Straight Dope Message Board

[muldoonthief]

Originally Posted by HubZilla

I was surprised when Gwyneth showed up in a blue Iron-Man suit. I know they teased it earlier with the daughter in the tent.

I just figured she'd come out using her fiery power from Iron Man 3. Wonder what happened to that?

At the end of IM3, Tony said he got Pepper sorted out. The whole plot was that Killian needed Stark to figure out how to stabilize Extremis after all, so he just completely removed it from her. 301

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Originally Posted by DPRK

Heavy boots of lead
Fills his victims full of dread
Running as fast as they can
Iron Man lives again!

Tony Stark makes you feel
He’s a cool exec with a heart of steel.
As Iron Man, all jets ablaze,
He’s fighting and smiting with repulsor rays!
Amazing armor! That’s Iron Man!
A blazing power! That’s Iron Man 302

[outlierrn]

Originally Posted by bucketybuck

When the two pairs split up, didn't Nebula say the line, "I hope they don't fall out..."

I can't decide if she meant physically fall out of the spaceship which was now on autopilot, or if it was a subtle nod at what was to come?

I think she said 'I programed the auto pilot, all they have to do is not fall out,' because Clint and Nat are basically monkeys in space. 303

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by simster

(wonder how exact he needed to be and how he pulled that caper off)

I'd guess that, so long as they were where they needed to be the next time they became important, he was fine. If one was missing from a box for five minutes, no big deal. My main question is how he subtlely got the red Reality Ooze back into Jane back in Asgard. Of course, it doesn't seem like Rocket was very subtle with getting it out in the first place. 304

[simster]

Originally Posted by Jophiel

I'd guess that, so long as they were where they needed to be the next time they became important, he was fine. If one was missing from a box for five minutes, no big deal. My main question is how he subtlely got the red Reality Ooze back into Jane back in Asgard. Of course, it doesn't seem like Rocket was very subtle with getting it out in the first place.

That one's not so hard - the ones that are complicated are the Teseract (cube no longer exists) and the Sceptre (also 'gone').

I guess he could prevent themselves from stealing them to begin with?

And what did it take to get Cap un-sceptered? (had to hit clint really really hard) 305

[Unintentionally Blank]

Originally Posted by simster

It's a closed loop now - once cap returned them to 'the moment' they were taken (wonder how exact he needed to be and how he pulled that caper off)

I could see Prof Hulk wandering off and Cap strolling around the corner, tossing the time stone in his hand, thanking The Ancient One for the loan.

Heck, that could be a whole freekin' series on D+streaming. 306

[Miller]

Originally Posted by simster

Right - its not that the timeline 'needs them to stay straight' - its that removing them from the 'past of this timeline' will fracture 'this' timeline.

No, it's not that at all. Nothing you can do with time travel shenanigans can "fracture" a timeline. Once something's happened, it's happened - paradoxes are impossible. You go back in time and kill baby Hitler, then come back to where you started from, Hitler will still have ruled Germany until 1945, started WWII, and committed the Holocaust. You've just created an alternate timeline with no Hitler, which is great for the people in that time line, but nothing will have changed in the timeline you started from.

The reason they had to return the stones is that, without the stones, a lot of those possible alternate timelines turn out really, really terrible. The Ancient One wouldn't give up the Time Stone, because without the Time Stone, Dormammu destroys the world in Dr. Strange's solo movie. Similarly, Cap had to take Mjolnir back, because Thor needed it to fight Malekith and the Dark Elves in Thor II. They could have noped out of all of that, and nothing would have affected the world they live in - Dormammu would still be defeated in the history of their timeline, Thor would have had Mjolnir, etc. etc. But there'd be new timelines created, in which billions of people die.

And what did it take to get Cap un-sceptered?

Presumably, nothing. He's technically being mind controlled by Future Cap, but all Future Cap wants him to do is let him escape with the scepter. He doesn't have any further instructions or agenda for himself, so he just goes on acting as he would normally under the circumstances. 307

[Quimby]

I just saw it last night finally. I really enjoyed it. I was pleasantly surprised about how the first hour of the movie was really an analysis of loss and how people deal with it. I didn't expect that and enjoyed it.

Captain America was always my favorite MCU character and I really liked that he got his happy ending. I literally almost teared up seeing him finally get his long promised dance....but...the ending really does fall apart when you think about it for more than 5 seconds. Would Steve Rogers let history pass without him righting wrongs he knows will happen? If so that must be a nightmare for him.

