Thanos was out gardening on his garden planet for a bit at least with all the stones, they could have snagged it then before he snapped them away while he was out watering his tulips or whatever.
Or just not return them and mind-stone him into thinking he snapped them away. I'm sure that won't have repercussions.
Keep in mind that there's nothing stopping them from just repeating everything they did last time, (only leaving Nebula behind and not letting Loki escape with the Tesseract)
Their past will always exist as it was (as you can't change it) so it'll always exist for them to go back to and grab the stones. As long as Pym is willing to provide the particles.
They're not going to do that because it's a boring way to solve everything, but by the logic of the movie, it fits.
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
The Quantum Tunnel also required some Guardians tech IIRC. Didn't get played up too much in the final release because it looked silly, but their white costumes are supposed to be the synthesis of Pym's shrinking tech, Tony's nano tech and software, and Rocket's... weird energy stuff? I dunno. The bubble spacesuit thing Drax wears in GotG2 - the visor in the Quantum Suit is supposed to be that thing.
Keep in mind that there's nothing stopping them from just repeating everything they did last time, (only leaving Nebula behind and not letting Loki escape with the Tesseract)
Their past will always exist as it was (as you can't change it) so it'll always exist for them to go back to and grab the stones. As long as Pym is willing to provide the particles.
They're not going to do that because it's a boring way to solve everything, but by the logic of the movie, it fits.
That isn't quite the rule. They can't change their own personal timelines. If they did the BttF thing of taking a photo through time with them it won't erase itself (or they won't erase themselves) because their personal timeline isn't interrupted by paradox even if they go back and murder themselves.
If they go back to the same point in time they'd run into themselves doing the first time heist because that event is now in their own pasts.
If the rule was that you can't change the past at all then Steve couldn't have fought himself. And (recent MCU tv series trailer spoilers):
The Loki series and the Timekeepers wouldn't exist.
1. "If they go back to the same point in time they'd run into themselves doing the first time heist because that event is now in their own pasts."
Banner: "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." That's literally the rule told to the audience. The Avengers true past (i.e. the one without all the time travel) still and will forever exist and cannot be changed. Any changes would result in a split timeline, leaving the original in tact. That's how the writers are avoiding paradoxes and also get out of the "kill baby HitlerThanos" question.
2. "If they go back to the same point in time they'd run into themselves doing the first time heist because that event is now in their own pasts."
Only if they go to that particular timeline; if they instead go to a timeline they haven't futzed with, there'd be no second set of Avengers.
3. "If the rule was that you can't change the past at all then Steve couldn't have fought himself."
By messing with events, they created an alternate timeline, so that would have been an alternate-timeline Steve that Steve-Prime fought, as Steve never fought his duplicate, got told Bucky was alive and then got zapped by the Scepter. As Hulk mentioned, you can't change your past. Any hijinks you get up to split the timelines.
4. Loki spoilers
The latest trailer specifically shows the TVA getting upset that Loki's existence was a divergent timeline (they even show a graphic illustrating the concept), not because he changed the one true past.
Just go to the moment right before Captain America is about to leave to return the stones, for best results send someone Bruce, Steve, Sam or Bucky know and trust, say "Hey Cap, I need to borrow that briefcase to save the world, I'll bring it right back".
That's it, done, one easy step, repeat as often as you like.
Because nothing with Cap's ending makes sense, they actively said 'no it doesnt work with the rules we set up, but cap should get his happy ending, shut up already'
The answer to "why not just keep doing it?" is because "that would be a really boring movie"
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SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
The only acceptable way to do it is via Bill and Ted rules,
"So, Thor, remember, after we win, we go back in time and leave the infinity gauntlet behind this sign here"
"Ok, Rabbit, if you're sure it'll work"
"Absolutely, it should be right about....here. Told ya it'd work! Now remind me about Bucky's arm later"
While I'm in the camp that Steve grows old in an alternate timeline, the rules are not as clearly defined as suggested by many posters. Remember, it's initially just a time heist. It isn't until Bruce talks to the ancient one that he changes the plan to include returning all the stones. The entirety of the film's (potentially incomplete) rules regarding alternate timelines is given in that conversation:
The Ancient One : The Infinity stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one stone and that flow splits.
