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Published 2019-05-05T20:28:22.793Z

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Time Travel Movies Mentioned in Avengers: Endgame

Movies involving time travel that were mentioned in Avengers: Endgame.

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All The Time Travel In Avengers: Endgame Explained

One of the biggest questions surrounding Avengers: Endgame leading up to its release was how exactly Earth's Surviving Mightiest Heroes were going to bring back their snapped comrades. We knew at least some of them would come back, of course (Black Panther's not about to bow out after just one solo film), but what we didn't know was how. Well, now that the film is here, we know that one of the most prominent theories surrounding that question — time travel — was correct.

So, how does time travel work in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? What are the implications of it spinning out of Endgame ? What's left of that tech in the universe? We're here to talk about all that and more as we break down the various threads, branch realities, and conundrums that came with the MCU's first foray into spacetime adventuring.

Oh, and in case you hadn't figure this out already, there are MAJOR SPOILERS for the entire film ahead.

The inspiration

As many fans theorized in the months leading up to the film, the Quantum Realm visited in Ant-Man and the Wasp did indeed have a major role to play in Avengers: Endgame , and it all began when Scott Lang returned after being trapped there for five hours, only to discover that five years had passed on Earth. Scott's time travel idea was based on this simple observation of his predicament: If time works differently in the Quantum Realm, and the Quantum Realm is in fact its own pocket reality, can it be used — with Pym Particles as the shrinking agent —  to leave our universe at one point in time and come out at a different point?

When Tony Stark initially dismissed the idea, Scott, Steve Rogers, and Natasha Romanoff turned to Bruce Banner for help, and he believed he could make the idea into something practical. Using the Quantum Tunnel designed by Hank Pym, Bruce tried to send Scott back in time by only a week. But instead of pushing Scott through time, he pushed time through Scott, leading to strange backwards and forwards aging issues. It did technically result in at least a little bit of time travel, but another big brain had to refine the idea to make it something usable.

An idea refined

Tony Stark's initial reluctance to collaborate on the time travel idea wasn't just scientific in nature. It was also personal, as Tony was unwilling to risk losing the family he'd built in the process of altering the past. Tony's mind wouldn't stop working, though, and after running some models, he realized he had a working formula for a "spacetime GPS" that would allow the Avengers to harness the quantum access granted by Scott and Hank Pym's work. With this new tech in hand, they could navigate the Quantum Realm to a specific date and a specific place.

Picking targets was the next great obstacle, and Black Widow pointed out that with the right year, they could collect three different Infinity Stones in New York City alone. So, three travel teams were assembled. Tony, Steve, Scott, and Bruce would travel to New York in 2012 (the year of The Avengers ) for the Space, Time, and Mind Stones. Rocket and Thor would head to Asgard in 2013 (the year of Thor: The Dark World ) to get the Reality Stone. And Natasha, Clint, Nebula, and Rhodey would head to space in 2014 to collect the Power (on Morag) and Soul (on Vormir) Stones. If only it were that simple, right?

The rules of time travel

As the time travel discussions began, Scott suggested that everything would be fine as long as they followed "the rules of time travel," meaning no altering historical events or speaking with their past selves or other tampering. Scott and Rhodey later pushed this argument further by mentioning virtually every film about time travel ever made, only to have Bruce cut them short. In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, at least, their "realistic" version of time travel does not work the way many other films have postulated.

According to Bruce, you don't change your future if you visit your past, because when you do that your past becomes your future on your own individual timeline, which means your present is now part of your past, and so on. This is, among other things, why we see things like Captain America fighting himself and even Nebula killing her own past self without wiping her present self from existence. That's simply how time travel works in this world, and that's important to remember in the context of the film's overall plot.

Branching realities

When the New York team arrived in 2012, they split up to snatch the Space, Mind, and Time Stones. It turns out that the Time Stone was actually in New York City at the time of the Battle of New York, though the Avengers of 2012 didn't know it. Bruce Banner travels to New York's Sanctum Sanctorum, where he finds The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) fighting her own defensive battle as the Chitauri attack rages on.

Bruce tries to explain to her that they need the Stone for their own future purposes, but she declines to hand it over, going so far as to split Banner's consciousness from his Hulk body so they can talk without fighting. As she explains, the Infinity Stones are actually responsible for helping to maintain the flow of time. If you remove one, it creates a "branch reality" in which people will suffer untold chaos in the absence of the Stone, particularly the Time Stone as it serves as the weapon of the Sorcerer Supreme. It's here that Banner makes a key point about the film's use of time travel: The Avengers can't stop the chaos of branch realities, but they can erase them by returning the stone to the exact spot where they removed it from the timeline. When that happens, the branch reality ceases to exist, and so does the suffering it caused. This is why returning the Stones rather than destroying them is so important.