I'm also not sure what to make of Tony committing genocide.

Still, in the moment, I really enjoyed the movie and kind of wish this really was the end of the MCU as it was a perfect send off. 308

[Folacin]

Originally Posted by simster

And what did it take to get Cap un-sceptered? (had to hit clint really really hard)

No need? Clint was being controlled by Loki - that would be bad. Prev Cap was being controlled by Future Cap - should be no problem, if indeed there was control at all - Cap certainly didn't intend to do anything to himself, assume intent matters. 309

[simster]

Originally Posted by Miller

No, it's not that at all. Nothing you can do with time travel shenanigans can "fracture" a timeline. Once something's happened, it's happened - paradoxes are impossible. You go back in time and kill baby Hitler, then come back to where you started from, Hitler will still have ruled Germany until 1945, started WWII, and committed the Holocaust. You've just created an alternate timeline with no Hitler, which is great for the people in that time line, but nothing will have changed in the timeline you started from.

The reason they had to return the stones is that, without the stones, a lot of those possible alternate timelines turn out really, really terrible. The Ancient One wouldn't give up the Time Stone, because without the Time Stone, Dormammu destroys the world in Dr. Strange's solo movie. Similarly, Cap had to take Mjolnir back, because Thor needed it to fight Malekith and the Dark Elves in Thor II. They could have noped out of all of that, and nothing would have affected the world they live in - Dormammu would still be defeated in the history of their timeline, Thor would have had Mjolnir, etc. etc. But there'd be new timelines created, in which billions of people die.



Presumably, nothing. He's technically being mind controlled by Future Cap, but all Future Cap wants him to do is let him escape with the scepter. He doesn't have any further instructions or agenda for himself, so he just goes on acting as he would normally under the circumstances.

I'm good with both of these - but we are still kinda/sorta back to the Thanos paradox - it happens, but it couldnt happen - one or the other has to be an alternate. 310

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Quimby

Captain America was always my favorite MCU character and I really liked that he got his happy ending. I literally almost teared up seeing him finally get his long promised dance....but...the ending really does fall apart when you think about it for more than 5 seconds. Would Steve Rogers let history pass without him righting wrongs he knows will happen? If so that must be a nightmare for him.

Steve would absolutely not sit around for that, and I suspect he did not.

Again, changing the past doesn't change the present. Steve spent several decades in an alternate timeline, almost certainly fighting Hydra and getting the world ready for Thanos showing up in ~sixty years. And none of that changes anything for the timeline he came from, because as soon as he starts making changes, the timeline diverges. It doesn't change anything in the future he came from, it creates an entirely separate and parallel future, one where everything unfolded just as we've seen in the movies to date, and another future where Captain America spent the entire second half of the 20th century uncannily predicting major threats and neutralizing them before they became full-fledged catastrophes.

Then, when he's an old man, probably a widower, and has seen everything in that timeline through to the end, he activates the time gizmo he used to return to the past, and jumps back to his original future - the one we saw in the movie - and gives Sam the shield. 311

[Miller]

Originally Posted by simster

I'm good with both of these - but we are still kinda/sorta back to the Thanos paradox - it happens, but it couldnt happen - one or the other has to be an alternate.

Not sure what you mean by the "Thanos paradox." There aren't any paradoxes in this movie - the way time travel works in this movie, paradoxes are literally impossible. 312

[enalzi]

Originally Posted by Miller

Steve would absolutely not sit around for that, and I suspect he did not.

Again, changing the past doesn't change the present. Steve spent several decades in an alternate timeline, almost certainly fighting Hydra and getting the world ready for Thanos showing up in ~sixty years. And none of that changes anything for the timeline he came from, because as soon as he starts making changes, the timeline diverges. It doesn't change anything in the future he came from, it creates an entirely separate and parallel future, one where everything unfolded just as we've seen in the movies to date, and another future where Captain America spent the entire second half of the 20th century uncannily predicting major threats and neutralizing them before they became full-fledged catastrophes.

Then, when he's an old man, probably a widower, and has seen everything in that timeline through to the end, he activates the time gizmo he used to return to the past, and jumps back to his original future - the one we saw in the movie - and gives Sam the shield.

Rogers most certainly did not spent the rest of his life being Cap. He straight up told Falcon that he did what Tony said to do and "got a life" AKA he retired.