That's it! She specifically says removal of a stone creates a branched reality. We don't know if there are any other cases that create alternate timelines or if other instances lead to BTTF style rewrites. Considering neither Bruce nor Tony suggested returning the stones until a lesson from the Ancient One, their knowledge of the mechanics of time travel/alternate timelines is incomplete. I think there's room there for Steve to return the Time Stone last, ask the Ancient One to use it to send him back to live a life with Peggy, given how vaguely defined everything is regarding the Time Stone and time travel/alternate timelines. As to why he wouldn't intervene in the timeline? In addition to wanting a well deserved retirement, he's keeping a promise to Tony that he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize Morgan's birth and the events of the five post-snap years.
Apologies for beating dead horses.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
There is already a hole in their time rules and with branch realities, they pulled the infinity stones out of time bring them to the future. Thanos comes from the past to the future, thanos and his army are wiped out via Tony’s snap, but that is already a branch because Thanos will have never been in the past to use the infinity stones in the first place.
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David_TA fashion yes-man is no good to me.Copenhagen, DenmarkRegistered Userregular
Because nothing with Cap's ending makes sense, they actively said 'no it doesnt work with the rules we set up, but cap should get his happy ending, shut up already'
The answer to "why not just keep doing it?" is because "that would be a really boring movie"
There is already a hole in their time rules and with branch realities, they pulled the infinity stones out of time bring them to the future. Thanos comes from the past to the future, thanos and his army are wiped out via Tony’s snap, but that is already a branch because Thanos will have never been in the past to use the infinity stones in the first place.
Right, but the Ancient One specifies that the flow of time splits if an infinity stone is removed. She doesn't give any other circumstance that creates a branch. Maybe that Thanos-less timeline is absorbed into the prime timeline or something. I don't know. Again, I think the alt-timeline Cap scenario is most likely, but it wouldn't be much of a retcon to say that Tony and Bruce were wrong regarding the consequences of time travel, given they didn't forsee needing to return the stones.
Or... Mephisto!
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
What happens with Cap isn't at all mysterious or nonsensical, the movie lays out what has to happen.
For him, it's the exact same Peggy but his arrival splits the timeline. For all intents and purposes, he does live out his life with Peggy and it's his Peggy, Rogers is the one that is different. According to the very explicitly-defined MCU rules of time-travel, he then lives in that alternate timeline until he catches up to the moment where he originally leaves the prime timeline. He can then use the Stark tech, either carefully preserved or restored/copied in the alternate timeline, to go back to his original timeline with a replacement shield relatively moments after he left.
After that, he could either hang around the prime timeline or go back to the alternate one, which is the only thing that is actually uncertain. And that would be a matter of choice for him because he has the means to reach either timeline, the only question is which one he feels like he belongs in.
It's important to note that a timeline missing one of the stones is doomed, as pointed out by the Ancient One. So branching timelines are just messy, missing time stones is an apocalypse.
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zepherinRussian warship, go fuck yourselfRegistered Userregular
It's important to note that a timeline missing one of the stones is doomed, as pointed out by the Ancient One. So branching timelines are just messy, missing time stones is an apocalypse.
It's important to note that a timeline missing one of the stones is doomed, as pointed out by the Ancient One. So branching timelines are just messy, missing time stones is an apocalypse.
Didn’t thanos destroy all the infinity stones?
Technically yes, but then the Avengers went back to before he destroyed them and then killed the younger version of Thanos.
So either after they put the stones back everything is fine, Strange still has the time stone. Or the universe where the stones were destroyed is now it’s own doomed alternate universe that has no infinity stones.
Thanks disassembled the stones on the molecular level, but the energy and matter is still in the universe. Time travel removes the stones entirely from that universe. Totally different. *pushes up glasses*
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RingoHe/Hima distinct lack of substanceRegistered Userregular
Steve's ending is dumb and I hate it for all the reasons laid out in the College Humor "90's Nostalgia" sketch
Ultimately it's probably impossible to make a 100% internally consistent time travel story of any size. Time travel is inherently paradoxical and weird and the more things you add the more likely you are to step on something you already said.