Further back

Captain America said before the Avengers started the journey that they should be ready for anything, even when they knew the place they were traveling to, and his words proved prophetic in the hunt for the Space Stone, which in 2012 was still in the form of the Tesseract. Tony Stark had the Stone secure in a case, but was knocked across the room by the 2012 Hulk coming down the stairs, sending the Tesseract sliding across the floor and ... right into Loki's path. The God of Mischief used the Stone to open a portal and escape Asgardian prosecution, leaving Tony and Steve with no Space Stone and only enough Pym Particles for one more trip through the Quantum Realm.

So, Tony came up with an idea: Use those Pym Particles to go backwards again, this time to 1970, when he knew both his own father Howard and Hank Pym would be at a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility in New Jersey. The trip allowed Tony to steal the Tesseract, while also meeting up with his own father just before his own birth. It also allowed Cap to steal more Pym Particles for the return trip, while also getting a little reminder of just how much he loved Peggy Carter.

Two Nebulas, one cybernetic system

The four-person space team was divided into two two-person teams, with Natasha and Clint heading to Vormir to get the Soul Stone and Nebula and Rhodey staying on Morag to follow Peter Quill's path to the Power Stone. In the process, we learned what happened when a cyborg time travels into the same time she used to live in. When Nebula landed in Morag, she was relatively close to her own 2014 self, and the neural network that existed in both of their brains suddenly became a shared space for two consciousnesses. This not only allowed Nebula to realize that Thanos was growing aware of their plan, but more importantly it allowed 2014 Nebula access to her own future memories. Thanos took full advantage of this, and used those memories to learn exactly what he had to do to get all of the Infinity Stones not with a galaxy-wide search, but by traveling through the Quantum Realm via stolen Pym Particles so he could steal all six from the Avengers in upstate New York after their time heist was complete.

Familiar faces return

Through the magic of time travel, Avengers: Endgame allowed us to get new glimpses of characters who were seemingly killed off for good in Infinity War . This was particularly exciting when it came to Loki and Gamora, who were found in 2012 and 2014, respectively, showing us parts of their stories from The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy we didn't get to see before.

In Loki's case, he used the time travel as an opportunity to snag the Tesseract and disappear into space. In Gamora's, she bonded with a future version of Nebula, realized her place as an enemy of Thanos a bit earlier, and helped keep the Infinity Stones out of his hand when she traveled to the present.

So, what happened to both of them? Well, whatever Loki did with the Tesseract was, according to Bruce Banner's logic, erased when Captain America returned the Space Stone to the point where it was taken. So Loki's timeline stayed relatively intact, meaning he's still dead. In Gamora's case ... well, unless Tony Stark's snap included her (she was no longer part of Thanos' army when he did it), she's out there somewhere, and Star-Lord is determined to find her. Specifically, her past self, who never got to know or fall in love with Quill.

Magic and science

Because this is the first time we've ever seen time travel in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Avengers: Endgame gives us a fascinating look not just at how it works, but at how it affects the larger world. In more than one of the team's time-travel voyages, that included how magic and various magical characters interacted with the science behind the voyage.

In 2012, Bruce Banner made contact with The Ancient One, and while she didn't immediately seem to sense that he was from the future, she wasn't surprised when he asked for Stephen Strange . She was already aware of Strange's place in the timeline, and was also clearly aware of how time travel and Infinity Stones would interact.

Things got even more interesting on Asgard in 2013, when Thor encountered his mother Frigga on the day she died in Thor: The Dark World . Frigga sensed almost immediately that she was looking at a future version of her son, and when he tried to deny it she noted that she was "raised by witches" and she "see(s) with more than eyes." So, at least some magic users in the MCU, including Doctor Strange, have a clear sense of what time travel looks like, and that could have major implications for future films.

The future of time travel

The third act of Endgame features all of the surviving Avengers returning to their compound with the Infinity Stones in hand. And then everything goes sideways when Thanos travels to the future courtesy of Nebula, who has infiltrated the compound with the Pym Particles stolen from her own future self. Thanos' ship destroys the time platform, and then Thanos himself destroys the Quantum Tunnel when he see Captain Marvel trying to make a break for it with the Stones.

That doesn't eradicate time travel from the MCU, though, as we see when Captain America steps onto a brand-new platform constructed by Bruce at the end of the film. Cap uses the remaining Pym Particles to journey back into the past to return the Stones. What this ultimately means is that time travel is not only still theoretically possible, but still practically possible in the MCU. As long as Henry Pym has or can produce more Pym Particles, the Avengers (or someone else) could make jumps through time again in the future.

