MovieChat Forums > Avengers: Endgame (2019) Discussion > *SPOILER*** the time travel issue

*SPOILER*** the time travel issue

posted 5 years ago by Vidanngo (26)
34 replies | jump to latest

So my understanding is that the way time travel works in this film is based on multiverses. So essentially, when they travel, they’re not going back in time in their reality, rather they’re travelling to a different reality. All their actions in that reality simply affects that reality while the one they travel from remains the same. This is the reason given for why the snap couldn’t be prevented by time travel (i.e. preventing the snap in another reality does not change their own) and also the reason why the ancient one is so protective of her own reality.

I think this was a great approach to time travel that was completely undone by cap’s ending.

So he travels in time to return the stones to their realities and chooses not to come back. This is fine and I’ll assume in that reality, the Steve Rogers there is still frozen in ice so there technically wouldn’t be two Rogers running around. But the problem is that back in the reality he comes from, Steve is still present and has become an old man. This is impossible based on the film’s own time travel rule. Steve travelled to a different reality and found his life there. This does not affect the reality he comes from. In the reality he comes from, he is simply gone. The realities do not intersect.

[–] ace2 (543) 5 years ago

My understanding is you go back to the same time stream, but as soon as you change anything it splinters into a new one.

Once you go back and replace the stone, the splintered time stream ceases to exist. But I still have 3 issues with this:
1) Obviously taking the stone is not the only thing that was changed, every action taken from showing up in the time line until the moment of taking the stone could have had side-effects as well,
2) Assuming trillions are born every-day across the universe, replacing the stones and aborting the splintered timeline is going to eradicate all the beings born in the splintered time stream between when the stones were taken and when they were returned (not great), and
3) It seemed like they were not only traveling through time, but also through space in an unexplained and inconsistent way. Hawkeye showed up at his farm miles away, sometimes they pick where they show up, other times they still have to travel to their destination.

[–] Vidanngo (26) 5 years ago

I don’t think the time stream idea is correct. The Russo brothers have confirmed that they travel to alternate realities and the Ancient One was aso extremely protective of the time stone in her reality.

Think of it as the multiverse where different outcomes based on different individual actions kinda like that movie coherence. So yes, all their actions in those realities would’ve prevented certain things that had happened in our reality from happening in that reality. But that alternate reality will just go on without knowing that Tom Cruise becomes a mega star in our reality just like how in our reality we will never know a Robert Downey jr who never recovered from rehab.

Regarding the travelling through space element, they wanted to minimise the number of realities they traveled to to reduce their impact. Hence it was better for that team to travel to morag 2014 and then fly to Vormir.