And no matter how hard you try and be explicit there will always be varying interpretations of what actually happened.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Ultimately it's probably impossible to make a 100% internally consistent time travel story of any size. Time travel is inherently paradoxical and weird and the more things you add the more likely you are to step on something you already said.
And no matter how hard you try and be explicit there will always be varying interpretations of what actually happened.
This. Time travel is inherently paradoxical. You cannot solve this problem. The MCU doesn't go into enough detail to describe an internally-consistent version of time travel. Probably because they know that it's a waste of time because it really doesn't matter to them or most of the audience.
Ultimately it's probably impossible to make a 100% internally consistent time travel story of any size. Time travel is inherently paradoxical and weird and the more things you add the more likely you are to step on something you already said.
And no matter how hard you try and be explicit there will always be varying interpretations of what actually happened.
This. Time travel is inherently paradoxical. You cannot solve this problem. The MCU doesn't go into enough detail to describe an internally-consistent version of time travel. Probably because they know that it's a waste of time because it really doesn't matter to them or most of the audience.
Nah, it's not inherently paradoxical, it's just hard.
Endgame goes out of it's way to present and describe a version of time travel that is logically consistent and avoids paradoxes and quick fixes. You can experience A past, but you can't change YOUR past.
You can't create a paradox by killing your grandfather before he has your father, because the timeline that begat you is and forever will be unaffected, and killing your grandfather just creates a new timeline.
You can't go back in time and stop a tragic event because you can't change your past; you could only jump to a new timeline where you stop the tragedy, abandoning everyone in the current timeline to continue to suffer from that tragedy.
Just as a heads up. Looks like visuals for POPs for Shang Chi are starting to pop up online. Nothing really spoilery except maybe a few character designs.
Looks like a similar situation to the initial waves of Pops for Black Widow and F&WS hitting last year when they were originally supposed to release.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Ultimately it's probably impossible to make a 100% internally consistent time travel story of any size. Time travel is inherently paradoxical and weird and the more things you add the more likely you are to step on something you already said.
And no matter how hard you try and be explicit there will always be varying interpretations of what actually happened.
This. Time travel is inherently paradoxical. You cannot solve this problem. The MCU doesn't go into enough detail to describe an internally-consistent version of time travel. Probably because they know that it's a waste of time because it really doesn't matter to them or most of the audience.
The version presented in the MCU is exactly what you're saying can't exist. Either you physically move to a different point in time and cause a new branch of causality or (via only the Time stone) you completely undo the passage of time and return the universe to a prior state.
The former prevents you from ever violating the sequence of your own experience. They can go muck around in multiple other timelines but they can never exist in their own past sequence of events, which is why they can use the stones to save their future but specifically not to change their past. This is literally what they explain, interpretation isn't involved. Your past is locked and set, altering it is impossible and thus it locks out paradox.
The latter might let you fuck up your entire universe because you can isolate things from the flow of time, thus creating situations like holding an object after it has been destroyed or a 30 year-old version of yourself existing in place of you being 10. But even that isn't time travel, just time manipulation since you're turning back the flow of time, not hopping to a different spot in the river. And it's not a viable option because it almost certainly kill anyone save for a handful of beings to turn back time to any large degree; Strange managed to turn time back a matter of mere minutes and that might have been largely local
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Dark Raven XLaugh hard, run fast,be kindRegistered Userregular
Thanks disassembled the stones on the molecular level, but the energy and matter is still in the universe. Time travel removes the stones entirely from that universe. Totally different. *pushes up glasses*
This is what it bugs me that (Loki trailer)
him yoinking the Tesseract created a branch. It didn't leave the universe! No branch!
Oh brilliant
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Thanks disassembled the stones on the molecular level, but the energy and matter is still in the universe. Time travel removes the stones entirely from that universe. Totally different. *pushes up glasses*
This is what it bugs me that (Loki trailer)
him yoinking the Tesseract created a branch. It didn't leave the universe! No branch!
I don't think you can say what Loki did/didn't do with timelines because we don't know what he did after he used the tesseract to get out of dodge. It's almost like it may be the premise of a show incoming...
Loki didn't cause the timeline split but his freedom is the most dramatic change in that branch timeline, not counting the removal of the stones since they were returned. Maybe his being free has terrible ramifications unless they capture him and make him set things straight. By that same reasoning though, alternate Thanos coming to the main timeline is kind of a huge deal for his own branch timeline, I wonder if that's another incident they need to address.
