The time has come. The climax of the Infinity Saga. 11 years in the making. Vision, Loki, Heimdall, Gamora, Yondu, Quicksilver- beloved characters that gave their lives for a greater good. Others that have passed that have had a great influence on our heroes include Odin, The Ancient One, Yinsen, Dr. Erskine, Peggy Carter, Frigga, and T’chaka. The heroes are completely dumbfounded. Never before have they experienced such a loss and defeat. 

Tony Stark is on the Benatar with Nebula following their defeat on Titan running out of oxygen, something Nebula doesn’t need to worry about. Just as he’s about to live out his final moments he is rescued by the mighty Captain Marvel who has grown into a much more confident and able warrior in the last 20 odd years. Captain Marvel brings them home to upstate NY to the Avengers facility where Tony and Steve meet again for the first time since their last brutal encounter in Siberia. Carol already knows Natasha, Bruce, Steve, Rhodey and Thor after responding to Fury’s pager at the finale of Infinity War and asking where he was when she arrived. Cap attempts to gain helpful information from Stark since he too battled Thanos but Stark tells him he has no help to offer and doesn’t want to after still holding to feelings of betrayal by Cap for neglecting to come forward about the truth behind Tony’s parents’. Instead, Nebula tells the Avengers where Thanos is and so they all, minus Stark, go the planet where he is and attack and demand to have the Infinity Stones from him. Unfortunately, he used the stones’ powers on themselves to destroy themselves rendering the Snap irreversible. Now completely defeated, Thor in anger takes his axe Stormbreaker and beheads the mad titan as the rest watch in awe and shock at what just happened. In addition to many of the protagonists vanishing from The Snap including Scott Lang’s loved ones, Clint Barton’s family also become casualties to the grim outcome. 

Five years pass and the world is feeling the aftershock of the phenomenon. After being trapped in the Quantum Realm for that long, a rat astronomically releases Scott who after realizing Cassie has grown the same number of years and the citizens of San Francisco inexplicably gone, immediately goes to the Avengers with the theoretical solution of reversing The Snap using time travel through the Quantum Realm. The Avengers approach Tony who rebuffs the idea, firstly for being impossible and secondly because if it were to be theoretically possible, he would not go through with it anyway due to the extreme risk of being stranded or killed in another time thus forever abandoning the new family he’s made for himself in the 5 years- his wife Pepper and daughter Morgan. Despite undeterred efforts by the Avengers for Tony to take a chance for the sake of their friends, Tony makes the hard choice of choosing what is precious to him in the moment, not what has already been taken. 

The Avengers try Bruce Banner who has since fused the Hulk together with his being and he has doubts creating a time machine as time travel is not his area of expertise but manages to create a functional albeit incomplete and imperfect model. Conveniently, Stark has had a change of heart after looking at a photo of himself and Peter and calculates how to construct a safe time machine. After agreeing to help the other Avengers and mending his friendship with Cap (even returning his shield), the heroes look for those who have ‘lost themselves’ along the way in the 5 years- Thor and Hawkeye. Thor is now living on New Asgard in Tonsburg, Norway- a callback to where the Tesseract resided for centuries and a nod to the comics when Asgard was remade and relocated on Earth just above Oklahoma state after Ragnarok. He considers himself a failure because he did not vanquish his enemy when he had the chance in Wakanda. Hawkeye is found in Tokyo mercilessly executing Yakuza and in a guise resembling his Ronin alias from the comics. 

All the original Avengers come together with the additions of Nebula, Ant-Man, and Rocket and split into 3 teams to retrieve the Infinity Stones: Hulk and Tony and Steve go to NY 2012 to retrieve the Space, Mind, and Time Stones; Nebula, Rhodey, Clint, and Natasha go to Morag and Vormir 2014 to retrieve the Power and Soul Stones, and Thor and Rocket go to Asgard 2013 to retrieve the Reality Stone. Sadly, such an ambitious and highly risky mission does not go without casualties as was the case with Natasha who sacrificed her life so that Clint may claim the Soul Stone. In a mishap in the 2012 era, Loki was able to escape with the Tesseract, opening a new branch in time, therefore, forcing Cap and Tony to travel back even further in time to the 1970s when both the Tesseract and Pym Particles were present at the same time thus allowing them to take the Tesseract back to the present using the Pym Particles they stole. 

