It All Makes Sense If You Squint A Bit: Visualizing and Explaining Time Travel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Before the wolves fall upon me, let me preface that the following is merely one geek's opinion of how the temporal mechanics in the Marvel Cinematic Universe seem to be working based on the evidence we have seen on-screen. I have attempted to keep speculation to a minimum, presume that on-screen evidence is reliable until proven otherwise, to point out some inconsistencies (and man, there are doozies) and offer solutions as to how these may be reconciled. I am sure there are holes in the thesis and I am open to suggestions and critique.
Note: This post may be way too geeky for most.
In my previous post, I attempted to make sense of the Avengers: Endgame timeline by positing two different models of time travel, based on the rules as we were presented with in the movie. This post covers a lot of the same ground because I wanted it to be relatively self-contained, but presents a new way to visualize the timeline of Endgame.
This post presents a linearly arranged timeline version of my earlier flowcharts, expands it to include all current MCU shows and, as a bonus feature, discusses how the latest season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. fits into all of this.
Ready? Let's dive.
DERIVING THE RULES OF TIME TRAVEL
First, the entire honking big MCU timeline before we discuss the rules and zoom into specific areas.
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When James Rhodes suggests killing baby Thanos, Bruce Banner protests, saying that time "[D]oesn't work that way. Changing the past doesn't change the future." Later, he elaborates by saying that, "If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future. And your former present becomes the past. Which can't now be changed by your new future..."
What Bruce is describing is the Novikov Self-Consistency Principle, which basically says that you can't do anything in the past that hadn't happened before. To put it another way, the timeline is not malleable, like Back to the Future. It is deterministic and fixed, and therefore any attempt at changing history is either impossible to do or doomed to fail. In such a model of temporal mechanics, paradoxes like the classic killing your grandfather paradox are impossible because a universe that follows Novikov simply won't allow them.
That's why the initial plan is not to change history, but to simply borrow it, by taking the Stones from their places in the timeline and then, after using them, replacing them so that time is restored and Novikov is happy.
That said, however, Bruce is simply assuming that the universe follows Novikov and is self-consistent. Because the basic flaw in Novikov is also its assumption that there is only one timeline - that alternate timelines can't be branched off from specific events or that if those exist, they cannot be accessed.
Indeed, when Bruce tries to get the Time Stone from the Ancient One in 2012, the latter tells him that the timeline can be branched... if an Infinity Stone is removed from its place in time. And if that Stone is subsequently replaced, the branch created when it was removed is reset, and any potential future there erased.
This is not to say that a universe following Novikov excludes branching timelines, just that a pure Novikov-following universe wouldn't allow us to even create these branches, and since we can't go there, for all intents and purposes it's the same as saying they don't exist.
The rules we're presented with here, assuming that Bruce and the Ancient One are both correct to some degree are these:
- Rule 1: History cannot be changed. What happened, happened, and there're no takebacks.
- Rule 2: Taking an Infinity Stone out of the timeline it belongs to will branch an alternate timeline
- Rule 3: Replacing the Stone will reset the timeline, erasing the branch.
The fact that you need Infinity Stones (which the Ancient One says "create what [we] experience as the flow of time") to be removed to branch history is significant because it means that branching history is either impossible - or at least incredibly difficult - without an Infinity Stone to break a pure Novikov universe, or that an equally powerful force or catastrophic event needs to happen to do so. I add that qualification because I'll be talking about Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. later.
In the meantime, there are two corollaries to Rule 1:
- Corollary 1(1): If you try to change history, you either cannot do it, or it ends up being something that happened anyway
- Corollary 1(2): Erasing the branch does not retroactively erase consequences of the branch's actions
What Corollary 1(2) means in practice is this: if something from a branch interacts with another branch, the fact that the first branch gets subsequently erased does not mean its actions in the other branch get erased retroactively. This becomes important when we consider what happens with the inhabitants of the alternate 2014a.
Of course, this assumes Bruce and the Ancient One are correct in their views of time travel. Why should this be so? For a couple of reasons:
The Ancient One is the wielder of the Time Stone, first of all, and one might imagine that she has some insight into the way time works in the MCU. Second, when Bruce says that replacing the Stone will reset the timeline, the Ancient One does not disabuse him of the notion. The only thing she corrects him on is his assumption that alternate branches cannot be accessed as per Novikov, because she says that she will get a "new" timeline. In a pure Novikov universe, she would notice nothing different since to be consistent, the Stone would inevitably have to be returned.
ONE MODEL OR TWO?
In my previous post, I presented two different models. The first one I called the Branching Multiverse Timeline, which assumed that branches persisted despite replacing the Stones. This particular model was more complicated and didn't go down as well as what I called the Single Universe Timeline, which reset the branches once the Stones were replaced.