Of course, I don't know what the point of fixing the timelines is if the rule of time travel is that every change merely causes a new fork, and you can't rewrite the future of a given timeline. So when Cap returned the stones, he created happier timelines where the stones were returned, but there should still be a version of each alt timeline that is doomed because the stones were not returned. I suspect Loki's series is going to clarify the rules in a way that does permit things to be changed to some extent, or for alt timelines to be collapsed back into the main timeline.
I'm guessing the TVA only messes with alternate timelines when they start having serious consequences.
Like, the timeline where future Hawkeye takes his kids baseball glove likely isn't significant enough to deal with. At best it minorly inconviances one family and then things get bac k to how they were going to be.
Loki escaping with the tesseract, prior to the Dark World, could have dire ramifications.
-Without the tesseract, can Thor even return to Asgard? How long until they rebuild the Bifrost?
-No Loki for Thor to cut a deal with, meaning he has no way to getting Jane Foster off of Earth, so she could wind up dying and/or Malakith would have assaulted Asgard a second time. And possibly have succeeded, beating Universal to the creation of a Dark Universe..
-Without Loki's ruse of dying and taking over as Odin, would Thor have been able to return to Earth afterwards or would real Odin have knocked some sense into him?
-If Thor isn't on Earth, how do the events of Age of Ultron play out? Do they succeed in getting the scepter from Hydra? Does Vision die before he can be born? Can they defeat Ultron at all?
-Without his Vision on Earth, would Thor even go on his fruitless quest leading ot Surturs death. How would the Hela event play out if Loki didn't stash Odin on Earth? Would she have popped up on Asgard proper?
-Without the Tesseract being on Asgard and then stolen by Loki a second time, would Thanos have even bothered fucking with that Asgard ship? Maybe he doesn' tfind the Tesseract for another hundred years, at which point Dr. Strange's plan completely falls apart as those needed to save the day wouldn't even be alive anymore. Not ot mentoin the snap, a universe wide event, not happening in 2019 would have major timeline ramifications.
All this could potentially go wrong if Loki escapes with the Tesseract, so I could see the TVA being "We need to to get you and the tesseract where they belong."
Isn't the primary barrier to using time travel to fix future movie plots the fact that you can't fix anything with time travel?
The only thing they got out of time travel was borrowing the infinity stones.
You can't fix anything that has happened, but you can travel to the past to create or find a solution that you can then take to the present (such as the infinity stones). Also, you can apparently turn an alternate timeline into a closed loop that merges back with the main timeline without issue (such as the infinity stones' brief trip to 2023, then back to their proper time).
Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion.
Loki didn't cause the timeline split but his freedom is the most dramatic change in that branch timeline, not counting the removal of the stones since they were returned. Maybe his being free has terrible ramifications unless they capture him and make him set things straight. By that same reasoning though, alternate Thanos coming to the main timeline is kind of a huge deal for his own branch timeline, I wonder if that's another incident they need to address.
Of course, I don't know what the point of fixing the timelines is if the rule of time travel is that every change merely causes a new fork, and you can't rewrite the future of a given timeline. So when Cap returned the stones, he created happier timelines where the stones were returned, but there should still be a version of each alt timeline that is doomed because the stones were not returned. I suspect Loki's series is going to clarify the rules in a way that does permit things to be changed to some extent, or for alt timelines to be collapsed back into the main timeline.
Once you’ve created a forked timeline you now have a stable connection to it and can pass back and forth between the two without causing paradoxes and more forks. This is shown by Alt. Nebula being able to reconnect to the timeline she came from where her Thanos was ready waiting with his army.
Jam Warrior on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Isn't the primary barrier to using time travel to fix future movie plots the fact that you can't fix anything with time travel?
The only thing they got out of time travel was borrowing the infinity stones.
You can't fix anything that has happened, but you can travel to the past to create or find a solution that you can then take to the present (such as the infinity stones). Also, you can apparently turn an alternate timeline into a closed loop that merges back with the main timeline without issue (such as the infinity stones' brief trip to 2023, then back to their proper time).