After mourning the loss of Black Widow, the Avengers create their own Gauntlet using Stark technology and implement the stones into it. No one except Hulk is able to wield and survive the power of the Gauntlet after being snapped since the energy it contains is mostly gamma radiation, not even Thor after he’s lost some of his stamina and strength in the 5 years after becoming apathetic, moping around and becoming a drunk. Hulk uses the Gauntlet to revive all those that were wiped out by the first snap and injures his arm in the process. Immediately afterwards, a time-displaced Thanos from the past attacks the Avengers, fortunately with no casualties and wants what he thinks rightfully belongs to him but the Avengers are not going without a fight, no sir. The combined efforts of Cap, Thor, and Iron Man together are still not enough to stop the behemoth and even when Cap lifts Thor’s hammer fully, (a huge nod to the comics and proving his worthiness), Thanos proves unstoppable. 

The heroes that were wisped away return and join the fray (that rhymes) via sling ring portals from wherever they ‘died’ along with many more allies including Asgardians, Ravagers, sorcerers, Wakandans, and even Howard the Duck himself. It’s them vs Thanos’s Black Order and Chitauri. The Avengers try and get the Gauntlet to safety and away from Thanos, actually trying to send it back in time through the Quantum Realm in Scott’s van but Thanos, the crafty devil, destroys it (the other time machine was destroyed in Thanos’ attack) and comes close to putting it on, getting more resistance from the heroes and Captain Marvel, who has joined the battle, proves to be a difficult opponent for Thanos, using her powers to absorb the energies from the Gauntlet forcing Thanos to resort to using the Power Stone just to knock her away. Right when Thanos claims victory and is wearing the Gauntlet on his hand ready to make his move to erase the entire known universe this time, he goes through one last struggle with Tony and easily swats him like a fly. All hope seems lost as he’s about to snap his fingers and proclaims ‘I am inevitable’ (Agent Smith wannabe) and when he does he goes into full surprise as he sees the stones transferred to Tony’s own Iron Gauntlet as he says ‘And I…….am…. Iron Man’ BOOM. In an ironic twist of fate, Tony used the 3rd snap to erase Thanos and his cronies out of existence but again…..at the cost of a life- Tony’s. 

Stark’s personal journey in the MCU has shown us how much he’s grown and how he had become more selfless with each movie. This is the ultimate self-sacrifice that Tony Stark has ever made. Post-death, a funeral is held for Tony attended by his Avenger allies, Nick Fury and Maria Hill, Carol, and even those that have had a frictional history with him such as Thunderbolt Ross and Hank Pym. All is not completely well, however, because the Avengers need to return the Infinity Stones back to their rightful time and place or risk creating branches of reality from the original reality where they were taken from. 

Ok…..so prepare yourself for some convolution. In several fictional franchises or stories, time is a major universal aspect that should never be taken lightly or meddled with. In such cases as Back to the Future or Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, affecting any 1 of the 3 tenses will affect the other indicating there is only one absolute reality; in Dragonball Z there are several realities which all follow the same path but only the one that is intervened in will be changed. Here is where the convolution steps in. The MCU universe is known as Universe 199999. Yes, there has been mention of different dimensions and realms such as the Quantum Realm, Mirror Dimension, Darkforce Dimension, Dark Dimension, Astral Dimension, and Hell itself but NOT a different reality. They all exist within the confines of the 199999 universe/reality…….presumably. Despite the dimensions being immune to the powers of the Time Stone unless the stone was used in that dimension directly, that does not mean they are not part of the MCU universe- they are merely pockets. 

