Did The Avengers Really Fix The Timeline After Endgame? Four Time Heist Changes That Could Still Matter
I’ve been thinking about the Time Heist in Avengers: Endgame again, especially with everything we’ve been hearing about Avengers: Doomsday and the multiverse.
Now we all remember the plan. Go back in time, collect the Infinity Stones, bring everyone back and then return the stones to the exact moment they were taken so nothing changes.
Simple enough.
Well, apart from the fact that absolutely nothing about the Time Heist went to plan.
And the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether Steve Rogers actually fixed everything when he went back to return the stones. Because yes, he might have put them back where they belonged, but that doesn’t necessarily undo everything else the Avengers did while they were there.
We’ve got Loki escaping, Thanos disappearing from 2014, Hank Pym losing his particles and Steve deciding to stay in the past with Peggy.
That’s quite a lot of messing around with history for a mission that was supposed to leave everything exactly as they found it.
Remember When Loki Escaped With The Tesseract?
Let’s start with the most obvious one, because this actually gave us two seasons of Loki on Disney+.
During the Avengers’ trip back to New York in 2012, Tony and Scott were supposed to grab the Tesseract after the Battle of New York. Unfortunately, things went a little wrong when Hulk came smashing through a door and sent Tony flying.
The Tesseract ended up on the floor, Loki spotted his opportunity and disappeared.
And just like that, an entirely different version of Loki was running around with the Space Stone.
Now we know what happened next because the TVA arrested him and the Loki series explored what happened after he escaped. But if you think about the original timeline, Loki was supposed to be taken back to Asgard, imprisoned and eventually become involved in the events of Thor: The Dark World.
That version of events couldn’t happen in quite the same way once he’d escaped.
And Loki wasn’t even the only problem during that trip.
Steve managed to get his hands on the Mind Stone by whispering “Hail Hydra” to Jasper Sitwell, which I still think is one of the funniest little moments in Endgame. Imagine being Sitwell and suddenly thinking Captain America is one of you.
Then Steve ended up fighting his younger self and telling him that Bucky was alive.
Now surely that’s going to change something?
Steve spent years believing Bucky was dead. Discovering he was alive was a huge part of The Winter Soldier, so imagine finding that out years earlier, even if it came from somebody who looked exactly like you.
Returning the Mind Stone doesn’t suddenly make everyone forget those conversations happened.
Although knowing the TVA, perhaps somebody turned up afterwards and cleaned up the mess.
What Happens To A Universe Without Thanos?
This is probably the one that interests me most.
When Rhodey and Nebula travelled back to 2014 to collect the Power Stone, Nebula’s cybernetic systems connected with those of her younger self.
Which was rather unfortunate considering Thanos was watching.
He discovered what the Avengers were planning, captured future Nebula and eventually travelled forward to 2023 with his army.
We all know what happened next. The portals opened, everyone returned, Captain America finally said “Avengers Assemble” and Tony Stark sacrificed himself to defeat Thanos.
Still gives me goosebumps thinking about that scene.
But there’s something about it that I’ve never really stopped to consider.
That wasn’t the Thanos from the Avengers’ original timeline. He was from 2014.
Which means there’s potentially an entire alternate reality where Thanos simply disappeared with his army and never returned.
No Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones. No Infinity War playing out the way we remember it. No Snap wiping out half the universe.
And if Thanos isn’t there, what happens to everyone else?
Does Gamora ever meet Peter Quill? Do the Guardians of the Galaxy become the same team? What happens to Ronan, the Power Stone and all the other events that were connected to Thanos?
There could be an entire universe where billions of people never experienced the Snap, all because the Avengers borrowed a version of Thanos from the past and Tony removed him from existence in 2023.
Now I’m not saying that automatically makes the Avengers responsible for everything that happens in that reality, but it’s a pretty enormous change.
And it’s exactly the sort of thing that makes me wonder whether Doctor Doom could have a problem with them.
1970, Hank Pym And A Conversation That Was Never Supposed To Happen
Then there’s the little emergency trip Tony and Steve made to 1970.
After losing the Tesseract in 2012, they had to come up with another plan, which meant heading to Camp Lehigh to collect an earlier version of the Space Stone and some extra Pym Particles.