An alternate timeline will always be alternate. The trip the stones took was a closed loop in that it began and ended in the time they were originally removed but for any of those timelines to "merge" into the main timeline, their events would need to be the new history of the main timeline. There's no way to "merge" a timeline where the future Avengers show up to borrow the stones with a timeline where everything that happens is what we see in the movies; any time the Avengers move back in time, that's an alternate, distinct timeline, permanently (short of an MCU event that forces them to collapse or merge or something).
Where the stones leave or return or end up has no bearing on the existence of new timelines, what matters is that the future Avengers simply existing in the past automatically creates permanent alternate timelines.
What happens with Cap isn't at all mysterious or nonsensical, the movie lays out what has to happen.
For him, it's the exact same Peggy but his arrival splits the timeline. For all intents and purposes, he does live out his life with Peggy and it's his Peggy, Rogers is the one that is different. According to the very explicitly-defined MCU rules of time-travel, he then lives in that alternate timeline until he catches up to the moment where he originally leaves the prime timeline. He can then use the Stark tech, either carefully preserved or restored/copied in the alternate timeline, to go back to his original timeline with a replacement shield relatively moments after he left.
After that, he could either hang around the prime timeline or go back to the alternate one, which is the only thing that is actually uncertain. And that would be a matter of choice for him because he has the means to reach either timeline, the only question is which one he feels like he belongs in.
What happens to the frozen Steve in the alternate timeline?
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
If you want time travel to make sense but you also want to maintain a single coherent timeline then you're SOL.
Either going back in time lets you change the future or it doesn't. And if you can change the future then you can change it enough such that you are no longer able to go back in time. This is the paradox.
The usual solution to avoid this problem is by allowing for multiple timelines/realities. But all this does is change the conception of time travel from what most people understand it to be to something else. Because when I go back in time I don't want to create a new, different reality. I want to change MY reality, and I want it to be the one true reality.
You can reframe the problem to come to a workable solution but you cannot solve the original paradox. The MCU hand-waves this away using the branching realities approach but they never go into detail beyond "you can't do that because it doesn't work that way". It's not a solution so much as a boundary constraint.
It's like when a mathematician solves the problem of how do you build a fence around China by building a fence around some random sheep in Scotland and saying, "China is on the other side of this fence therefore I have solved this problem". Like, sure, that could be a thing, but we all know that's not really what they were asking for.
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Or just not return them and mind-stone him into thinking he snapped them away. I'm sure that won't have repercussions.
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Their past will always exist as it was (as you can't change it) so it'll always exist for them to go back to and grab the stones. As long as Pym is willing to provide the particles.
They're not going to do that because it's a boring way to solve everything, but by the logic of the movie, it fits.
That isn't quite the rule. They can't change their own personal timelines. If they did the BttF thing of taking a photo through time with them it won't erase itself (or they won't erase themselves) because their personal timeline isn't interrupted by paradox even if they go back and murder themselves.
If they go back to the same point in time they'd run into themselves doing the first time heist because that event is now in their own pasts.
If the rule was that you can't change the past at all then Steve couldn't have fought himself. And (recent MCU tv series trailer spoilers):
Banner: "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." That's literally the rule told to the audience. The Avengers true past (i.e. the one without all the time travel) still and will forever exist and cannot be changed. Any changes would result in a split timeline, leaving the original in tact. That's how the writers are avoiding paradoxes and also get out of the "kill baby HitlerThanos" question.
2. "If they go back to the same point in time they'd run into themselves doing the first time heist because that event is now in their own pasts."
Only if they go to that particular timeline; if they instead go to a timeline they haven't futzed with, there'd be no second set of Avengers.
3. "If the rule was that you can't change the past at all then Steve couldn't have fought himself."
By messing with events, they created an alternate timeline, so that would have been an alternate-timeline Steve that Steve-Prime fought, as Steve never fought his duplicate, got told Bucky was alive and then got zapped by the Scepter. As Hulk mentioned, you can't change your past. Any hijinks you get up to split the timelines.
4. Loki spoilers
That's it, done, one easy step, repeat as often as you like.