And that's why he had to go to the past. If he stayed in the present, he never would have been able to give it up. In the past, even when bad things happen, he knows it will work out in the end. 313

[bordelond]

Originally Posted by cmkeller

IIRC, he was wearing a plain gold gauntlet, not a Stark-tech-looking gauntlet. But even if I'm wrong about that, simple answer...Stark mentally had the armor with the gems form around his own hand, and simultaneously had a new armored glove form around Thanos's, so he wouldn't notice the switch until too late.

Coulda sworn that Thanos started the final battle with no gauntlet at all ... but that he ended up with the (first) Stark gauntlet that Hulk had already used. The same gauntlet that a bunch of heroes were kicking around during the final battle.

When it came time for Stark to lift the stones from Thanos ... it was a "Stark gauntlet 1" to "Stark gauntlet 2" transfer of the stone-holding components. In universe ... that's no big deal, tech-wise. 314

[outlierrn]

I actually thought that kid was Evan Peters at the time, I was like 'now what's this going to be about.' 315

[enalzi]

Originally Posted by bordelond

Coulda sworn that Thanos started the final battle with no gauntlet at all ... but that he ended up with the (first) Stark gauntlet that Hulk had already used. The same gauntlet that a bunch of heroes were kicking around during the final battle.

When it came time for Stark to lift the stones from Thanos ... it was a "Stark gauntlet 1" to "Stark gauntlet 2" transfer of the stone-holding components. In universe ... that's no big deal, tech-wise.

That's correct. Thanos wouldn't have gotten the actual Guantlet for a few more years. 316

[icon]

Originally Posted by Quimby

I'm also not sure what to make of Tony committing genocide.

I am not sure how you can say that he committed genocide. Did Thanos ship include the whole of the population of those creatures, or just the ones he enslaved/recruited/indoctrinated? There is nothing to indicate that he dusted more than all the ones attacking on the planet. Which would explain why alternate timeline Gamora survived, she was no longer in the attacking group.

//i\\ 317

[simster]

Originally Posted by Miller

Not sure what you mean by the "Thanos paradox." There aren't any paradoxes in this movie - the way time travel works in this movie, paradoxes are literally impossible.

Except that Thanos came forward in time and got dusted - he jumped from 'GotG1' to 'Endgame' - since he was dusted in Endgame - he didn't go back. Similarly, Nebula was killed and can't go back, nor did the rest of the 'followers of Thanos'. Gamora from that timeline is an unknown, but is 'maybe' running around 'now' (even though a version of her died in IW).

Unless his 'dusting' was some how different than the other dustings in that they all got to go back to finish their density. Upthread, it was mentioned that 'they used the same technique/imagery for the dusting, so dusted they are, not just sent back to whence they came'.

Or is that a fracture - 'timeline we watched' is intact - but there is another timeline where those event(s) never happened - aka 'Back to the Future', which supposedly wouldn't happen with the return(s) of the stones and was also specifically ruled out in the movie universe. 318

[Miller]

Originally Posted by simster

Except that Thanos came forward in time and got dusted - he jumped from 'GotG1' to 'Endgame' - since he was dusted in Endgame - he didn't go back. Similarly, Nebula was killed and can't go back, nor did the rest of the 'followers of Thanos'. Gamora from that timeline is an unknown, but is 'maybe' running around 'now' (even though a version of her died in IW).

Right. So, there's the timeline we see in all the movies, where Thanos snaps away half the universe, then gets his head cut off by Thor. Then there's another timeline where Thanos takes his flagship and all his generals into a time warp and is never heard from again. In that timeline, Thanos never acquires the stones never assembles the gauntlet, and never snaps away half the universe. In "our" timeline, all that stuff still happens exactly as we see it, because the instant the timeline bifurcates, there's basically two different Thanos, in two different timelines, and nothing that happens to one Thanos has any effect on the other Thanos.

Unless his 'dusting' was some how different than the other dustings in that they all got to go back to finish their density. Upthread, it was mentioned that 'they used the same technique/imagery for the dusting, so dusted they are, not just sent back to whence they came'.

That was me.

Or is that a fracture - 'timeline we watched' is intact - but there is another timeline where those event(s) never happened - aka 'Back to the Future', which supposedly wouldn't happen with the return(s) of the stones and was also specifically ruled out in the movie universe.