It turns out that these were misnomers, because the Single Universe Timeline really isn't - it's still a multiverse with branches, it's just that those branches can get reset to the Prime Timeline.
On reflection, I'm abandoning the "Branching Multiverse Timeline" because it's not consistent with what we're presented with. The evidence and rules on screen, which we have no reason to believe are wrong, tell us that where Stones are involved, branches can be reset and erased. Besides, if branches persist despite the Stones, that means the branch created when Bruce took the Time Stone is still doomed, leading to an apocalypse, and I'd much rather Bruce got off the hook for that one.
THE ENDGAME TIMELINE - OVERVIEW
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Jump five years ahead, and Scott emerges from the Quantum Realm and proposes that they can time travel to get the Infinity Stones out of history to restore the universe. So the Avengers split into teams and jump back to the various spots along the timeline to get the Stones.
For the most part, this is uncontroversial. When Thor and Rocket jump back to the events of Thor: The Dark World in 2013, they don't actually change anything. Thanks to Corollary 1(1), we can assume that in the gaps in the movie we didn't get to see, Frigga managed to have a heart-to-heart with her son's future self and Rocket extracted the Aether from Jane Foster for a time.
Similarly, Peter Quill always did get punched out on Morag by a time-traveling Rhodey in 2014 before he got to the Power Stone, and thought nothing of it (which is wholly in character for a tool like Peter). We just never got to see it happening until now.
And again, Steve and Tony did show up in Camp Lehigh in 1970 in the Prime Timeline on their way to borrow the Space Stone then. That means that the Space Stone in 2012 was the same stone that they took in 1970 and then subsequently Steve returned after the climax of Endgame. It's all Novikov.
The only thing is that at each point, the removal of the Stones creates a branch where the Stones vanished from history, but that branch is resolved/reset/erased when the Stones are returned, and that branch merges back into the Prime Timeline.
One of the sequences that gets people confused (and I was confused initially when I first watched Endgame in the theater) is what happens in 2012, in the aftermath of The Avengers and the Battle of New York. However, if we keep the Rules in mind, it does make sense. Let's take a closer look.
THE ENDGAME 2012 TIMELINE - A CLOSER LOOK
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What we need to understand here is that, according to Rule 1 and Corollary 1(1), up to this point nothing has changed. The fact that we didn't see the botched heist of the Space Stone in The Avengers, or Loki escape, or Steve fight Steve doesn't mean that history has been changed. Up to this point, nothing we see outright contradicts anything we've seen on screen previously. We know that at the end of The Avengers Loki is in irons again and taken to Asgard with the Tesseract, but that doesn't preclude him escaping and being recaptured in the time between Stark Tower and the epilogue.
Similarly, Steve fighting Steve doesn't contradict anything. His lack of memory at fighting his future self is easily attributed to Steve-2023's use of the Mind Stone. How Sitwell and Brock Rumlow reconcile Steve-2023's "Hail HYDRA" with what he does in Captain America: The Winter Soldier is not explained, but if push came to shove I can always handwave an explanation that they chalked it up to Loki, who's a known illusionist.
Things change however, when Scott and Bruce leave 2012 to return to 2023, taking the Mind and Time Stones with them and Steve and Tony jump back to 1970 to try and get the Space Stone from that time. Rule 2 means that at this point, a branch is created in 2012. This branch will eventually result in apocalypse in 2017, but the good news is that all this gets erased the moment Steve returns the Stones to 2012 and the timeline resets itself to follow the Prime Timeline from then on.
WHAT HAPPENS TO LOKI?
One of the big discussions in fandom following Endgame was whether Loki survives now because we saw him escape. Given the popularity of the character, I can understand people really wanting Loki to live. To this end, I've seen arguments that history was changed, or that the branch persisted because Loki holds the Space Stone and it's not replaced.
Rule 1 puts paid to the idea that history was changed. The idea that the branch persists because Loki is holding the Space Stone doesn't hold up on examination for a few reasons, but basically it all boils down to the fact that Loki is going to get recaptured. We know this, we saw him captive, and Novikov demands it.
When Steve eventually returns the Time and Mind Stones, the branch should reset as per Rule 3. If it doesn't reset but persists, then all that happens is that that alternate Earth is going to go poof in 2017 when Doctor Strange can't use the Time Stone to troll Dormammu. I reject this scenario because it's inconsistent with Rule 3, and we have nothing to show that this should happen.
Also, Loki holding on to the Space Stone doesn't make a difference to the timeline one way or another because as per Rule 2, history only branches when a Stone is removed from the timeline. If history doesn't branch or reset, Loki is on track to being recaptured as he did in the Prime Timeline (and we have no reason to believe he won't be).
