Marvel May Have Set The Stage For *SPOILER* In ENDGAME, But Where Will We See Them Next?

@soup3161 - I removed the broken list so that the article is viewable now.

@WakandanQueen - That's my first guess, too. The backbone of the story is already there in the comics. Two feuding kings. Two nations.

My story was always having a third party, similar to Zemo in Civil War, that foments war between Atlantis and Wakanda. That way, Namor can stay an anti-hero instead of a straight villain.

@LiteraryJoe

@Fanmar16 -
We will almost certainly get an Avengers 5 in 2022/2023 that will adapt Secret Invasion followed by Captain Marvel 2 adapting Secret War. Secret Invasion is a great way of avoiding a large conflict and instead keeping things personal.

The Disney shows will be used to build-up the newer characters and supporting characters prior to the reveals of some of them getting replaced by Skrulls.

@LiteraryJoe -
Thanks :) Yeah, in my mind;
• Phase 4 would deal with Skrulls and end with Avengers; Secret Invasion.
• Phase 5 would adapt Dark Reign spread out over the course of the phase. It would begin with Captain Marvel; Secret War and end with Avengers; Seige.

Civil War 2 is tricky to adapt in the current MCU as 'Doctor Strange' and 'Endgame' sort of implied free-will does not exist - you have the option of free-will but that will always end in disaster. Plus the Sorcerers ensure that time is set travelling down a singular path by course correcting.

In regards to the film arc of Carol, i think she needs to end the film series passing on her legacy. During the events of Dark Reign in the comics her powers begin playing up, she is no longer able to use the name or wear the costume.

This could easily be adapted, with her being banned from being a hero after placing her trust in the Skrulls and allowing them to stay on Earth - this is hammered home by one of the Skrull Refugees from the previous movie being the leader of the invasion squad, Veranke. Either she voluntarily abandons the title/costume or her hero status is revoked which causes the Avengers to distrust those in charge setting the stage for Dark Reign.

Then we have Secret War with her trying to prove herself and earn the legacy that has been left for her while dealing with the fact her powers are fading.

In essence for Carol, her saga would look something like this;
• Captain Marvel; Higher Further Faster (Origin)
• Avengers; Secret Invasion (Loses title/role)
• Captain Marvel; Secret War (Starts losing powers)
• Captain Marvel; The Enemy Within (Passes legacy to a successor)

@KoolerThanJesus -

- People die. People move on. Welcome to Earth.

- Why would the world not be as it was pre-snap after the snap is fixed? And yeah, Ned and that lot could've all easily been a portion of the snap (do you know how many people half of the universe entails?)

- You're ignoring the rules that Endgame set up for time travel and instead plonking in your own or some from another fictional franchise. "That's not how time travel would work," time travel cannot happen in real life, however the fiction says it works is how it works.

- In this movie, everybody's goal is to snap with the gauntlet. Thanos wants to speed up his balancing of the universe, the Avengers want to return those snapped, and Tony wants to get rid of Thanos and his armies. This isn't like IW wherein only a few of the stones are in the gauntlet for a bit, they're all in there and ready to go. In IW, as soon as Thanos gets all the stones, he'll snap (it's legitimately what he did).

- The A-Force scene is hit or miss it seems but I thought it was fine and fun. As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing wrong with it.

- Your final point has all of nothing to do with Endgame.

@Nebula -

-Yeah, billions of people died because of the snap, not just the ashed people, that's my point, they never even think about how to potentially save all those billions of people in the universe that were not directly snapped/ashed.

-FFH supposedly begins right after Endgame, the world has been on the sh*tter for five years and it's back to normal in no time, and again frick all the millions of people (just on Earth) who died after the snap without being ashed, ok.

-Yes, I think it's too much of a coincidence that the whole Spider-Man cast formed by teenagers were ashed and come back as teenagers.

-I'm saying that the time travel rules in this movie make zero sense and are not believable enough. And time travel doesn't exist in real life but there are real life theories about how time travel would work in real life, these theories are made by real scientists and try to make sense about how time travel should work to not create paradoxes and to make some sense, serious made up time travel rules should at least try the same, I'm just saying that this movie fails miserably in that regard because none of what is shown makes any sense, not even if we follow the rules made up for this movie.