Returning the stones prevented the creation of six different timelines, one for each stone that was taken to the future. It didn't prevent the creation of at least three new timelines: Steve being with Peggy, Loki escaping with the tesseract, and Thanos disappearing before he can assemble all the stones. 319

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by simster

Except that Thanos came forward in time and got dusted - he jumped from 'GotG1' to 'Endgame' - since he was dusted in Endgame - he didn't go back. Similarly, Nebula was killed and can't go back, nor did the rest of the 'followers of Thanos'. Gamora from that timeline is an unknown, but is 'maybe' running around 'now' (even though a version of her died in IW).

Old Thanos did all the stuff with the stones, the snap and getting his head cut off. New Thanos created an alternate timeline for himself when he jumped to the present day but Old Thanos still existed and all the things he did were still done. New Thanos never needed to go back, the stuff that was done by Old Thanos was done regardless. 320

[simster]

Originally Posted by Miller

Right. So, there's the timeline we see in all the movies, where Thanos snaps away half the universe, then gets his head cut off by Thor. Then there's another timeline where Thanos takes his flagship and all his generals into a time warp and is never heard from again. In that timeline, Thanos never acquires the stones never assembles the gauntlet, and never snaps away half the universe. In "our" timeline, all that stuff still happens exactly as we see it, because the instant the timeline bifurcates, there's basically two different Thanos, in two different timelines, and nothing that happens to one Thanos has any effect on the other Thanos.

Bolding mine - this is your parathanos - Thanos from timeline2 is in our timeline where he should not be.

or wait - Thanos2 jumped to Timeline1 ? I guess thats workable. Similar to Old Cap jumping back to his original timeline.

Originally Posted by Miller

Returning the stones prevented the creation of six different timelines, one for each stone that was taken to the future. It didn't prevent the creation of at least three new timelines: Steve being with Peggy, Loki escaping with the tesseract, and Thanos disappearing before he can assemble all the stones.

Right - and I'm good with those seperations - we have no idea what/how those happened, retired steve jumped back to ours - those are all workable. 321

[Quartz]

I wonder if they had Stan Lee pencilled in for that final scene with Captain America? 322

[FlikTheBlue]

Originally Posted by simster

Except that Thanos came forward in time and got dusted - he jumped from 'GotG1' to 'Endgame' - since he was dusted in Endgame - he didn't go back. Similarly, Nebula was killed and can't go back, nor did the rest of the 'followers of Thanos'. Gamora from that timeline is an unknown, but is 'maybe' running around 'now' (even though a version of her died in IW).

Unless his 'dusting' was some how different than the other dustings in that they all got to go back to finish their density. Upthread, it was mentioned that 'they used the same technique/imagery for the dusting, so dusted they are, not just sent back to whence they came'.

Or is that a fracture - 'timeline we watched' is intact - but there is another timeline where those event(s) never happened - aka 'Back to the Future', which supposedly wouldn't happen with the return(s) of the stones and was also specifically ruled out in the movie universe.

It created an alternate timeline in which there is a universe with no Thanos or Thanos mooks, whatever they’re called. I suppose there are multiple alternate timeline now. I’ll list some, but please correct me if I miss any.

A timeline that splits around 1947 when Captain America goes back to live his life with Peggy Carter.

A timeline that splits in 2012 when Loki steals the tesseract.

A timeline that splits in 2014 when Thanos and his whole army are transported to the future. 323

[Southern Yankee]

I'm sure it's something from the comics after I stopped reading, but how can Falcon be the new CA just by having the shield? He hasn't been given the Super Soldier serum. 324

[Miller]

Originally Posted by enalzi

Rogers most certainly did not spent the rest of his life being Cap. He straight up told Falcon that he did what Tony said to do and "got a life" AKA he retired.

And that's why he had to go to the past. If he stayed in the present, he never would have been able to give it up. In the past, even when bad things happen, he knows it will work out in the end.

I don't buy it. It's just not in Steve's personality to sit around when he knows, for example, that Bucky is being tortured and turned into an assassin by Hydra. Yeah, he knows that eventually, he'll break free of that, but there's no way he could just sit around while his best friend suffers unimaginably.

He "got a life" meaning that he developed a life outside of punching bad guys. That doesn't mean he gave up on punching bad guys altogether, it just means he's got a healthier work-life balance.

