Avengers: Endgame SEEN IT thread - SPOILERS AHOY!

[simster]

@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.

@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.

[Quartz]

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

[FlikTheBlue]

@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.

[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.

[Miller]

@AlsoNamedBort

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.

[Miller]

@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.

[icon]

@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\

[Southern_Yankee]

@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.

[Miller]

@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.

[Southern_Yankee]

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

[muldoonthief]

@Miller

That was me.

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

[Miller]

@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.

@muldoonthief

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

Fuckin’ hipsters.

[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”?

[Miller]

@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.

[galen_ubal]

@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.

[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).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Half_Man_Half_Wit]

@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:
[ol]
[li]When do I have the right to create a new timeline?[/li][li]Am I confident that righting some wrong now does not lead to greater wrong down the road?[/li][li]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?[/li][/ol]

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.