The answer to "why not just keep doing it?" is because "that would be a really boring movie"
"So, Thor, remember, after we win, we go back in time and leave the infinity gauntlet behind this sign here"
"Ok, Rabbit, if you're sure it'll work"
"Absolutely, it should be right about....here. Told ya it'd work! Now remind me about Bucky's arm later"
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
The Ancient One : The Infinity stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one stone and that flow splits.
That's it! She specifically says removal of a stone creates a branched reality. We don't know if there are any other cases that create alternate timelines or if other instances lead to BTTF style rewrites. Considering neither Bruce nor Tony suggested returning the stones until a lesson from the Ancient One, their knowledge of the mechanics of time travel/alternate timelines is incomplete. I think there's room there for Steve to return the Time Stone last, ask the Ancient One to use it to send him back to live a life with Peggy, given how vaguely defined everything is regarding the Time Stone and time travel/alternate timelines. As to why he wouldn't intervene in the timeline? In addition to wanting a well deserved retirement, he's keeping a promise to Tony that he wouldn't do anything to jeopardize Morgan's birth and the events of the five post-snap years.
Apologies for beating dead horses.
In short:
You have to explain how this works!
Right, but the Ancient One specifies that the flow of time splits if an infinity stone is removed. She doesn't give any other circumstance that creates a branch. Maybe that Thanos-less timeline is absorbed into the prime timeline or something. I don't know. Again, I think the alt-timeline Cap scenario is most likely, but it wouldn't be much of a retcon to say that Tony and Bruce were wrong regarding the consequences of time travel, given they didn't forsee needing to return the stones.
Or... Mephisto!
For him, it's the exact same Peggy but his arrival splits the timeline. For all intents and purposes, he does live out his life with Peggy and it's his Peggy, Rogers is the one that is different. According to the very explicitly-defined MCU rules of time-travel, he then lives in that alternate timeline until he catches up to the moment where he originally leaves the prime timeline. He can then use the Stark tech, either carefully preserved or restored/copied in the alternate timeline, to go back to his original timeline with a replacement shield relatively moments after he left.
After that, he could either hang around the prime timeline or go back to the alternate one, which is the only thing that is actually uncertain. And that would be a matter of choice for him because he has the means to reach either timeline, the only question is which one he feels like he belongs in.
Technically yes, but then the Avengers went back to before he destroyed them and then killed the younger version of Thanos.
So either after they put the stones back everything is fine, Strange still has the time stone. Or the universe where the stones were destroyed is now it’s own doomed alternate universe that has no infinity stones.
And no matter how hard you try and be explicit there will always be varying interpretations of what actually happened.
This. Time travel is inherently paradoxical. You cannot solve this problem. The MCU doesn't go into enough detail to describe an internally-consistent version of time travel. Probably because they know that it's a waste of time because it really doesn't matter to them or most of the audience.
Nah, it's not inherently paradoxical, it's just hard.
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And it looks like I'm about to fight all of you.
You can't create a paradox by killing your grandfather before he has your father, because the timeline that begat you is and forever will be unaffected, and killing your grandfather just creates a new timeline.
You can't go back in time and stop a tragic event because you can't change your past; you could only jump to a new timeline where you stop the tragedy, abandoning everyone in the current timeline to continue to suffer from that tragedy.
Looks like a similar situation to the initial waves of Pops for Black Widow and F&WS hitting last year when they were originally supposed to release.
The version presented in the MCU is exactly what you're saying can't exist. Either you physically move to a different point in time and cause a new branch of causality or (via only the Time stone) you completely undo the passage of time and return the universe to a prior state.
The former prevents you from ever violating the sequence of your own experience. They can go muck around in multiple other timelines but they can never exist in their own past sequence of events, which is why they can use the stones to save their future but specifically not to change their past. This is literally what they explain, interpretation isn't involved. Your past is locked and set, altering it is impossible and thus it locks out paradox.
The latter might let you fuck up your entire universe because you can isolate things from the flow of time, thus creating situations like holding an object after it has been destroyed or a 30 year-old version of yourself existing in place of you being 10. But even that isn't time travel, just time manipulation since you're turning back the flow of time, not hopping to a different spot in the river. And it's not a viable option because it almost certainly kill anyone save for a handful of beings to turn back time to any large degree; Strange managed to turn time back a matter of mere minutes and that might have been largely local
This is what it bugs me that (Loki trailer)
Of course, I don't know what the point of fixing the timelines is if the rule of time travel is that every change merely causes a new fork, and you can't rewrite the future of a given timeline. So when Cap returned the stones, he created happier timelines where the stones were returned, but there should still be a version of each alt timeline that is doomed because the stones were not returned. I suspect Loki's series is going to clarify the rules in a way that does permit things to be changed to some extent, or for alt timelines to be collapsed back into the main timeline.