Here is how time works in the MCU: like the Heroes tv show concept of time, there is only one reality to start off and time travel links past and future of that reality much like the Time Stone can access past and future. In similitude, both universes have multiple potential paths in which reality can go unless one key action or event is taken or changed to set the reality on a preferred path such as Peter being told to save the cheerleader (Claire) to stop Sylar claiming her abilities or Tony snapping his fingers with the Iron Gauntlet to stop Thanos. This is where the similarities end. In Heroes, the future seems to be constantly shaped in accordance to any negative outcome from the past which, if left unchecked and unchanged, could pose disastrous results for the future. It is apparent that Heroes has a number of futures much like a check-off list and each reality must be avoided by doing something crucial in the past. The future incarnations of the characters remain with the same psyches and personalities in each reality. What all these time concepts in each of these franchises have in common is that you may have to go back to the past an indefinite number of times and do the precise and exact right thing to fix the future in the desired manner, save for DBZ in which Trunks’ journey into a completely different timeline to save HIS future was fruitless but to save THEIR future bore fruit. Oh and don’t even get me started on Terminator or X-men time travel science. It doesn’t make sense. ANYWHO, back to business, sorry folks. 

In Avengers: Endgame, we know that the past and future can be looked at and meddled in without consequence. Unlike Harry Potter where if a character were to see themselves it would screw everything up, not so in the MCU. So, according to the lore of the MCU, only the displacement of an Infinity Stone would open a new reality branch…...indicating that all the moments where the Avengers travelled back in time to are in the same reality. There seems to be no consequence of characters seeing doubles of themselves for the present incarnations or the past incarnations. The most curious and interesting factor about this representation of time is that despite that the Avengers travel back to past events in the stream of time, there is no connectivity- the past events are already established and the heroes can go about each different point in time with as much freedom as possible without the worry of affecting their future selves. People can go move from time period to time period and the laws of nature still apply- people can still die. If Black Widow was killed in 2014, then the same should be true for Thanos who travelled into the future- permanently dead. Tiny nuances were caused by the Avengers’ interference, a perfect example being Stark having a seizure thus perhaps delaying or even altogether outright cancelling the schwarma date at the end of Avengers- but that is why they returned the Stones to the right time and place so that everything would go the way it had to. Now…...about that. Cough* cough* looking at you Steve. 

At the very end of the film, Steve is tasked to take the Stones back to their rightful places. Okay, got that. He travels through time through the Quantum Realm. Okay got that. He comes back as an elderly man. Okay, let’s talk about this. Clearly, Steve needed to use the Pym Particles to travel throughout the decades to return the Stones, the earliest being the 70s to return the Space Stone buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, Mr. Steve goes back even earlier to what appears like the 50s. Why is he here? To stay and live out his life with the love of his life Peggy. Ok, let’s try and make sense of this. We’ve established he can run around all willy-nilly without affecting his present. 2014 Thanos didn’t lose his mind when he found out his 2023 self was decapitated and that there were people from the future in his time. But what about Peggy? Granted, that Peggy is an S.S.R agent and may be used to uncanny phenomena, her Steve is still frozen in the ice so either she married a twin or clone of Steve Rogers, or she accepted his bizarre story of being from the future quite easily. It should make someone mad but hey this is the movie medium on top of being adapted from the comic medium. It’s understandable if future Steve lived out his life with Peggy staying in the comfort of his new life and out of the limelight, allowing the events to play out until he reached the point where his beloved Peggy passed away and he returned back to the future old and grey. 

Now, the writers of the film, Stephen Mcfeely and Christopher Markus just HAD to go and say that Steve is the mystery husband that Peggy mentioned in an interview in Winter Soldier to complicate matters further. Like the time concept of Looper, it was a loop the entire time……….really? Apparently, he is her husband, and the father of her two children, a boy and a girl. He was always intended to fill in that role according to them but come on guys, if he was put in that slot because he conveniently fits and because you just really wanted him in there but nowhere throughout the ENTIRE MCU (not even Endgame) does it implicitly let alone explicitly imply that Steve is the husband and father, is it truly canon? Not another Dumbledore is gay fact AFTER the story is over guys. As Tony Stark would say to the writers in his Tropic Thunder role…..never go full retard.