reality. Is essence, this could mean that possibly the universe it not only actively shrinking as realities are destroyed, it is actively /preventing/ any new realities from being created. The alteration of parallel futures would thus be the the universe's way of preventing more damage from occurring thru paradox.
My brain hurts.

The "brain hurts" part is also accurate. =P

Consider what Mark Waid and Tom Brevoort have said:
http://m.hitfix.com/news/comic-con-2...t-of-time-news
http://brevoortformspring.tumblr.com...me-travel-that

Marvel has been up front that time is broken because of "Age of Ultron," and that this is why time travel no longer works the way it used to. Miguel's future being endangered by the present of the 616 says nothing about his reality being the same one ('cause, really, it's not), and plenty about how screwed up time is at this point.

Which makes you wonder if just messing around without Doomlocks, splitting off lots of extra realities, wouldn't help put off the end of everything. After all, that's more realities that would need to suffer Incursions before they're gone.

Due to the above consequences of "Age of Ultron," this idea -- which would have been great once upon a time -- is no longer viable.

Besides, we have yet to get any kind of confirmation that the breakage of time involves other universes that much. The Time Gem is presumably intact in many of them.

With the Incursions affecting all realities, I'm assuming they're all experiencing the same problems with time too. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I have been.

I also don't know whether most of the Gems missing from the Gauntlet on the "Infinity Gauntlet" teaser for May is an indication of that reality dealing with all the same problems as the 616 or just an indication that the Thanos of that reality tried using the Gauntlet against an Incursion like the Illuminati did.

About the exiles and time passing thing that was brought up, exiles actually makes a pretty big plot point of time NOT passing consistently. This is how a couple decades can pass for sabretooth when he's watching the mutants kids they rescue in a reality while a MUCH shorter time passes for the rest of the team before they are reunited. There's also an earlier story where the team is separated and while morph and Sasquatch spends a couple hours in one reality, mimic spends I think 3 years in another. Combined with Earth X's supporting evidence, its clear that differing realities experience time at different rates.

Thanks for the correction about "Exiles." I forgot about those instances. I guess I was thinking about how it seemed like the same amount of time passed for Psylocke and Sage when they were away with the team as passed in the 616 in their absence.

In any case, yeah, I was also thinking about "Earth X" when I mentioned "1602." There are alternate presents that don't line up with that of the 616.

My point (I think) was that you can't trick the multiverse on the flow of time. The Incursions are happening on a timetable that would ignore attempts to prolong them.

It doesn't have to be explicitly shown being discussed on panel. Really, if it were that simple, someone (especially Doom) would be doing it.

And, honestly, the fact that every universe has its own Eternity and Infinity is all we need to know that each universe operates on an independent time scale. That, plus the fact that the threat of the Incursions is something that comes from outside a given universe is all we need to put those pieces together.

Honestly, vit, we can put those pieces together ourselves.

[Habis]

Hickman has been watching all your comments and how you all are going back and forth with this incursion genocide

Attachment 15966

Meh. Marvel cheats; they present a situation in which not destroying a planet means destruction of that planet, of your planet, and of both universes, but in the end they will make it so some deus ex machina will fix everything and make the people who has tried to stave the end look like criminal fools.

[vitruvian]

Well, that would be the simplest explanation, but only if we discard everything about time travel and the multiverse published prior to Age of Ultron.

Not everything. There were plenty of time travel stories in which real changes to the past of the 616 universe, or closed time loops in which it turned out you'd always gone to the past and done that thing, rather than the Marvel Two-In-One splitting off an alternate timeline so it does you personally no good (or bad) idea, even well before Age of Ultron. Most recently, it's mostly been on the X-book side of things, but even if you go to the earliest days of the MU, we have Ben Grimm always having been Blackbeard, the first encounter with Rama-Tut by the FF always having been a part of history, and similar things.

Which works just fine by me. Locking in a definitive future which has, really, very few threads of connection to maintain with the current MU would certainly give writers something fun to play around with.

And I'm all for Dr. McCoy, the great destroyer. Basically an extreme offshoot of the Here Comes Tomorrow crazy Beast idea.

Yeah, the broken time thing to me can provide a justification for causality within the 616 universe breaking down, so could be responsible for the extended presence of the O5 in the present learning about all sorts of things they never, ever want to do, and even thinking about never returning, not destroying the universe yet.... and we know it's canonically broken down some of the barriers between the 616 and Ultimate universes, what with Galactus crossing over to that universe and messing about and there being all sorts of portals for them to deal with... but it still makes no sense for breakage of time to make events in two originally different universes to become more causally connected in a consistent way, like they're just two times in the same timeline, as we've seen recently with O'Hara and Stone.