So in both scenarios - where the branch persists and where the branch gets reset - Loki is on schedule to meet his fate in Infinity War.
But!
There is one way out for Loki, or rather the alternate Loki-2012a created when the "a" branch was split off the Prime Timeline. If he manages to avoid recapture long enough to get out of the timeline (with or without the Space Stone) through whatever means before it gets erased when Steve returns the Stones to 2012, then he'll survive thanks to Corollary 1(2). His timeline may be gone, but if he's not there when it resets, he'll live on, with his future wide open as there is no longer anything to be consistent with.
How he gets out, though, is a series of events I leave to your headcanon.
THE BATTLE OF EARTH - A CLOSER LOOK
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Armed with the knowledge they have ripped from Nebula-2023's cybernetics, Nebula-2014 infiltrates the 2023 Avengers in Nebula-2023's place, and signals Thanos in 2014 so that he can time travel to 2023 and attack the New Avengers Facility.
This results in the climactic Battle of Earth, and ends with Nebula-2023 killing her past self and Tony grabbing the Infinity Stones, turning Thanos-2014 and his Army to dust.
This is when most people's heads exploded, because isn't this changing history? If Thanos-2014 is dead in 2023, how can he have carried out his dastardly plan in 2018's Infinity War? If Nebula-2023 killed her past self, how can she continue to exist in the present?
Here's where timing is important. Up until Rhodey jumps out with the Power Stone, everything is still Novikov consistent. As I noted above, we now can understand that Quill being punched out by Rhodey happened in the Prime Timeline, it's just that we never saw it. Similarly, Thanos-2014 accidentally gaining access to Nebula-2023's memories happened - we were just never privy to it until now, and until they actually captured Nebula-2023, they assumed it was just a glitch or never could confirm the veracity of the information.
That's because the moment Rhodey jumps out with the Power Stone, just as Clint jumps out with the Soul Stone, the flow of time splits, and 2014a is created. Nebula-2023 is out of her time zone and so is not duplicated with a branched self like Loki-2012. So 2014a is where Nebula-2023 finds herself shifted to when the flow splits, and it is Thanos-2014a, not Thanos-2014, that captures her.
By the same token, it is Nebula-2014a, not Nebula-2014 that infiltrates the Avengers of 2023, and so on and so forth. Therefore, it is the alternate Nebula that's killed by her Prime counterpart, and it is the alternate Thanos and his Army that is dusted.
Consequently, their various demises do not make a bit of difference to the Prime Timeline. There, as always, Thanos-Prime dismissed Nebula-2023's memories as a glitch, then continued his quest to get the Infinity Stones and so on and so forth until Infinity War, the Snap and his eventual death by Thor's hand.
2014a gets erased/reset when Steve returns the Power and Soul Stones to their place in history as per Rule 3. In the Prime Timeline, by the time they get to Morag, there is no future Nebula there so the timeline continues as we see in Guardians. Gamora and Nebula are dispatched to Ronan's ship. Thanos has gained some knowledge of the future he's not sure what to make of it.
By the same token, it is Nebula-2014a, not Nebula-2014 that infiltrates the Avengers of 2023, and so on and so forth. Therefore, it is the alternate Nebula that's killed by her Prime counterpart, and it is the alternate Thanos and his Army that is dusted.
Consequently, their various demises do not make a bit of difference to the Prime Timeline. There, as always, Thanos-Prime dismissed Nebula-2023's memories as a glitch, then continued his quest to get the Infinity Stones and so on and so forth until Infinity War, the Snap and his eventual death by Thor's hand.
2014a gets erased/reset when Steve returns the Power and Soul Stones to their place in history as per Rule 3. In the Prime Timeline, by the time they get to Morag, there is no future Nebula there so the timeline continues as we see in Guardians. Gamora and Nebula are dispatched to Ronan's ship. Thanos has gained some knowledge of the future he's not sure what to make of it.
However, if Gamora-2014a survived Tony's Snap, since she is out of her time zone just like Nebula-2023 was in 2014, when her timeline gets erased, she gets to survive her branch's reset. That last shot with Quill searching for her seems to imply that Gamora-2014a's survival may be a plot point in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.
WAIT, YOU'RE MY GREAT-UNCLE?! AND I KISSED YOU?! EWWW!
The eventual fate of Captain America gets confusing because we have two different Word of God pronouncements, one from the Russo Brothers, who directed Endgame and one from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote it.