Also, he married Peggy fuckin' Carter, SSR agent and co-founder of SHIELD. Even if Steve wanted to sit on his ass in 1950, there's no way she'd let him. 325

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Southern Yankee

I'm sure it's something from the comics after I stopped reading, but how can Falcon be the new CA just by having the shield? He hasn't been given the Super Soldier serum.

The Super Soldier serum made Steve really good at punching Nazis. His idealism and strength of character are what made him Captain America. 326

[icon]

Originally Posted by FlikTheBlue

A timeline that splits around 1947 when Captain America goes back to live his life with Peggy Carter.

We do not know if this timeline still exists. It is possible that Captain America fixed it after he got old and Peggy dies. After all, there was no rush for him to fix the timeline until he knew he would no longer be able to do so.

The Loki timeline probably exists because he would think it a great jest and would not make an attempt to fix it even if he new about it.

The Thanos timeline definitely exists because there was no one willing to go back and fix it.

//i\\ 327

[Southern Yankee]

Originally Posted by Miller

The Super Soldier serum made Steve really good at punching Nazis. His idealism and strength of character are what made him Captain America.

I'm not sure idealism and strength of character make him survive the building fall in Winter Soldier or the punishment Thanos inflicts on him. 328

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Southern Yankee

I'm not sure idealism and strength of character make him survive the building fall in Winter Soldier or the punishment Thanos inflicts on him.

No, but doing those things aren't what makes him Captain America, either. 329

[Southern Yankee]

If he is strictly going to be a symbolic CA, I guess. 330

[muldoonthief]

Originally Posted by Miller

That was me.

Hey, I was pointing out the dusting effect before it was cool. 331

[Miller]

Originally Posted by Southern Yankee

If he is strictly going to be a symbolic CA, I guess.

He's already a non-symbolic superhero, so I'm not sure why that would change if he starts calling himself Captain America.

Originally Posted by muldoonthief

Hey, I was pointing out the dusting effect before it was cool.

Fuckin' hipsters.

332

[SlackerInc]

Okay, so:

--How does the Earth handle a sudden near-doubling of the population? How many people are now homeless, unemployed, dealing with gut-wrenching family issues (remarriage for instance)? Are we looking at mass famine? Do the lifetime-appointed members of the Supreme Court get their spots back? What about the probate issues?

--Apparently Peter Parker is back in high school, and all his friends are there too? How does that work? What are the odds against all of them being "snaptured"? 333

[Miller]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Okay, so:

--How does the Earth handle a sudden near-doubling of the population? How many people are now homeless, unemployed, dealing with gut-wrenching family issues (remarriage for instance)? Are we looking at mass famine? Do the lifetime-appointed members of the Supreme Court get their spots back? What about the probate issues?

One interesting thing that the movie doesn't get into: during the five year time skip, some of the people who lost people to the snap are going to have died. Then, when their loved ones return, they experience almost a kind of mini-snap. One minute they're fine, then it's suddenly five years later and their wife is dead.

--Apparently Peter Parker is back in high school, and all his friends are there too? How does that work? What are the odds against all of them being "snaptured"?

Well, it's a 50% chance that any given individual gets snaptured. Peter's social group includes him, Ned, MJ, Flash, and maybe two other significant characters (half guessing here, based on memories of seeing Homecoming the one time). My math skills are generally sucky, but I believe that works out to about a 1 in 64 chance that all of them disappeared. Which is unlikely, but not exactly astronomical. 334

[galen ubal]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Okay, so:

--How does the Earth handle a sudden near-doubling of the population? How many people are now homeless, unemployed, dealing with gut-wrenching family issues (remarriage for instance)? Are we looking at mass famine? Do the lifetime-appointed members of the Supreme Court get their spots back? What about the probate issues?

--Apparently Peter Parker is back in high school, and all his friends are there too? How does that work? What are the odds against all of them being "snaptured"?

As for the first, maybe they'll be ignoring it, maybe they'll be handling it in future movies and/or TV shows.

As for the second,

As a highly placed Marvel Studios source put it to IGN: “Thanos’ snap wiped out 50% of all life -- and 100% of Peter’s friends.”

So that means MJ (Zendaya) died in Infinity War, too, and that’s why Peter, Ned and MJ are all still in high school in Spider-Man: Far From Home)..