Now, it's true that there might be multiple possible futures at any given point, so it can be convenient to give these different futures Earth-XXX designations as alternates, and we do see in Spider-Verse that it's even possible to travel to these futures as though they were regular alternates... but in order for the whole thing about Tiberius Stone's existence being in jeopardy in 2099 depending what happens with his ancestor in 2014 to make sense, 2099 still needs to 'really' be a future of the 616 universe, if not the only possible one. Miguel must have left the Doomlocks on... ;-)

[vitruvian]

Marvel has been up front that time is broken because of "Age of Ultron," and that this is why time travel no longer works the way it used to. Miguel's future being endangered by the present of the 616 says nothing about his reality being the same one ('cause, really, it's not), and plenty about how screwed up time is at this point.

It does, because it is explicitly said to be because the Stone in 2014 is the ancestor of the one in 2099, not for any other reason. If they were in alternate realities, then the guy in 2014 would not be his actual ancestor.

Unless maybe you think the Stone of 2014 or his kid is fated to travel from one universe to another.

Due to the above consequences of "Age of Ultron," this idea -- which would have been great once upon a time -- is no longer viable.

It was written in ASM and Spider-Man 2099 as a simple causal connection of this sort, so somebody should tell Dan Slott his stories aren't viable then.

With the Incursions affecting all realities, I'm assuming they're all experiencing the same problems with time too. Maybe I shouldn't be, but I have been.

Why would you assume that most or all realities had the time travel shenanigans of Age of Ultron, or their consequences except maybe as bleed over (which to be honest, we've only seen in the Ultimate Universe)?

For that matter, why would you assume the Incursions have anything to do with Age of Ultron? They started well before the point from which Logan and Sue started going back and messing with things to prevent Ultron's rise, and Marvel has been very explicit that the whole broken time started then, and not back in the early Avengers days when Pym was inventing the robot that they went back to.

I don't think that either of these ideas, while interesting, is supported by the stories as published.

I also don't know whether most of the Gems missing from the Gauntlet on the "Infinity Gauntlet" teaser for May is an indication of that reality dealing with all the same problems as the 616 or just an indication that the Thanos of that reality tried using the Gauntlet against an Incursion like the Illuminati did.

Well, it's been well, well established that Gems and Gauntlet only have reach within their native realities, and no sway over others whatsoever, so it can't be the case that the destruction of most of the Gems in the 616 when Steve used the Gauntlet caused them to be destroyed in another reality as well.

Thanks for the correction about "Exiles." I forgot about those instances. I guess I was thinking about how it seemed like the same amount of time passed for Psylocke and Sage when they were away with the team as passed in the 616 in their absence.

In any case, yeah, I was also thinking about "Earth X" when I mentioned "1602." There are alternate presents that don't line up with that of the 616.

My point (I think) was that you can't trick the multiverse on the flow of time. The Incursions are happening on a timetable that would ignore attempts to prolong them.

It doesn't have to be explicitly shown being discussed on panel. Really, if it were that simple, someone (especially Doom) would be doing it.

And, honestly, the fact that every universe has its own Eternity and Infinity is all we need to know that each universe operates on an independent time scale. That, plus the fact that the threat of the Incursions is something that comes from outside a given universe is all we need to put those pieces together.

Honestly, vit, we can put those pieces together ourselves.

No, unless it's shown, we don't know whether they've tried something or if it could work or not - especially given that they haven't even been shown to attempt 'shading the apocalypse', which we know for certain does work.

[Habis]

Not everything. There were plenty of time travel stories in which real changes to the past of the 616 universe, or closed time loops in which it turned out you'd always gone to the past and done that thing, rather than the Marvel Two-In-One splitting off an alternate timeline so it does you personally no good (or bad) idea, even well before Age of Ultron. Most recently, it's mostly been on the X-book side of things, but even if you go to the earliest days of the MU, we have Ben Grimm always having been Blackbeard, the first encounter with Rama-Tut by the FF always having been a part of history, and similar things.

It could be that time travellers don't create divergent timelines, but all the divergent timelines always existed; when you travel back in time, casualty protects itself against paradoxes sending you to the parallel universe where your actions can get integrated. Time travellers would come to believe that they have changed history.

People changing their own past is more problematic. It could be as simple as time travellers being unable to go back to their native timeline and becoming stuck in the new one.

[exiled]

Meh. Marvel cheats; they present in a situation in which not destroying a planet means that destruction of that planet, of your planet, and of both universes, but in the end they will make it so some deus ex machina will fix everything and make the people who has tried to stave the end look like criminal fools.

Yeah! Ain't it fun?! I love it!

[vitruvian]

It could be that time travellers don't create divergent timelines, but all the divergent timelines always existed; when you travel back in time, casualty protects itself against paradoxes sending you to the parallel universe where your actions can get integrated. Time travellers would come to believe that they have changed history.