Now, this is where things get interesting because they didn’t just walk in, take what they needed and disappear.
Tony ended up having a conversation with his father, Howard Stark.
And I absolutely loved that scene.
After everything we’d seen between Tony and his dad over the years, getting that little moment where Tony could speak to him as an adult, without Howard knowing who he really was, was something special.
But Howard wasn’t supposed to have that conversation.
He met a strange man who seemed to know quite a lot about being a father, shared a personal moment with him and then carried on with his day.
Maybe it changed nothing. Maybe Howard forgot all about it by the following morning.
But what if it did change something?
Then you’ve got Steve sneaking into Hank Pym’s laboratory and stealing the particles.
Hank wasn’t exactly the most trusting person when it came to S.H.I.E.L.D. and people interfering with his research, so imagine discovering that somebody had been into your lab and taken something you were developing.
Would that make him more suspicious? Would he change how he protected his work? Could it affect something later down the line?
We don’t know.
But again, Steve returning the Space Stone doesn’t put those stolen Pym Particles back or erase Tony’s conversation with Howard.
It might have prevented the loss of the stone from causing further problems, but the rest of that day still happened.
And Then Steve Decided He Wasn’t Coming Home
Which brings me to Captain America.
After everything they’d been through, Steve volunteered to return the Infinity Stones and Mjolnir to their rightful places.
He had a job to do, and as far as everyone knew, he’d be back in a few seconds.
Except he wasn’t.
Instead, Steve decided to go back and spend his life with Peggy Carter.
Now I loved that ending. Steve had sacrificed so much over the years that seeing him finally get the life he’d always wanted was lovely.
But it also left me with about a million questions.
According to the Russo brothers’ explanation, Steve lived with Peggy in an alternate timeline before eventually returning to the main MCU timeline to give Sam Wilson his shield.
But think about everything that means.
Did Steve simply sit back and watch events unfold, knowing what was going to happen? Did he ever try to stop Hydra? Did he know Bucky was still out there being used as the Winter Soldier?
And what about the other Steve Rogers who was still frozen in the ice?
Wouldn’t you want to go and rescue yourself?
Actually, knowing Steve, he’d probably be the one person capable of having an argument with himself about whether he should interfere.
And this is where my previous theory about James Rogers comes back into it.
We’ve been hearing speculation about Captain America’s son appearing in Doomsday, and while nothing has confirmed that child is James, it does make me wonder how much Steve’s decision to stay in the past could matter.
If Steve created or lived in another branch of reality, what happens to the family he built there?
And what if Doom believes that life was never supposed to exist?
Did Returning The Stones Actually Fix Anything?
To be fair, Bruce Banner did explain that returning the stones would prevent those realities from being left without them, and the Ancient One was particularly worried about what would happen if her timeline lost the Time Stone.
So Steve returning them absolutely mattered.
But I think there’s a difference between returning an Infinity Stone and undoing everything that happened while it was missing.
And that’s what keeps getting me.
Loki still escaped. Steve still fought himself. Tony still met Howard. Thanos still travelled from 2014 into the future.
Those things happened, even if the TVA later dealt with some of the branches.
We’ve also learned through Loki that the TVA wasn’t simply protecting every universe equally. Under He Who Remains, it was pruning timelines that threatened the Sacred Timeline, and by the end of Season 2, Loki had taken on the responsibility of holding the surviving branches together.
So perhaps the bigger question isn’t whether Steve returned the stones.
It’s what happened to all those other realities afterwards.
Were they allowed to continue? Were some pruned? And are any of them still out there, developing in completely different directions?
With Avengers: Doomsday bringing the multiverse into the spotlight again, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Time Heist turns out to have consequences the Avengers never expected.
Especially if Doctor Doom believes they’ve been interfering with lives that weren’t theirs to change.
And if that somehow connects to Steve’s family, Loki and the next generation of Avengers, things could get very interesting.
Or perhaps the Russo brothers will explain it all in five minutes and I’ll realise I’ve spent far too much time thinking about stolen Pym Particles.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
But that’s why I still love going back to Endgame. Seven years later and I’m still finding little things that make me question what actually happened.
What do you think, Fandom? Did Steve really put everything right, or did the Avengers leave behind a multiverse full of problems that are only just catching up with them?
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