Like, the timeline where future Hawkeye takes his kids baseball glove likely isn't significant enough to deal with. At best it minorly inconviances one family and then things get bac k to how they were going to be.
Loki escaping with the tesseract, prior to the Dark World, could have dire ramifications.
-Without the tesseract, can Thor even return to Asgard? How long until they rebuild the Bifrost?
-No Loki for Thor to cut a deal with, meaning he has no way to getting Jane Foster off of Earth, so she could wind up dying and/or Malakith would have assaulted Asgard a second time. And possibly have succeeded, beating Universal to the creation of a Dark Universe..
-Without Loki's ruse of dying and taking over as Odin, would Thor have been able to return to Earth afterwards or would real Odin have knocked some sense into him?
-If Thor isn't on Earth, how do the events of Age of Ultron play out? Do they succeed in getting the scepter from Hydra? Does Vision die before he can be born? Can they defeat Ultron at all?
-Without his Vision on Earth, would Thor even go on his fruitless quest leading ot Surturs death. How would the Hela event play out if Loki didn't stash Odin on Earth? Would she have popped up on Asgard proper?
-Without the Tesseract being on Asgard and then stolen by Loki a second time, would Thanos have even bothered fucking with that Asgard ship? Maybe he doesn' tfind the Tesseract for another hundred years, at which point Dr. Strange's plan completely falls apart as those needed to save the day wouldn't even be alive anymore. Not ot mentoin the snap, a universe wide event, not happening in 2019 would have major timeline ramifications.
All this could potentially go wrong if Loki escapes with the Tesseract, so I could see the TVA being "We need to to get you and the tesseract where they belong."
You can't fix anything that has happened, but you can travel to the past to create or find a solution that you can then take to the present (such as the infinity stones). Also, you can apparently turn an alternate timeline into a closed loop that merges back with the main timeline without issue (such as the infinity stones' brief trip to 2023, then back to their proper time).
- John Stuart Mill
Once you’ve created a forked timeline you now have a stable connection to it and can pass back and forth between the two without causing paradoxes and more forks. This is shown by Alt. Nebula being able to reconnect to the timeline she came from where her Thanos was ready waiting with his army.
An alternate timeline will always be alternate. The trip the stones took was a closed loop in that it began and ended in the time they were originally removed but for any of those timelines to "merge" into the main timeline, their events would need to be the new history of the main timeline. There's no way to "merge" a timeline where the future Avengers show up to borrow the stones with a timeline where everything that happens is what we see in the movies; any time the Avengers move back in time, that's an alternate, distinct timeline, permanently (short of an MCU event that forces them to collapse or merge or something).
Where the stones leave or return or end up has no bearing on the existence of new timelines, what matters is that the future Avengers simply existing in the past automatically creates permanent alternate timelines.
What happens to the frozen Steve in the alternate timeline?
Time Travel makes no sense
thats really all there is
Either going back in time lets you change the future or it doesn't. And if you can change the future then you can change it enough such that you are no longer able to go back in time. This is the paradox.
The usual solution to avoid this problem is by allowing for multiple timelines/realities. But all this does is change the conception of time travel from what most people understand it to be to something else. Because when I go back in time I don't want to create a new, different reality. I want to change MY reality, and I want it to be the one true reality.
You can reframe the problem to come to a workable solution but you cannot solve the original paradox. The MCU hand-waves this away using the branching realities approach but they never go into detail beyond "you can't do that because it doesn't work that way". It's not a solution so much as a boundary constraint.
It's like when a mathematician solves the problem of how do you build a fence around China by building a fence around some random sheep in Scotland and saying, "China is on the other side of this fence therefore I have solved this problem". Like, sure, that could be a thing, but we all know that's not really what they were asking for.
Your face doesn't make sense!