According to the Russos, when Steve went on his mission to return the Stones (and Mjolnir) to their rightful places in time and space and decided to settle in the past and marry Peggy, he created a branch. In other words, in the Prime Timeline, Steve was never Peggy's husband, and when we see Old Steve at the end of Endgame, he has crossed from a branch to the Prime Timeline, traveling across dimensions. Like so:
On the other hand, according to Markus and McFeely, their intent was that Steve traveled to the past of the Prime Timeline, becoming Peggy's Hitherto Unseen Husband™ and when we see Old Steve, he's just traveled back to 2023 the long way, by living through the intervening years instead of jumping ahead.
I prefer Markus and McFeely's version, for the simple reason that it follows the Rules. The Russos' idea does not.
For the Russos' scenario to work, Steve would have had to do a few things: violate Novikov by replacing Peggy's actual husband, branch a timeline without removing an Infinity Stone from the timeline, and/or manage to jump to a branch he has no coordinates for when we have never seen that ability exhibited before by Tony's Time-Space GPS.
Also, we'd have to try and posit some new tech to explain how Steve managed to cross dimensional barriers to return to 2023-Prime, since he didn't appear on the platform which he would have done if he'd used the GPS.
Conversely, in Markus and McFeely's scenario, Novikov is followed - we've never seen Peggy's husband, so there's nothing really to say that he wasn't an incognito Steve Rogers all along. Peggy talks about her husband in 1953 documentary footage, but all that could have been a lie to cover up the fact of Steve's identity so as not to rock the boat, temporal or otherwise, and would also explain why he's never been around when Steve is visiting. Marrying one of the founders of the most powerful espionage organizations in the world would make it easier to establish a fake identity, and the real clincher is that Steve didn't reappear on the platform - he didn't use any technology to return to 2023. He just lived long enough to get to it. Unsurprisingly, the scriptwriters' scenario is more consistent with the script as written.
So, that means that there are at least two kids out there with possible traces of Super-Soldier Serum in their genetic makeup, and yes, Sharon Carter did full-on snog her great-uncle, albeit neither of them knew it at the time. Game of Thrones still comes out ahead in the incest stakes, but good on you, Marvel, for taking a step in that profoundly disturbing and awkward direction.
BONUS FEATURE: AGENTS OF H.E.A.D.A.C.H.E.
(Those who aren't interested in the show can probably just skip this bit.)
Season 5 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had all of the regular cast (sans Fitz) get shanghaied to the year 2091 by means of a mysterious monolith, where they discover that in the future the Earth has been reduced to rubble due to an incident a year from their prior present. There's a lot of talk about time loops and whether their destiny can be changed, but the million dollar question for our purposes is whether or not the Rules of time travel we infer from S.H.I.E.L.D. are consistent with what we see in Endgame.
The answer is simply no.
They are not consistent at all. You'd think that the producers of the show never consulted with the screenwriters of Endgame! What a ridiculous notion in a shared universe because Marvel surely cares about coordinating their movie and television arms, right? Right?!
(No, I'm not bitter. Why do you ask?)
You really have to be familiar with the show to make complete sense of what I'm about to go through below, but I'll try to summarize the events of Season 5.
The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are in a loop. They travel from 2017 to the future of 2091S (I'll explain the designation in a bit). There, in an outpost orbiting Earth where humans are enslaved by the Kree, they discover details about the destruction of Earth. They go back to 2018S to avert it, but everything pushes them towards the disaster.
Back in the present, a HYDRA cell is trying to create their own superhuman, which might become the Destroyer of Worlds that destroys Earth. In trying to prevent this, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s old ally Glenn Talbot becomes infused with gravitonium and becomes the super-villain Graviton, who it turns out will be the one to destroy Earth. So Novikov rears its ugly head again - the timeline is fixed and nothing one can do will change the outcome.
What's worse, Coulson is dying (again and for reals this time) because of what happened in 2091S, and the only cure is the one remaining dose of the Centipede serum, a HYDRA attempt to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum. But Yo-Yo tells them what she learned from her future self: it is the team's choice to save Coulson that results in them losing. If there's any chance to change history, the cure must not be given. Coulson must be allowed to die.
Parallel to all of this, the Fitz who we see left behind, whom I've designated as Fitz-2017S for reasons that will become clearer later, finds out his friends are in 2091S and freezes himself to get to 2091S the long way, with a synthetic being, a Chronicom named Enoch, for company. Enoch is the same synthetic who shanghaied the Agents in the first place. Enoch is in touch with a precognitive girl named Robin who has seen the future and the Agents' place in it.
74 years later, Fitz-2091S and Enoch help the Agents in the future, and they return via the monolith to 2018S. Unfortunately, Fitz-2091S dies during the Season's climactic battle against Graviton. The Agents, however, succeed in averting the disaster by the choice of Daisy using the Centipede serum on herself instead of using it to cure Coulson, and becoming powerful enough to defeat Graviton. Earth is saved.
