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okay, i had a go at making a (non-exhaustive) overview of the new timelines in endgame
of course, this is mostly from the point of view of the canon!avengers, there’s plenty of branching out. for example, all the timelines except the orange one (and maybe the teal one, if steve changes things so a stone is destroyed or thanos defeated) will likely end up with a Snap, and therefore further time travel
also if we go with the theory that even tho steve went back to put back the stones (and mjolnir), the timelines where they’re missing still exist, that’s 4 additional timelines (with no Snap but maybe other problems) - alt!orange, alt!red, alt!green, alt!blue. also poor alt!red!thor never gets his hammer back.
my personal opinion is that those timelines don’t exist if steve goes back, because steve isn’t going to his past timeline and changing something (so that you’d need a new timeline to avoid a paradox), he’s visiting alt timelines.
and people have probably said this before, but even tho it’s all well and good for 2023!steve to have his life with peggy (and maybe alt!bucky if they liberate him), wtf happens to 1940′s steve in the ice? do they leave him there until 2012?
---
what i’ve also been thinking about is:
what happens when the alt!timelines do their own time heist? (assuming Thanos wins)
i mean, in clint!verse, it’s easy, everything goes just like canon. but what about the red, green and blue timelines? in their own past, they already have the canon!2023!avengers stealing then bringing back one or several stones at one point in their history.
i can see several options:
- alt!avengers arrive in 2012, 2013 or 1970 slightly before canon!avengers. the timeline diverges, they don’t meet. they do a similar or identical heist
- the timelines are so similar that they end up “replacing” the canon!avengers in their past and do the exact same things, and we now have a stable time loop. cue quantum physics science technobabble. (sorry for the bad explanation, i can sorta see how it would work, but yeah it’s confusing)
- they arrive slightly after canon!avengers. the timeline diverges from their past too, but now there are TWO avengers teams around with the same missions. so many possible hijinks
take new york. i can only imagine the chaos with THREE caps, hulks and iron mans. who gets the stones? does loki still escape with the tesseract? when does the losing team travel to get the mind stone or the time stone? or do they lurk around waiting for canon!cap to bring back the stones and THEN improvise their own heist?
also i just thought that it’s too bad that the soul stone was taken in the verse where thanos disappeared, because if future!orange!avengers had needed it, they could just have gotten it from steve, no sacrifice required.
now i’m going one step further and dreaming of an universe where the avengers are clever and thinking of more than just their own timeline, and we get the Team of the Multiverse-Travelling Gauntlet, where they just jump from timeline to timeline to unSnap everyone in 2019. that’s pretty much an Almost Everyone Lives deus ex machina.
---
[more thoughts from this reblog]
[in answer to a post saying that Steve returning the stones consecutively creates exponentially more realities]
I don’t see why Steve visiting them consecutively changes anything? The created timelines are still independent from one another. imo, only the choices actually made matter, not those cap could have made (eg, only bringing back the time stone to the ancient one)
since Cap chose to go back, the created timelines go forward in the way @sethodell outlined above (After Steve Returns Stones).
If he had chosen not to bring back the stones, we would be in the first situation (Before Steve Returns Stones). and I think we have to consider that he’s not going to his own past timeline, he’s just participating in the ones they created earlier. there’s no causality problems that make a new timeline “necessary” from a logical, cause-to-effect standpoint.
idk if I’m right, but i’m also thinking that time travel in itself shouldn’t create a new timeline ad infinitum. the recursion would be insane.
take clint’s test run for example. he travels back, calls lila. now this is a new timeline, almost identical to canon, except that in canon!clint’s past, there was never a 2023!clint at this moment. but alt!2023!clint will also be going back in time for a test run. so you end up with two time travelling clints (canon AND alt!2023!clint) in the same place, in YET another timeline.
(the bits of the timelines that are all horizontal happen the same way, it was just easier to draw them like this)
yeah that’s kinda horrifying. and this is the time travel with the smaller impact in the whole movie!
so here’s my headcanon: since in alt!2023!clint’s past, there was already a future clint (canon!2023!clint), and the timelines are pretty much identical, when alt!2023!clint goes back, you end up with a stable time loop (like in prisoner of azkaban) where future!clint was always in his past in this particular timeline, and it doesn’t branch out any further. maybe with some quantum technobabble to explain why there’s only one time travelling clint in the alt!timeline.
if the canon verse and the alt timeline have more differences, you might have a few (or a lot) more divergent timelines until you end up either with a loop, or a timeline where no further time travel occurs.
am i totally off base or does this makes sense to somebody else?