*shrug* I'll trade a little whiplash for convenience, honestly. 335

[SlackerInc]

Yeah. Although it would be kind of fun to have just one of them be in college now (but still hang out with the others). 336

[galen ubal]

There's a lot of articles on IGN, wit input from the creators, on the various choices made in Endgame - and addressing a lot of the questions and concerns I've been seeing in this thread.
Examples:
Avengers Endgame writers on Cap's choice to stay in the past.

McFeely did admit to a struggle over separating what was right for the character from what fans wanted. Would it have been better for Cap to die a heroic death like Iron Man? "I started to lose my barometer on what was just fan service and what was good for the character," he said. "Because I think it’s good for the characters. But we also just gave you what you wanted. Is that good? I don’t know. But I’ll tell you, it’s satisfying. He’s postponed a life in order to fulfill his duty. That’s why I didn’t think we were ever going to kill him. Because that’s not the arc. The arc is, I finally get to put my shield down because I’ve earned that."

The writers of Avengers: Endgame have revealed the thinking behind the all-female team-up sequence that occurs in the film’s climactic final act.

“There was much conversation. Is that delightful or is it pandering?,” said script writer Stephen McFeely in an interview with The New York Times. “We went around and around on that. Ultimately we went, we like it too much.”

The source for these IGN articles is this New York Times article. 337

[MaxTheVool]

One further thought on Cap living a full life in the past. Maybe he realized that he absolutely positively could not get into hydra/heroing/world-changing-events etc. So maybe he founded a local chapter of habitat for humanity and marched in civil rights marches and so forth. There's more than one set of problems that a hero can address himself to.

It would be hard for him to not try to prevent the catasrophes he knows are coming... but hard isn't impossible. 338

[HowSoonIsThen]

I don't know if it has been mentioned here yet, but there's been a bit of speculation by fans that the prinicipal of Peter's school at the end is Ben Mendelsohn. From what I can find there's no confirmation that it was in fact him, but interesting if true. Could mean more stories of the skrulls in the present.

EDIT: I found a screenshot. It's blurry so can't say for certain either way, but I'm thinking it's very unlikely. Just fans trying to find easter eggs wherever they can. Would love to be wrong. 339

[Half Man Half Wit]

Originally Posted by Miller

I don't buy it. It's just not in Steve's personality to sit around when he knows, for example, that Bucky is being tortured and turned into an assassin by Hydra. Yeah, he knows that eventually, he'll break free of that, but there's no way he could just sit around while his best friend suffers unimaginably.

He "got a life" meaning that he developed a life outside of punching bad guys. That doesn't mean he gave up on punching bad guys altogether, it just means he's got a healthier work-life balance.

Also, he married Peggy fuckin' Carter, SSR agent and co-founder of SHIELD. Even if Steve wanted to sit on his ass in 1950, there's no way she'd let him.

I think one can at least debate the ethics of actually changing anything in the past. Let's say Cap saves Bucky, but in doing so, proverbial butterflies flapping their wings, prevents the creation of the Avengers, and Earth is obliterated by Loki's forces (or whatever unknown threat may occur). Plus, after having changed something, his foreknowledge is going to be unreliable, at least; you can't save Bucky and expect that the infiltration of SHIELD by Hydra is going to take place in the same way.

So Cap is faced with some tough questions:

1. When do I have the right to create a new timeline?
2. Am I confident that righting some wrong now does not lead to greater wrong down the road?
3. Which wrong is great enough to be righted---do I prevent, say, Kennedy's death, accepting the possibility that I won't be able to stop Hydra, because they're going about it differently than they did in my timeline?

The first one is more hairy than one might think. Does the suffering in the world outweigh the pleasure? If so, then a simple utilitarian calculation would suggest that it's actually morally wrong to bring into being new copies of people who will experience suffering, since you've thereby increased the total suffering in the world ('multiverse').

The other two essentially highlight the issue that the timeline isn't going to stay congruent with what he knows once he starts changing stuff. People seem to think about this as if he could just fix every disaster of the past fifty years, but that's not how it works---any change he introduces could lead to a timeline wildly different from what he remembers. Save Kennedy, and the Cold War turns hot, with near-term nuclear armageddon.