-I'm just saying that I find ridiculous how for some reason the mechanism to use the gauntlet needs to be a fingers snap, and how everybody now seems to know how to use it. Iirc in the comics Thanos snaps his fingers as a show off, like "Now I can do this by just snapping my fingers", however in IW Gamora already knew he would snap his fingers to kill half of the universe and in Endgame the Hulk does the same to bring everybody back and IronMan kills Thanos and his army doing the same, like if it was really necessary to snap the fingers to do all of that, and both Hulk and IronMan seem to know how to use the gauntlet for such difficult tasks, like if learning how to use the stones was just as easy as snapping fingers and that was a part of the gauntlet's mechanism, just kill or resurrect people by necessarily snapping your fingers, idk, I think it could have been done differently and that even with the huge power of the stones it's necessary an extraordinary will, power and wisdom to use the stones for something like that.

-The A-Force scene just felt forced, that's my only problem with it, like "Girl power!!! Wink, wink".

-It has to do because the FF are supposed to be first Marvel heroes and that's obviously impossible now in the MCU, but I hoped that time travel could help to somehow bring the FF to the MCU and stablish that they were actually superheroeing before The Avengers somehow (maybe secretly) and that they got lost in time while fighting Kang (who is a major villain for both the FF and The Avengers), then Kang becomes the big bad for Phase (Fantastic) 4 after learning that The Avengers were travelling in time and could become a threat for him, and the FF come to the present to help, I would have liked something like that, but now it's stablished that for lots of years (10+5 with this movie, plus all the years until they get a new movie) they just seem to have not existed in the MCU, and where have been the mutants during all this time? That's my problem, the more time that passes by, the harder will be to explain where all these FF and X-Men characters have been in a way that feels even remotely comic accurate, and this movie just added +5 years to that time.

I also forgot to mention:

-Captain Marvel's wig looks awful, if Brie Larson doesn't want to cut her hair just give her a different long hair haircut, don't use such a fake looking ugly wig.

-Thor Ragnarok told us that Thor's lightning/thunder powers didn't come from Mjolnir (somehow he didn't realize in 1500 years and Odin never thought about telling him this earlier), however for some reason Cap America can use Thor's lightning/thunder powers with Mjolnir?

Ps:Cap was with Sharon in CW, he finally seemed to accept that his story with Peggy could never be and that he had to go on with his life in the present, but ok, he gets to go back to the past through time travel, but then what was the point of introducing Sharon as a romantic interest, which by the way was his grandniece (not blood related, I hope)? It's like: "Sharon? F*ck that b*tch". 😂

@Nebula - I rewatched Endgame today and further fleshed out some aspects of my breakdown so that everything would make ever more sense to others, mostly in point 1. Wanted to make sure as much as possible was being addressed and accounted for.

By the way, keep up the good work with your counter points on here, they are spot on from the looks of it! Keep on adding those necessary doses of reality and fact!


Anyways, heres the time travel breakdown:

here are the really important points: 1) the infinity stones are returned to the past, preventing alternate realities from occurring, 2) Thanos 2014 and his forces coming to 2023 creates a parallel alternate timeline for 2014, 3) old Cap lives in the MCU past. I will flesh these out below so they make sense (sorry if its long).

1)
So, Bruce Banner and the Ancient One provide some really important info for how time travel works, and these rules are followed WHEN talking about the Infinity Stones. As the Ancient One explains, the infinity stones are fundamental to the flow of time. You can take a baseball mitt from the past and not interrupt time (this trivial scene in hindsight is important in explaining the rules), but you can't take the stones from the past and not return them; not returning them would create breaks in the reality of space-time.

This is why Cap goes back in time to return the stones to right after from where they were plucked so that the timeline remains intact. Returning the stones closes/prevents any splits (or splinters, as he calls it), alternate timelines/realities that would arise from plucking the stones from the past and not returning them. Sure, one could question how Cap would address the space stone no longer being housed in the tesseract, for example, but you've got to imagine that this is properly accounted for in the movie and that everything is returned how it is supposed to be/originally was; plus, with the time stone or even reality stone, he could fix this (if Strange told him how to do so). But as is explained in the movie, Cap returns the stones to right after they are taken. This issue is nicely addressed and closed.

Everything that happened when the Avengers go to the past (Howard meeting Tony, Cap stealing Pym particles [which also explains how he was able to go to live with Peggy, cause he had extra Pym particles to use], the Ancient One talking with Bruce, all the Cap stuff in 2012 [Hail Hydra, fighting himself, etc.], Thor talking with his mom, etc.) doesn't break the timeline. It doesn't happen in the past UNTIL the present day versions of our heroes cause it to happen. It is explained in the movie that you can't change your past, the past that you have previously lived, by journeying to that time and doing something new then. As Banner states, this is because the past you visit becomes your future; your present self doesn't rewind time going into the past, you only keep living your own life in an older year. You can make small changes to the past (think Legends of Tomorrow), such as the actions of the present day Avengers in the past, that don't ultimately interrupt the timeline or create new realities AS LONG AS stuff fundamental to the timeline ultimately remains intact and allowed to play out as expected (again, why the stones were returned in the first place. Why you can't kill baby Thanos unless you want to create an alternate reality, etc.). For example, Thor talking with his mother doesn't change the events that happen afterwards in TDW. However, Loki's actions do throw a wrinkle in reality (more on that later).