okay, i had a go at making a (non-exhaustive) overview of the new timelines in endgame
of course, this is mostly from the point of view of the canon!avengers, there’s plenty of branching out. for example, all the timelines except the orange one (and maybe the teal one, if steve changes things so a stone is destroyed or thanos defeated) will likely end up with a Snap, and therefore further time travel
also if we go with the theory that even tho steve went back to put back the stones (and mjolnir), the timelines where they’re missing still exist, that’s 4 additional timelines (with no Snap but maybe other problems) - alt!orange, alt!red, alt!green, alt!blue. also poor alt!red!thor never gets his hammer back.
my personal opinion is that those timelines don’t exist if steve goes back, because steve isn’t going to his past timeline and changing something (so that you’d need a new timeline to avoid a paradox), he’s visiting alt timelines.
and people have probably said this before, but even tho it’s all well and good for 2023!steve to have his life with peggy (and maybe alt!bucky if they liberate him), wtf happens to 1940′s steve in the ice? do they leave him there until 2012?
---
what i’ve also been thinking about is:
what happens when the alt!timelines do their own time heist? (assuming Thanos wins)
i mean, in clint!verse, it’s easy, everything goes just like canon. but what about the red, green and blue timelines? in their own past, they already have the canon!2023!avengers stealing then bringing back one or several stones at one point in their history.
i can see several options:
- alt!avengers arrive in 2012, 2013 or 1970 slightly before canon!avengers. the timeline diverges, they don’t meet. they do a similar or identical heist
- the timelines are so similar that they end up “replacing” the canon!avengers in their past and do the exact same things, and we now have a stable time loop. cue quantum physics science technobabble. (sorry for the bad explanation, i can sorta see how it would work, but yeah it’s confusing)
- they arrive slightly after canon!avengers. the timeline diverges from their past too, but now there are TWO avengers teams around with the same missions. so many possible hijinks
take new york. i can only imagine the chaos with THREE caps, hulks and iron mans. who gets the stones? does loki still escape with the tesseract? when does the losing team travel to get the mind stone or the time stone? or do they lurk around waiting for canon!cap to bring back the stones and THEN improvise their own heist?
also i just thought that it’s too bad that the soul stone was taken in the verse where thanos disappeared, because if future!orange!avengers had needed it, they could just have gotten it from steve, no sacrifice required.
now i’m going one step further and dreaming of an universe where the avengers are clever and thinking of more than just their own timeline, and we get the Team of the Multiverse-Travelling Gauntlet, where they just jump from timeline to timeline to unSnap everyone in 2019. that’s pretty much an Almost Everyone Lives deus ex machina.
---
[more thoughts from this reblog]
[in answer to a post saying that Steve returning the stones consecutively creates exponentially more realities]
I don’t see why Steve visiting them consecutively changes anything? The created timelines are still independent from one another. imo, only the choices actually made matter, not those cap could have made (eg, only bringing back the time stone to the ancient one)
since Cap chose to go back, the created timelines go forward in the way @sethodell outlined above (After Steve Returns Stones).
If he had chosen not to bring back the stones, we would be in the first situation (Before Steve Returns Stones). and I think we have to consider that he’s not going to his own past timeline, he’s just participating in the ones they created earlier. there’s no causality problems that make a new timeline “necessary” from a logical, cause-to-effect standpoint.
idk if I’m right, but i’m also thinking that time travel in itself shouldn’t create a new timeline ad infinitum. the recursion would be insane.
take clint’s test run for example. he travels back, calls lila. now this is a new timeline, almost identical to canon, except that in canon!clint’s past, there was never a 2023!clint at this moment. but alt!2023!clint will also be going back in time for a test run. so you end up with two time travelling clints (canon AND alt!2023!clint) in the same place, in YET another timeline.
(the bits of the timelines that are all horizontal happen the same way, it was just easier to draw them like this)
yeah that’s kinda horrifying. and this is the time travel with the smaller impact in the whole movie!
so here’s my headcanon: since in alt!2023!clint’s past, there was already a future clint (canon!2023!clint), and the timelines are pretty much identical, when alt!2023!clint goes back, you end up with a stable time loop (like in prisoner of azkaban) where future!clint was always in his past in this particular timeline, and it doesn’t branch out any further. maybe with some quantum technobabble to explain why there’s only one time travelling clint in the alt!timeline.
if the canon verse and the alt timeline have more differences, you might have a few (or a lot) more divergent timelines until you end up either with a loop, or a timeline where no further time travel occurs.
am i totally off base or does this makes sense to somebody else?