Here's a timey-wimey bit. At this point there are two Fitzs present at the same time. One is frozen, awaiting his thawing in 2091S, while the other, a few weeks older, has traveled back and eventually dies, while his a-bit-younger self is still frozen. So Jenna, refusing to admit defeat, goes off in search of the frozen Fitz, who has not gotten to 2091S and has never experienced anything of that future.
It's all very cool, and it makes logical sense, causally speaking, but to try and fit it in with the model we have in Endgame is tricky.
THE PROBLEMS WITH S.H.I.E.L.D.
The biggest problem is that in S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5, although history is indeed very hard to change as per Novikov, in the end, they succeed in doing so. What's worse, they seem to be doing it without the use of an Infinity Stone or similar power.
That being said, there are possible loopholes. The initial jump to 2091 is done using the White Monolith, one of a number of mysterious artifacts of unknown origin which could conceivably have the same effect as an Infinity Stone.
Also, during the final branch point, the so-called Battle of Chicago that takes place at the same time as Thanos's 2018 invasion of New York, Graviton is infused with gravitonium, an extremely powerful substance that grants him Omega-level powers of gravity control and telekinesis, and could conceivably have the same power level as an Infinity Stone. But this doesn't follow Rule 2, which says that branches happen when an Infinity Stone is removed from the timeline.
And on top of that, Season 6 of S.H.I.E.L.D. takes a time jump one year ahead, with no mention at all about the Snap or its consequences. Word of God in the form of Jeph Loeb has suggested that it takes place before the Snap, which cannot be correct since the finalé of Season 5 definitely was supposed to be in synch with the events of Infinity War.
So what gives? And can we even begin to work it out so it fits? Can we earn our No-Prize?
It ALL MAKES SENSE IF YOU SQUINT A BIT
In my analysis, the closest I can get to following the model set up in Endgame is to posit the following scenario. I admit that a lot of what follows is speculative on my part, but I'm trying my best to shoehorn the situation in with the model we see in Endgame. In trying to come up with this, I also came up with other explanations which could fit to varying degrees, but for the sake of simplicity (and sanity), I'll just go with one for now.
First, 2018S, the year where the Earth gets destroyed, cannot be part of the Prime Timeline. This is plain from the fact that Earth was not destroyed in 2018. So when the Agents are shanghaied to 2091S, which is the future 73 years after Earth is destroyed, it is the future of a different timeline, which I designated S for S.H.I.E.L.D.
But how was this different timeline created? Looking over the events of S.H.I.E.L.D., there is no clear branch point - that is because as presented in Season 5, the whole thing is a closed time loop. Coulson starts to die due to events in 2091, which leads the team to try to save him in 2018, which then causes the Earth's destruction, so the Kree take over, which leads to Coulson starting to die in 2091.
So the simplest alternative I can come up with is that 2018S is not an alternate branch splitting off from a specific event, but a parallel timeline with independent existence. This solves the problem of how a different timeline exists without the need for a branch event or an Infinity Stone to be removed from the timeline.
In this scenario, as far as the Prime Timeline is concerned, none of the events of Timeline-S happen. When Enoch-Prime got in touch with Robin-Prime of the Prime Timeline, he did not realize that Robin-Prime was actually seeing Robin-S's future. Using the Grey Monolith, instead of transporting the Agents-Prime to 2091-Prime, Enoch inadvertently transported them across timelines into 2091S instead.
Which means that, in the Prime Timeline, the Agents (except for Fitz) simply vanished at the end of Season 5 and, as far as we can tell, never returned to the Prime Timeline.
(The same thing happens in Timeline-S. Enoch-S does not realize that Robin-S is seeing another Robin's future, and shanghais the Agents-S to the 2091 of another timeline, leaving Fitz-S behind. However, in this timeline, Enoch-S eventually meets the Agents-Prime in 2091, not realizing that they are from another timeline. Maybe a bunch of Agents from yet another timeline comes to replace our Agents in the Prime Timeline, but I'm not getting into that. It's turtles all the way down.)
So the events of Season 5 play out in Timeline-S, with the Agents-Prime unknowingly taking the place of their S counterparts and thinking they are still in their own timeline. When the fateful decision is made by Daisy to inject herself and not Coulson with the Centipede serum, it is in the presence of Graviton-S's gravitonium-infused person, with waves of gravity washing over them.
This, I submit, is enough to allow the timeline to branch into a new flow (Timeline-Sa) where Graviton-S is defeated and Earth is saved. However, everyone still remembers what happened in Timeline-S, and Fitz-2091S is still dead.
