Agents of Shield Time Travel Logic

Be prepared to try and make sense of as much as you can. I am confused as much as anyone who will try to read this.

Ok let’s begin with the basics. Avengers:Endgame was released on April 26, 2019 and season 6 of S.H.I.E.L.D. was released 2 weeks later on May 10, 2019. What do both have in common? They both incorporate time travel. Endgame was in production from Aug 2017-Jan 2018 while this season of S.H.I.E.L.D was renewed in May 2018 and began filming in July 2018 which means that it easily could have addressed the aftermath of the Snap from Infinity War but for a number of reasons the showrunners did not. According to Wikipedia, “After Endgame was released in April, the showrunners and Loeb revealed that the series would not be depicting this loss of life for several reasons: they began production on the season without knowing all of Endgame's plot or how Spiderman Far From Home(2019) would be depicting a post-Endgame MCU; they were unsure when the season would be released in relation to Endgame and how much they would be allowed to reveal if they had begun airing before the film was released; and they wanted to focus on telling their own story rather than be "shackled too much to the universe-changing events from the films". They acknowledged that this meant the series no longer lined-up with the films' timeline, but Whedon said the writers had an explanation for this that made sense to them even though they did not plan to "burden the audience" with it” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agents_of_S.H.I.E.L.D._(season_6)#Marvel_Cinematic_Universe_tie-ins).

If you recall watching the Terminator movies, you’ll remember how much of a headache they could give someone by trying to make sense of the concept of time travel of John Connor being leader of the human resistance in 2018 and how Kyle Reese was one of his higher ranking subordinates yet John sent Kyle back in time to 1984 so he could impregnate John’s mother Sarah so that John would be born, meaning it’s a loop. Apparently it was the same deal with the Earth 2091 scenario, where specific events needed to play out a specific way to lead to the dystopian future. Once John reached adulthood, he sent Reese back in time to repeat the cycle otherwise John would not be born but would that have magically erased the future John or would he still be there? S.H.I.E.L.D’s concept of time seems to be that the reality isn’t linear because when Daisy changed the outcome of the future by defeating Graviton, did 2091 align itself, did it stay the same way, or did it completely erase itself out of existence? We never found out. Anybody’s rationalization of time travel would be fruitless because it’s impossible- every time it’s done it always seems to be done a different way and that’s because it is an element of science fiction, not governed by laws of physics, so liberties can be done away with the concept. The fact of the matter is, Season 6 takes place one year after the end of Season 5 without mentioning the Snap at all and we all remember how close Thanos was to coming to Earth so Season 6 should be well within the 5 years between Infinity War and Endgame but I suppose because that was a highly classified detail of Endgame, AOS could not utilize that and were forced to go their own way. The time travel concept makes no sense (the team returns to the main timeline with Fitz who cryoslept for decades) which of itself makes no sense because if the team was in the future for say, a few months, and returned swiftly after the job was done, even if it took a couple of years, there’s no way in logical hell that Fitz should have been there with them in 2091. The team could have met their future selves which Yo-Yo did and makes sense or it can be vice versa where they could have met their past selves if they had travelled backwards in time. If someone was time-displaced out of their present and into their future, what would happen in their life in the time between? If they are not there to act out the choices and consequences leading up to the moment in the future, then that future should be constantly rewriting itself. If said individual were to stay in the future, then it would become the new present but if they went back to the present to the exact time they travelled to the future, then the future would still be as it was meant to be unless something was changed between the present and that specific time in the future. In the team’s case, life was still going on as normal in 2018 while they were in 2091 and depending on how much time they spent in 2091, the same amount of time passed in 2018. If the team was gone for months, then Fitz would have been in space for months and they obviously did not return before Fitz left to prevent him from leaving. To my logic, there should only be one Fitz. He remained in the present while the others were in the future.

This still does not explain the alternate timeline however. As far as the audience is concerned, the team returns to main timeline 199999 because even Thanos is mentioned. It’s easier to time-displace someone in the past because it’s already happened but my question is, if someone were to change a significant moment of history would it change the entire course of history or would it branch off in a new timeline? I would think….that were time travel a real thing and one mastered the manipulation of time itself, that if they changed or omitted a very significant part of history, that there’d be a serious change. I don’t know how it would be affected, hypothetically, but changes would be sure to happen. Different empires ruling, different rulers, conquerors, laws, people born, number of countries etc. Unfortunately, I don’t think that AOS has a logical explanation for the alternate timeline other than that ABC could no longer keep up and follow the story of the MCU so they branched off on their own. To this day there is still no valid explanation as to how the alternate timeline exists as even Jemma can’t explain to Fitz how there is two of him. If it somehow IS in the main timeline still, then no one was snapped luckily, though you’d think someone would mention The Snap or there would be signs of it. It is a sad shame that AOS and the films should part ways because of how strong the connections were in the beginning. With Kevin Feige taking over Marvel Television, any MCU connected shows on Hulu, Freeform, and Neftlix were cancelled as Marvel Studios begins a new chapter with Disney Plus original shows, all overseen by Feige. This being said, I will still post the analyses of the final two seasons next week and the week after.