With all that, I think one can easily argue that it's reasonable to keep out of large-scale events in the past---actually, more than reasonable, heroic: sacrificing his inborn drive to right wrongs for the greater good. So I really see no reason to believe that that's not just what he did. 340

[Jack Batty]

Wouldn't Steve now have the advantage of knowing how Dr. Strange handled a similar dilemma? Strange knew that he had to give Thanos the stone in Infinity Wars in order for the ending of End Game to come to fruition. So Steve would be armed with that same rationale - just a little longer game. 341

[icon]

I still maintain, there is nothing in the movie that indicates that Captain America did not erase his life with Peggy Past before returning back. He could have lived a long life, go back to where the timeline diverges, prune it, and then return. There is no need to imagine him staying out of anything.

//i\\ 342

[Jophiel]

But you can't erase things. That timeline with Peggy will still exist even if he goes back to 1942 and throws himself in a pit and covers it up. You just make a third timeline where that happened. The fact that Old Cap remembers his life with Peggy is all the evidence we need to know that that timeline still exists or else he wouldn't be able to remember it.

The "pruning" requires the restoration of things to return the alternate timelines back to the main. Even after Tilda Swinton gets her rock back, the thirty seconds or five minutes or day she spent without it before Cap returns it and that timeline returns to 'normal' will always exist independently.

I'd guess that, in the Peggy timeline, he just does what he can to influence things for the better without going full Captain America. And it's not ridiculous -- even if he never let anyone know that he was Captain America, his wife is a significant person and it's not the same as you or me going back in time and calling the Secret Service to say Kennedy will be shot. She can actually start action about things. 343

[Little Nemo]

Originally Posted by SlackerInc

Apparently Peter Parker is back in high school, and all his friends are there too? How does that work? What are the odds against all of them being "snaptured"?

As I recall, we only saw Peter (who we already knew had been snapped) and Ned. The other people we're seeing are the other students who got snapped and are now returning to class five years later along with the students who were in elementary school five years ago and are now the same age as the snapped students. Peter and Ned's peers who didn't get snapped have all graduated and moved on.

This does point out that there's going to be a huge divide between the billions of people who were snapped and returned and the billions of people who lived through those five years. With Scott Lang being somewhere in the middle. 344

[Intergalactic Gladiator]

Rest assured, True Believers, that Howard the Duck was in the end battle. Here he is in a group shot, no doubt ready to unleash some Quack-Fu.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media...ttqjldfmjn.png 345

[Dewey Finn]

Didn't Peter Parker say that all he remembered was being in Wakanda, and then he woke up on Titan five years later? So did everyone reappear on Titan? 346

[D_Odds]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

As I recall, we only saw Peter (who we already knew had been snapped) and Ned. The other people we're seeing are the other students who got snapped and are now returning to class five years later along with the students who were in elementary school five years ago and are now the same age as the snapped students. Peter and Ned's peers who didn't get snapped have all graduated and moved on.

This does point out that there's going to be a huge divide between the billions of people who were snapped and returned and the billions of people who lived through those five years. With Scott Lang being somewhere in the middle.

I could easily see 1or 2 years of no school as clean-up and new logistics are worked out. Pretty sure the day after the snap, school (or anything else) didn't start right back up at 50% capacity. Same could be said for the day after the reverse snap. While the school reunion is nice on camera, it probably occurs months later (and Pete and Ned would likely have seen each other in that span). I'll suspend my disbelief for the cool scene. 347

[Jophiel]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

Didn't Peter Parker say that all he remembered was being in Wakanda, and then he woke up on Titan five years later? So did everyone reappear on Titan?

No, Parker was never in Wakanda. He woke up on Titan where both he and Dr Strange were dusted (among others). Strange says "Hey, we gotta roll" and portals them back to Earth while also alerting the rest of the Magic Users Guild about what's going on and putting out an all points bulletin for everyone to get to Avengers HQ. 348

[DigitalC]

Originally Posted by Dewey Finn

Didn't Peter Parker say that all he remembered was being in Wakanda, and then he woke up on Titan five years later? So did everyone reappear on Titan?

No he remembered getting all "dusty" then passing out and waking up five years later and Strange telling him to get ready. 349

[Little Nemo]

Originally Posted by Intergalactic Gladiator

Rest assured, True Believers, that Howard the Duck was in the end battle. Here he is in a group shot, no doubt ready to unleash some Quack-Fu.

I was surprised they didn't have Nick Fury appear in the battle scene.

I also think it would have been cool if they had some supervillains appear to fight alongside the superheroes. It would have shown how serious a threat Thanos and his army was if even past opponents were willing to work together against him. 350