The fact that Timeline-S is independent of the Prime Timeline also lends a neat explanation as to why Infinity War and the Snap don't seem to merit a mention in Season 6 - because there's no requirement for events to happen that same way. For all we know, Thanos' plans could have been stopped at New York, or he never managed to get a full set of the Stones for whatever reason.
And that's how you make it fit if you squint a bit and don't ask too many questions.
THERE'S ALWAYS A BUT...
This may not be the end of it, because subsequent events in Season 6 may change throw wrenches into my speculative model above. Right now in Timeline-Sa which everyone but Fitz-S was shifted into when it branched, Fitz-2017Sa has been awakened and so is no longer on schedule to meet the Agents in 2091S and then travel back to die in 2018S. The Chronicoms are hunting him because apparently he is "out of time". Parsing that double entendre, it probably means that he's a paradox.
But really, if you think about it, the Chronicoms are full of crap because the 2091 he's supposed to be on schedule for is meant for another Fitz, since he's actually a branched version (Fitz-2091Sa) of the original Fitz-2091S who made it to the future.
But then again, this is Agents of H.E.A.D.A.C.H.E., so I'll have to wait to see how it plays out over the next couple of months.
AND IN CONCLUSION...
I hate time travel.
No, I'm kidding. I love time travel - thinking about it always makes my synapses tingle as much as it makes my head hurt. Time travel holds an allure for us not just for the wish fulfillment fantasy of changing what went before or just the fascination of exploring history up close and personal instead of through books.
And I say "not just", because for me, thinking about time travel can also challenge our ideas of cause and effect and linear time, and for those few minutes we manage to visualize it, we open our minds to higher dimensions and appreciate a perspective beyond our fourth-dimensional prison of space-time.
So here you have it, the product of an obsessive mind. Questions and criticisms, as always, are welcome.
(Right now I'm resisting the urge to fire up Powerpoint and turn this into an actual lecture. Help.)
Terence Chua has had a more interesting life than some, but right now he works as a prosecutor. He lives in a secret volcano base somewhere in the Pacific, where he watches dozens of TV shows and movies, often simultaneously, while reading, playing video games and occasionally dealing with two young children. During the day, he fights crime.
WAIT, YOU'RE MY GREAT-UNCLE?! AND I KISSED YOU?! EWWW!
The eventual fate of Captain America gets confusing because we have two different Word of God pronouncements, one from the Russo Brothers, who directed Endgame and one from Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, who wrote it.
According to the Russos, when Steve went on his mission to return the Stones (and Mjolnir) to their rightful places in time and space and decided to settle in the past and marry Peggy, he created a branch. In other words, in the Prime Timeline, Steve was never Peggy's husband, and when we see Old Steve at the end of Endgame, he has crossed from a branch to the Prime Timeline, traveling across dimensions. Like so:
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I prefer Markus and McFeely's version, for the simple reason that it follows the Rules. The Russos' idea does not.
For the Russos' scenario to work, Steve would have had to do a few things: violate Novikov by replacing Peggy's actual husband, branch a timeline without removing an Infinity Stone from the timeline, and/or manage to jump to a branch he has no coordinates for when we have never seen that ability exhibited before by Tony's Time-Space GPS.
Also, we'd have to try and posit some new tech to explain how Steve managed to cross dimensional barriers to return to 2023-Prime, since he didn't appear on the platform which he would have done if he'd used the GPS.
Conversely, in Markus and McFeely's scenario, Novikov is followed - we've never seen Peggy's husband, so there's nothing really to say that he wasn't an incognito Steve Rogers all along. Peggy talks about her husband in 1953 documentary footage, but all that could have been a lie to cover up the fact of Steve's identity so as not to rock the boat, temporal or otherwise, and would also explain why he's never been around when Steve is visiting. Marrying one of the founders of the most powerful espionage organizations in the world would make it easier to establish a fake identity, and the real clincher is that Steve didn't reappear on the platform - he didn't use any technology to return to 2023. He just lived long enough to get to it. Unsurprisingly, the scriptwriters' scenario is more consistent with the script as written.
So, that means that there are at least two kids out there with possible traces of Super-Soldier Serum in their genetic makeup, and yes, Sharon Carter did full-on snog her great-uncle, albeit neither of them knew it at the time. Game of Thrones still comes out ahead in the incest stakes, but good on you, Marvel, for taking a step in that profoundly disturbing and awkward direction.
BONUS FEATURE: AGENTS OF H.E.A.D.A.C.H.E.
(Those who aren't interested in the show can probably just skip this bit.)