But then that darn Marvel Two-In-One story went and contradicted that: Ben cured his past self, then came back to an unchanged present and was told by Reed all he'd managed to do was split off a new timeline. And that is an example of an alternate timeline specifically caused by a time traveler's intervention, not by events that could have always gone one way or the other, like most of the What If? worlds. And Marvel went with that concept for time travel for the most part (although I do recall causality being conserved in other time travel stories even in Marvel Two-In-One, like the Doc Savage and Liberty Legion team-ups, too).

But then in Age of Apocalypse, Legion goes back and gets his dad killed and it results in Age of Apocalypse as a real change to the 616 timeline.... although when things got switched back, the Age of Apocalypse timeline did persist as an alternate universe.

I think the best we can say is that sometimes it works one way, sometimes the other, or perhaps that really it's the same deal either way but looks like different consequences depending which version of the present or future the time traveler comes back to.

People changing their own past is more problematic. It could be as simple as time travellers being unable to go back to their native timeline and becoming stuck in the new one.

Except we get all kinds of stories where that's supposed to be the case, and even more, we get stories where the tampering in the past is shown as actually causing people and things in the present (or in the 2099 future, in the case of Tiberius Stone) to start disappearing or fading (although it doesn't really make any sense for anybody to experience that, since memories and perceptions should alter as 'fast' as facts on the ground, so if somebody was never born you won't miss them being there), in the case of Stone even while there was communication going on between the two times.

I suppose you could argue that it was all a matter of perspective rather than a single timeline actually changing, with the fading of Tiberius Stone actually being an indication that Miguel is being shifted to (communicating with) a different timeline, and I don't actually mind that idea much... it's actually very reminiscent of shadow walking in Roger Zelazny's Amber series, one of my favorites. However, I don't think anyone can deny that there have been quite a few stories set in the MU where it at least appeared to everybody, supergeniuses like Reed and seasoned time travelers like Kang and Immortus and Zarrko included, that the past had actually been changed.

[Habis]

But then that darn Marvel Two-In-One story went and contradicted that: Ben cured his past self, then came back to an unchanged present and was told by Reed all he'd managed to do was split off a new timeline. And that is an example of an alternate timeline specifically caused by a time traveler's intervention, not by events that could have always gone one way or the other, like most of the What If? worlds. And Marvel went with that concept for time travel for the most part (although I do recall causality being conserved in other time travel stories even in Marvel Two-In-One, like the Doc Savage and Liberty Legion team-ups, too).

Reed Richards could be wrong, he's not omniscient. And while Ben Grimm 616 would have healed some other Ben Grimm in another universe, if it doesn't affect his own past, it doesn't creates paradoxes. Ben Grimm 616 would be altering the flow of events the same way we do all the time (our actions change the future), but he wouldn't be affecting his own past, and wouldn't be altering events that have already happened.

Except we get all kinds of stories where that's supposed to be the case, and even more, we get stories where the tampering in the past is shown as actually causing people and things in the present (or in the 2099 future, in the case of Tiberius Stone) to start disappearing or fading (although it doesn't really make any sense for anybody to experience that, since memories and perceptions should alter as 'fast' as facts on the ground, so if somebody was never born you won't miss them being there), in the case of Stone even while there was communication going on between the two times.

I suppose you could argue that it was all a matter of perspective rather than a single timeline actually changing, with the fading of Tiberius Stone actually being an indication that Miguel is being shifted to (communicating with) a different timeline, and I don't actually mind that idea much... it's actually very reminiscent of shadow walking in Roger Zelazny's Amber series, one of my favorites. However, I don't think anyone can deny that there have been quite a few stories set in the MU where it at least appeared to everybody, supergeniuses like Reed and seasoned time travelers like Kang and Immortus and Zarrko included, that the past had actually been changed.

Since people shouldn't be able to perceive the timeline changing (because their memories should change too), I prefer to not give much thought to those scenes. The "Return to Future" kind of vanishing people scenes are the worst time travel variant.

[Habis]

Yeah! Ain't it fun?! I love it!

Yup.

"90% of people in Manhattan are infected with the Zombie Virus! You must throw a nuke and blast the city to save the world, or the virus will spread like wildfire ending Humanity"

"You did it?! HAH! Sucker! Chocolate is the secret cure for the Zombie Virus! You are a genocidal monster now! You murdered all those people without need!"

[vitruvian]

Since people shouldn't be able to perceive the timeline changing (because their memories should change too), I prefer to not give much thought to those scenes. The "Return to Future" kind of vanishing people scenes are the worst time travel variant.

