MAJOR ENDGAME SPOILERS AHEADI saw a lot of posts, articles and videos trying to explain the different timelines in the movie, however I think they’re all wrong, or don’t explain their viewpoint properly. So I am going to try to explain what i think happened. (I just got out of watching Endgame for the fourth time so everything is fresh in my mind).First if all, time travel in the MCU works differently than other movies, which was pointed out in the Endgame. Just by going to a different point in time, one of two things will happen, a fracture or branch timeline (if any significant change takes place), or a time loop (if no significant change takes place.(Side note: time travel does not create new universe, all of the timelines are still part of the Earth-199999 universe, which is the MCU)In the movie we see 4 different timelines other than the main one: 2014, 2013, 2012, and 1970, and one more timeline that we don’t see (Cap and Peggy). Before going into each timeline I want to explain a few terms.1- Time Loops: With the way time travel works in the MCU, just by going back in time, a time loop is created. For example, lets assume it took Ant-man one week from leaving the quantum realm and reaching the Avengers compound. So if Hulk sends Ant-man back one week (even though he didn’t as pointed out by Tony, Hulk pushed time through Lang and not Lang through time) and Ant-Man changes nothing, a time loop will be created. That means that as long as the future Ant-man doesn’t change anything, the regular or past Ant-man will go through the same events that the future Ant-man went through during this week, and end up at the avengers facility one week later, identical to the future Ant-man. So in this time loop, Ant-man would go back a week and come back, only for the past Ant-man to do the same thing again one week later, and then a third Ant-man a week after that and so on.Branch timelines or fractures: These occur when a significant change happens to the events of the past caused by the Avengers from the future. Such as Loki taking the tesseract. The events in this timeline will be different from the events we know (the main timeline).Basically, a branch timeline isn’t created by simply going back in time, a significant change has to take place for that to happen. Going back in time creates a time loop, and if no major change occurs, the events of this timeline will play out identically to the main timeline, making it insignificant.Explaining each timeline is tricky but I will try to do my best:1970 timeline: In this timeline, no major change took place, Cap and Iron Man went into this facility, took the tesseract and 4 vials of Pym particles, and the Tesseract was returned later by Cap. From the perspective of the people in that timeline, nothing that weird actually happened. Howard met a visitor from MIT who has a short attention span and likes hugs, the lady in the elevator suspected that Tony and Cap are intruders, she tells the guards but they don’t find anyone, and probably forgot about it, and Hank Pym lost 4 vials of Pym particles after receiving a weird phone call about some cargo. None of these events are significant enough to create a branch timeline in my opinion, therefore the events in this timeline unfold exactly like the main timeline and a time loop is created. In this time loop Howard goes on to have a son called Tony and dies on December 16 1991, his son becomes Iron Man, eventually invents time travel and uses it to go back to 1970 to get the space stone and Pym particles.2012 timeline: The major change that occurs in this timeline is Loki taking the Tesseract and escaping, because as far as we know Captain America successfully returned the time and mind stones at the same moment they were taken. Loki taking the tesseract can cause a lot of changes to the way the events of this timeline unfold. By taking the tesseract, Loki succeeded in the mission given to him by Thanos in the first Avengers movie, so my best guess is that Thanos uses the Tesseract which allows him to collect the stones much quicker and the snap ends up happening earlier in this timeline, possibly without the avengers even knowing what caused it. Therefore a branch timeline was created from this point.2013 timeline: Similar to the 1970s timeline, no major changes occurred here, from the perspective of the people in it, a rabbit stole the Aether, the guards chase it down but can’t find it, only to find out that the Aether was still in Jane Foster (assuming that Cap returned it). Frigga talks to a fat Thor from the future, but still dies later that day. And since Cap returned Mjolnir, it basically never left. So the result is a time loop, where Thor gives up the Aether to Malekith to try and get revenge for the death of his mother, stops Malekith from using the Aether, chops Thanos’ head off, gets fat, then 5 years later Hulk and Rocket come knocking asking him to join them in their time travel mission, which takes him back to the day his mom died.2014 timeline: This timeline is the opposite of the 2012 branch timeline, since in that timeline I assumed that the snap happened early, in this timeline the snap never happens. The 2014 Thanos, along with the 2014 Gamora, 2014 Nebula, 2014 Black Order, and the 2014 Chitauri and Sakaaran armies, goes to the main timeline in 2023 and dies, so in this new 2014 branch timeline, Thanos does not exist anymore and the snap does not happen, the events of the Guardians of the galaxy movies don’t happen because Thanos/ Ronan does not send Gamora to retrieve the power stone from Xandar. The Avengers break up after Civil War, and don’t join forces again until another earth related villain appears. So another branch timeline was created from this point.Cap and Peggy timeline (1945-1950?): This timeline is the trickiest one, simply because we don’t know what actions Captain America took during his lifetime with Peggy, if the government and the Public was aware of his existence, everyone would assume he survived crashing the plane into the ice, and Captain America would live on, which means no one would go looking for him and the actual Captain America that went into the Ice never gets found. He could also find Bucky before he kills Tony’s parents, so Tony might never actually become Iron Man. No one would attempt to recreate the super soldier serum since they can just extract it from Steve, so Bruce Banner never becomes the Hulk. Loki would only go up against Thor and SHIELD only in the Avengers and probably win, and Thanos’ snap happens earlier. However, If Captain America decides to keep it a secret and only tell Peggy the Truth, no one would know about his existence in that time period, and the events of the MCU would probably unfold the same way they did in the main timeline (which means the frozen Captain America gets found, Tony becomes Iron man, Banner becomes Hulk and the Avengers form when Loki decides to invade earth). When young Cap visits old peggy in CA:TWS, the older Cap knows that they can’t meet so he simply doesn’t show up on that day. We also never get to see who Peggy married, her quote “Captain America saved over 4,000 men that day, Including the man that would one day become my husband. Even after he died steve is still changing my life” could be a cover up, after Cap told her to keep him returning from the future a secret.So, with this timeline there are two options: Either Cap makes his existence public and creates a new timeline, where the snap happens early eventually. Or he keeps it a secret, creating a time loop, where the Captain America that was frozen in ice gets found and goes through all the events we know, only to go back in time after beating Thanos to live with peggy, and from that point any of these two options can happen again. So until we know what Cap did in his lifetime with Peggy, we can’t decide if a new timeline has been created or no.If there are any loopholes in my theory please point them out, I believe this is the most logical explanation for time travel in the MCU.TL;DR: going back in time in the MCU either creates a new timeline (if a major change takes place) or a time loop (when no major change takes place), the results of the timeline we saw in the movie are:1970: Time loop 2012: New Timeline 2013: Time Loop 2014: New Timeline Cap and Peggy: If Cap revealed his existence to the public: New Timeline If he Kept his Existence a secret and only Peggy new about it: Time Loop
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