Season 5 of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. had all of the regular cast (sans Fitz) get shanghaied to the year 2091 by means of a mysterious monolith, where they discover that in the future the Earth has been reduced to rubble due to an incident a year from their prior present. There's a lot of talk about time loops and whether their destiny can be changed, but the million dollar question for our purposes is whether or not the Rules of time travel we infer from S.H.I.E.L.D. are consistent with what we see in Endgame.
The answer is simply no.
They are not consistent at all. You'd think that the producers of the show never consulted with the screenwriters of Endgame! What a ridiculous notion in a shared universe because Marvel surely cares about coordinating their movie and television arms, right? Right?!
(No, I'm not bitter. Why do you ask?)
Here's the zoom-in on that segment of the MCU timeline.
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The Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. are in a loop. They travel from 2017 to the future of 2091S (I'll explain the designation in a bit). There, in an outpost orbiting Earth where humans are enslaved by the Kree, they discover details about the destruction of Earth. They go back to 2018S to avert it, but everything pushes them towards the disaster.
Back in the present, a HYDRA cell is trying to create their own superhuman, which might become the Destroyer of Worlds that destroys Earth. In trying to prevent this, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s old ally Glenn Talbot becomes infused with gravitonium and becomes the super-villain Graviton, who it turns out will be the one to destroy Earth. So Novikov rears its ugly head again - the timeline is fixed and nothing one can do will change the outcome.
What's worse, Coulson is dying (again and for reals this time) because of what happened in 2091S, and the only cure is the one remaining dose of the Centipede serum, a HYDRA attempt to recreate the Super-Soldier Serum. But Yo-Yo tells them what she learned from her future self: it is the team's choice to save Coulson that results in them losing. If there's any chance to change history, the cure must not be given. Coulson must be allowed to die.
Parallel to all of this, the Fitz who we see left behind, whom I've designated as Fitz-2017S for reasons that will become clearer later, finds out his friends are in 2091S and freezes himself to get to 2091S the long way, with a synthetic being, a Chronicom named Enoch, for company. Enoch is the same synthetic who shanghaied the Agents in the first place. Enoch is in touch with a precognitive girl named Robin who has seen the future and the Agents' place in it.
74 years later, Fitz-2091S and Enoch help the Agents in the future, and they return via the monolith to 2018S. Unfortunately, Fitz-2091S dies during the Season's climactic battle against Graviton. The Agents, however, succeed in averting the disaster by the choice of Daisy using the Centipede serum on herself instead of using it to cure Coulson, and becoming powerful enough to defeat Graviton. Earth is saved.
Here's a timey-wimey bit. At this point there are two Fitzs present at the same time. One is frozen, awaiting his thawing in 2091S, while the other, a few weeks older, has traveled back and eventually dies, while his a-bit-younger self is still frozen. So Jenna, refusing to admit defeat, goes off in search of the frozen Fitz, who has not gotten to 2091S and has never experienced anything of that future.
It's all very cool, and it makes logical sense, causally speaking, but to try and fit it in with the model we have in Endgame is tricky.
THE PROBLEMS WITH S.H.I.E.L.D.
The biggest problem is that in S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5, although history is indeed very hard to change as per Novikov, in the end, they succeed in doing so. What's worse, they seem to be doing it without the use of an Infinity Stone or similar power.
That being said, there are possible loopholes. The initial jump to 2091 is done using the White Monolith, one of a number of mysterious artifacts of unknown origin which could conceivably have the same effect as an Infinity Stone.
Also, during the final branch point, the so-called Battle of Chicago that takes place at the same time as Thanos's 2018 invasion of New York, Graviton is infused with gravitonium, an extremely powerful substance that grants him Omega-level powers of gravity control and telekinesis, and could conceivably have the same power level as an Infinity Stone. But this doesn't follow Rule 2, which says that branches happen when an Infinity Stone is removed from the timeline.
And on top of that, Season 6 of S.H.I.E.L.D. takes a time jump one year ahead, with no mention at all about the Snap or its consequences. Word of God in the form of Jeph Loeb has suggested that it takes place before the Snap, which cannot be correct since the finalé of Season 5 definitely was supposed to be in synch with the events of Infinity War.
So what gives? And can we even begin to work it out so it fits? Can we earn our No-Prize?
It ALL MAKES SENSE IF YOU SQUINT A BIT
In my analysis, the closest I can get to following the model set up in Endgame is to posit the following scenario. I admit that a lot of what follows is speculative on my part, but I'm trying my best to shoehorn the situation in with the model we see in Endgame. In trying to come up with this, I also came up with other explanations which could fit to varying degrees, but for the sake of simplicity (and sanity), I'll just go with one for now.
First, 2018S, the year where the Earth gets destroyed, cannot be part of the Prime Timeline. This is plain from the fact that Earth was not destroyed in 2018. So when the Agents are shanghaied to 2091S, which is the future 73 years after Earth is destroyed, it is the future of a different timeline, which I designated S for S.H.I.E.L.D.