I prefer to give thought to, consider, and weigh all scenes in order to judge how things work in a fictional universe... even though I agree with you about the Back to the Future fading thing in general. Give me the tightly closed time loops of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure any day (even though these suggest that the villain's plan was always doomed to failure in any case).

Which is not to say that I won't discard any story at all as just not fitting in with the rest; I'm pretty sure the Manhattan of the MU doesn't float on water, in order for that one Hercules story where he dragged it back into place using a giant chain to make any sense - far more likely that was just a tall tale of his (although come to think of it, Manhattan's geological foundations are probably a bit iffy post both Terrax and Graviton lifting it into the air then putting it back down). But with the time travel changes causing fading of people in your present thing, problem is we've got too many instances of it working that way in the MU to dismiss it out of hand as a real thing ('real' within the fiction, of course).

[TresDias]

It does, because it is explicitly said to be because the Stone in 2014 is the ancestor of the one in 2099, not for any other reason. If they were in alternate realities, then the guy in 2014 would not be his actual ancestor.

Unless maybe you think the Stone of 2014 or his kid is fated to travel from one universe to another.

We already know them to be different realities, vit. This has been established for years.

We then have to reconcile what is happening with that information -- which Marvel has provided for us with the "time is broken" thing. Even if we don't assume that Marvel is using the long established fact that time and space are the same thing (see the Eternity/Infinity duality), the fact we've seen the effects of time being broken to include dimensional consequence (e.g. Galactus and Angela) and have been told that yet another consequence is that dimensions no longer splinter when conducting time travel tells us all we need to understand what is happening with Miguel's era and Peter's.

You say you're making the simplest connection, but you aren't. You're throwing out long-established information to make things work instead of incorporating it with the new developments, despite in-universe plot developments and out-of-universe commentary alrrady making the connection seamless without a need to throw anything out.

Synthesizing the available information would be making the simplest connection.

It was written in ASM and Spider-Man 2099 as a simple causal connection of this sort, so somebody should tell Dan Slott his stories aren't viable then.

What are you replying to? I said trying to prolong the life of the multiverse through creating dimensional branches is not a viable plan. We have at least two occasions where Marvel representatives have told us this no longer happens.

Why would you assume that most or all realities had the time travel shenanigans of Age of Ultron, or their consequences except maybe as bleed over (which to be honest, we've only seen in the Ultimate Universe)?

We know the "time runs out" thing goes beyond just the 616 to the whole multiverse, and, again, we've had two Marvel representatives tell us that time travel no longer creates divergent realities. These issues with time go beyond the 616.

For that matter, why would you assume the Incursions have anything to do with Age of Ultron?

I didn't? But time is literally running out. It is broken. "Age of Ultron" is another straw on the haystack that broke the camel's back. We've been seeing for years now that it's all the time/dimensional travel of the heroes and villains that is causing the walls between realities to collapse.

It freed those creations of the Celestials that had nearly destroyed their race (resulting in the Age of Apocalypse reality becoming a wasteland), it landed Galactus in another dimension, and it's all but been spelled out for us that this is why the Incursions are happening.

Yes, the birth of the Great Destroyer, early death of a universe, blah, blah, blah -- universes have been destroyed before without resulting in the coming of Incursions. Were the walls between realities not already whittled away to nothing, would the Great Destroyer's birth have mattered? I'm going to wager it wouldn't.

They started well before the point from which Logan and Sue started going back and messing with things to prevent Ultron's rise, and Marvel has been very explicit that the whole broken time started then, and not back in the early Avengers days when Pym was inventing the robot that they went back to.

Marvel has been very explicit that broken time/space started when heroes and villains started hopping across time/space with all the abandon of "Dragonball Z" characters using the Dragonballs (which also blew up in their faces).

"Age of Ultron" was what made an already **** situation drastically worse.

Well, it's been well, well established that Gems and Gauntlet only have reach within their native realities, and no sway over others whatsoever, so it can't be the case that the destruction of most of the Gems in the 616 when Steve used the Gauntlet caused them to be destroyed in another reality as well.

That isn't what I suggested.

No, unless it's shown, we don't know whether they've tried something or if it could work or not - especially given that they haven't even been shown to attempt 'shading the apocalypse', which we know for certain does work.

The most important part of that passage is the part you didn't respond to -- that it's been long established that each universe has its own Eternity and Infinity. It's inarguable that every universe has its own time stream.

But then in Age of Apocalypse, Legion goes back and gets his dad killed and it results in Age of Apocalypse as a real change to the 616 timeline.... although when things got switched back, the Age of Apocalypse timeline did persist as an alternate universe.

Legion was a straight-up reality warper like Wanda. It makes sense that when they did something to time it affected the actual reality they inhabited and a splinter effect would only follow when it was reversed.