Additionally, per Bruce's comments, these new events that happen to their younger selves as a result of their present day selves aren't detectable by the older versions; there is no Looper effect going on here. Present day Cap doesn't suddenly say 'hey, I fought myself at one point, I suddenly remember that. I also remember saying Hail Hydra.' There is an original version of time (what all of our characters experienced throughout history leading up to 2023, what we as the viewers have seen for the last 21 movies) and a newer version of that same time (again, think Legends of Tomorrow) that is undetectable to everyone in 2023 but still ultimately ends with the same outcomes (in this case, we can say everything we have previously seen in the movies up to 2023): stealing Pym particles doesn't break time or the future from playing out; Cap fighting himself doesn't break time or prevent the future from playing out (though the 'new' 2012 that this Cap fight comes from is possibly an alternate reality due to Loki's actions, again see below, unless the space stone is returned); etc. Some new stuff may happen along the way that didnt initially, but the same important outcomes still ultimately occur. For example, Frigga still dies. There are no alternate realities created because the same important, history changing events are still allowed to happen. These changes or additions would not be detectable by anyone present day; everyone in 2023 still is unaware of these changes, but new people visiting these moments in time would now see these changes.

There are two breaks though in the timeline. One is Thanos from 2014 time hopping (point 2). The other one, the one break in time with a stone that isn't resolved in the movie is Loki escaping with the tesseract in 2012. This DOES create an alternate reality if left unchecked. But this was obviously intentional, and will be resolved in the Disney+ series. But he has to return to right after he disappears in 2012 by the end of his series in order for the timeline to remain intact. If he doesn't then he creates an alternate reality in his own time (one that has no impact on the original MCU timeline).

2)
While returning the stones (and mjolnir) to the past where they belong closes breaks caused by their absence, and the timeline remains in tact with no new alternate realities, the same cannot be said for non-infinity stone things being plucked from time. Thanos and his ship coming to the future from the past creates an alternate reality (but not one that would disrupt the fabric of spacetime like a stone being taken from the past and brought to the future and never being returned). This is why Nebula can shoot this alternate, younger version of herself and still survive. And its why Thanos and his forces can be erased from 2023. It doesn't undo the events of the past (something that is clearly explained by Banner early on) from the main/original timeline, those events already happened. But there is now an alternate timeline/reality in 2014, parallel to the original timeline, in which the infinity quest ends in 2014, the Guardians never form, etc.

This alternate timeline that runs parallel to the MCU perfectly falls in line with the concept of the multiverse, something that has been brought up a few times in the MCU. And the best way to understand this alternate reality is to think about Agents of SHIELD S5. In the alternate reality of the quaked apart future, Flint goes about rebuilding Earth, even though the Agents prevent the destruction from happening in the present. That destruction still occurred TO the Agents, in order for them to stop it from happening in the first place. Likewise, everything that happened up to 2023 in the MCU still happens, but there is an alternate reality now where Thanos dies in 2014.

Even though the 2014 the power and soul stones come from becomes a new reality separate from the original MCU one, our heroes can move between realities based on the quantum realm and the device Tony creates, which returns everyone to what we perceive as the main reality.

3)
Cap always grew old in the past, we the audience just weren't aware of this until now. It is not an alternate reality situation like Thanos jumping from 2014 to 2023. Its the same reasoning as in point 1; the past Cap lives in, the MCU past, is what becomes his future, a future that eventually intersects with the point in time in which his younger self journeyed to return the stones, leading him to that bench. He becomes a part of the original timeline, with him and Peggy keeping and hiding the world's greatest secret. What's been established already in the MCU, especially with Peggy, also allows this, nothing is voided. Cap returns to some time after Agent Carter S2 (there was no indication of what year he was with her, it was late 40s, early 50s based on vehicles) and lives out the rest of his life, being the family man, leaving his hero days behind him and otherwise letting the timeline play out as it should.

And Cap grew old in the main, original timeline/reality. How do we know this? Because he is already sitting on the bench waiting. He doesn't come back through the quantum gateway, as Banner says he blew past his time stamp; he never returns. Instead, he grows old and lives his life until it reaches the point at which he left to return the infinity stones. It is at this point that his future meets up with the present of everyone else. So we can conclude that Cap's actions didnt create an alternate reality (because if it had, he wouldn't be sitting on that bench).