But how was this different timeline created? Looking over the events of S.H.I.E.L.D., there is no clear branch point - that is because as presented in Season 5, the whole thing is a closed time loop. Coulson starts to die due to events in 2091, which leads the team to try to save him in 2018, which then causes the Earth's destruction, so the Kree take over, which leads to Coulson starting to die in 2091.
So the simplest alternative I can come up with is that 2018S is not an alternate branch splitting off from a specific event, but a parallel timeline with independent existence. This solves the problem of how a different timeline exists without the need for a branch event or an Infinity Stone to be removed from the timeline.
In this scenario, as far as the Prime Timeline is concerned, none of the events of Timeline-S happen. When Enoch-Prime got in touch with Robin-Prime of the Prime Timeline, he did not realize that Robin-Prime was actually seeing Robin-S's future. Using the Grey Monolith, instead of transporting the Agents-Prime to 2091-Prime, Enoch inadvertently transported them across timelines into 2091S instead.
Which means that, in the Prime Timeline, the Agents (except for Fitz) simply vanished at the end of Season 5 and, as far as we can tell, never returned to the Prime Timeline.
(The same thing happens in Timeline-S. Enoch-S does not realize that Robin-S is seeing another Robin's future, and shanghais the Agents-S to the 2091 of another timeline, leaving Fitz-S behind. However, in this timeline, Enoch-S eventually meets the Agents-Prime in 2091, not realizing that they are from another timeline. Maybe a bunch of Agents from yet another timeline comes to replace our Agents in the Prime Timeline, but I'm not getting into that. It's turtles all the way down.)
So the events of Season 5 play out in Timeline-S, with the Agents-Prime unknowingly taking the place of their S counterparts and thinking they are still in their own timeline. When the fateful decision is made by Daisy to inject herself and not Coulson with the Centipede serum, it is in the presence of Graviton-S's gravitonium-infused person, with waves of gravity washing over them.
This, I submit, is enough to allow the timeline to branch into a new flow (Timeline-Sa) where Graviton-S is defeated and Earth is saved. However, everyone still remembers what happened in Timeline-S, and Fitz-2091S is still dead.
The fact that Timeline-S is independent of the Prime Timeline also lends a neat explanation as to why Infinity War and the Snap don't seem to merit a mention in Season 6 - because there's no requirement for events to happen that same way. For all we know, Thanos' plans could have been stopped at New York, or he never managed to get a full set of the Stones for whatever reason.
And that's how you make it fit if you squint a bit and don't ask too many questions.
THERE'S ALWAYS A BUT...
This may not be the end of it, because subsequent events in Season 6 may change throw wrenches into my speculative model above. Right now in Timeline-Sa which everyone but Fitz-S was shifted into when it branched, Fitz-2017Sa has been awakened and so is no longer on schedule to meet the Agents in 2091S and then travel back to die in 2018S. The Chronicoms are hunting him because apparently he is "out of time". Parsing that double entendre, it probably means that he's a paradox.
But really, if you think about it, the Chronicoms are full of crap because the 2091 he's supposed to be on schedule for is meant for another Fitz, since he's actually a branched version (Fitz-2091Sa) of the original Fitz-2091S who made it to the future.
But then again, this is Agents of H.E.A.D.A.C.H.E., so I'll have to wait to see how it plays out over the next couple of months.
AND IN CONCLUSION...
I hate time travel.
No, I'm kidding. I love time travel - thinking about it always makes my synapses tingle as much as it makes my head hurt. Time travel holds an allure for us not just for the wish fulfillment fantasy of changing what went before or just the fascination of exploring history up close and personal instead of through books.
And I say "not just", because for me, thinking about time travel can also challenge our ideas of cause and effect and linear time, and for those few minutes we manage to visualize it, we open our minds to higher dimensions and appreciate a perspective beyond our fourth-dimensional prison of space-time.
So here you have it, the product of an obsessive mind. Questions and criticisms, as always, are welcome.
(Right now I'm resisting the urge to fire up Powerpoint and turn this into an actual lecture. Help.)
Terence Chua has had a more interesting life than some, but right now he works as a prosecutor. He lives in a secret volcano base somewhere in the Pacific, where he watches dozens of TV shows and movies, often simultaneously, while reading, playing video games and occasionally dealing with two young children. During the day, he fights crime.
It All Makes Sense If You Squint A Bit: Visualizing and Explaining Time Travel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Reviewed by Terence Chua
on
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Rating:
Reviewed by Terence Chua
on
Wednesday, May 29, 2019
Rating:
