Since the release of Loki, time travel in the MCU has been a hot topic of conversation amongst viewers. Understanding the rules of time travel can be quite difficult, but one fan took to Reddit and proposed a theory that Tony Stark didn’t actually create a time machine in Avengers: Endgame, but instead found a way to travel between points on the sacred timeline. Although jumping between spots on the timeline sounds a lot like time travel, the difference is that the Avengers may have been traveling to points in a different universe, which was similar but not identical to their own.
Reddit user Hickspy supported this idea by pointing out that a multiverse opens the door to infinite worlds and infinite possibilities, meaning that the Avengers could have been going to universes that were almost exact copies of their own, with only a few small differences. It’s not unreasonable to assume that this happened, because Loki showed fans that the TVA possesed a multitude of Infinity Stones. Therefore, there are obviously numerous realities that contain at least one, if not all six, stones. The Avengers easily could have been tapping into other universes and removing the stones from that reality, since Thanos was already in possession of the stones in their own world.
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Bruce Banner also confirmed that traveling into the past won’t have any effect on their present, or mess up the future of their world. It makes sense for this to be true, assuming that the Avengers were traveling to previous spots in time that were separate from their own universe. If the Avengers were in timeline A, but they traveled to the past and removed stones from timelines B, C, and D there would obviously be no consequences for timeline A. It could, however, start a chain of negative reactions or cause branches in reality for timelines B, C, and D.
When Bruce met the Sorcerer Supreme, she explained how giving him the Time Stone could affect her reality in the same way Loki has explained Nexus events. When altering something on the timeline that wasn’t supposed to be changed, a new branch of time could form that would cause chaos amongst the multiverse.
Giving up the Time Stone left the Sorcerer Supreme from Avengers: Endgame unprotected, which is why she was so unwilling to let it go. Even if the Avengers went “back in time” to return the stones to their exact location at the exact time they were taken, that wouldn’t erase everything that happened while the stones were gone, because like Bruce said, the past will not influence the future.
Instead, the events that took place in alternate realities when the Infinity Stones were removed would actually be a different timeline altogether. This is due to the fact that the MCU multiverse rules have proven timelines cannot be destroyed, only additional ones created, unless the TVA steps in to prune an entire branch.
The original Reddit poster also brings up a good point about how there are millions of other people in the universe who could have easily “invented” time travel, long before Tony did. The Avengers are mostly Earth-bound, which means their understanding of time and space is relatively similar to that of the average human. However, there are Celestials and sorcerers who specialize in the creation and maintenance of reality within the Marvel Universe, so why haven’t they thought to use traditional time travel, if it were possible?
If time travel existed in the MCU, organizations like the TVA would have been using it by now, since their only job is to protect the flow of time and space. The TVA, however, never goes back in time to change past events or prevent Nexus events from being created. They simply destroy the branched timelines that aren’t supposed to exist, which means they probably can’t stop Nexus events before they happen, they can only do damage control once the mess has begun. This once again makes it seem as if the Avengers didn’t go back in time within their own universe, but simply traveled to other ones that were extremely similar.
Given the overall importance of the timeline in Phase 4, it’s not a stretch to assume that Avengers: Endgame was planting the seeds long before the MCU ever gave the multiverse its name. Based on everything fans now know about how time works, thanks to Loki, it seems more logical that Tony Stark tapped into the multiverse, and wasn’t using the more traditional model of time travel fans have seen in other films. Avengers: Endgame even made a point to distinguish the difference between “time travel” in the MCU and time travel in movies like Hot Tub Time Machine. What viewers were unaware of at the time was that the MCU is a multiverse, where the progression of time moves on an infinite loop, whereas time travel in other films is more linear.
Whether or not this theory is true, it seems to make sense in the grand scheme of the MCU. With films like Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and a second season of Loki on the way, the rules of time will hopefully begin to be more clear as the heroes continue on their journey to restore balance to the universe.
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