The First Avenger's second chance

Even after the victory over Thanos, the noble sacrifice of Tony Stark, and the return of all of the Decimated beings to the universe, Avengers: Endgame delivered one more happy ending. Captain America did not simply jump to the past with the Infinity Stones, but returned them and then jumped further into the past to be with Peggy Carter again. That means that, through all the years he was frozen and all the years after he was thawed out, Captain America got to live a semi-regular life while his past self was living out the life we already know in the MCU.

But just how regular was that life? Cap declines the opportunity to fill Sam Wilson in on the past, but we do know that he took Mjolnir, which he'd been proven worthy to wield, and while he brought his repaired shield back to the future with him, he did not seem to bring the hammer. Did he leave it in the past? Did he have adventures with it? Did he and Peggy save the world in their own quiet way during the Cold War? Will we ever see any of those adventures? Cap was coy, but perhaps future MCU stories won't be.

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• Breaking Down the Complicated Time Travel in <i>Avengers: Endgame</i>

Breaking Down the Complicated Time Travel in Avengers: Endgame

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame .

At the end of Avengers: Infinity War , Thanos uses powerful gems called Infinity Stones to snap his fingers and destroy half of all life in the universe. At the beginning of its follow-up film Avengers: Endgame , the Avengers hunt down Thanos and try to take the Infinity Stones back to undo the damage. Unfortunately for them, Thanos has already destroyed the Stones. There is nothing they can do.

Fast forward five years. A rat happens to crawl over a machine that allows people to travel through the Quantum Realm and accidentally releases Ant-Man (Paul Rudd). He’s been stuck in the Quantum Realm for half a decade, even though it feels to him as if only five minutes have passed. Ant-Man rushes to Avengers headquarters to tell his fellow superheroes that they can travel back in time and collect all the Infinity Stones.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) agrees to work on a machine that would allow the Avengers to time travel — on one condition. He has started a family in the last five years and thus does not want to alter recent history in any way. Instead of trying to rewind time once they have the Time Stone and undo everything that has happened in the last five years, they decide to use the Infinity Stones to bring back everyone who disappeared in this current timeline, five years later. That way, Tony can preserve his daughter’s life, while saving dusted characters like Spider-Man (Tom Holland).

If you’re already confused, well, we’re just getting started. Time travel in pop culture can get rather tricky. Just ask J.K. Rowling, who destroyed all the Time Turners in Harry Potter just to avoid dealing with time-loop-related plot holes. Avengers: Endgame tries to side step these problems by establishing certain time travel rules. It’s complicated, so bear with me.

The Avengers time travel through the Quantum Realm

Ant-Man theorizes that because he was able to jump forward five years in what felt like five minutes, the Avengers could travel back in very little time. They use Pym Particles (created by his mentor Hank Pym before he disappeared in the snap) to shrink to subatomic size and enter the Quantum Realm. Tony just has to mess around with some of the technology for a day and ta-da! He’s solved the problem of how to control where they land in time using tiny little watches. Anyway, back to the plot.

READ MORE: We Ranked Every Single Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie

They decide to split up and visit a few spots to intercept the Infinity Stones. Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man, Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Ant-Man travel to New York in 2012 when both the Mind Stone and the Space Stone (then known as the Tessearact ) were in Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) possession during the Battle of New York and the Time Stone resided at the Sanctum Sanctorum in the same city.

Iron Man and Ant-Man flub stealing the Space Stone (Loki gets away with it), so then Captain America and Iron Man travel further back in time to a military lab in New Jersey in 1970 to steal it from Tony’s father’s lab. They also grab more Pym particles from Pym’s lab while they’re at it.

Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and Rocket (Bradley Cooper) travel to Asgard in 2013 where the The Reality Stone resides inside Jane Foster (Natalie Portman). Nebula (Karen Gillan) and James Rhodes (Don Cheadle) travel to Morag in 2014, where Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) found the Power Stone. And Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) travel to Vormir in that same time period to find the Soul Stone.

What the Avengers do in the past won’t affect the future in their timeline

Let’s say they steal the Space Stone from Tony Stark’s father in 1970. Doesn’t that mean that Tony Stark’s father was never able to study the Stone, thus he never creates the Arc Reactor technology that Tony later uses to power the Iron Man suit? And Iron Man is never born? This is basically a version of the Grandfather Paradox of time travel: Travel back in time to kill your grandfather, and then you are never born — hence you are unable to kill your grandfather.

Well, not in this movie! This movie version of time travel isn’t quite what most moviegoers are used to. For example, the rules of the butterfly effect where changing one tiny aspect of the past will alter the future in unpredictable ways — think Back to the Future or this famous Simpsons episode — aren’t in place.

READ MORE: How to Stream Every Single Marvel Movie

Nor is there a time loop. For example, in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the characters who travel back through time know exactly what they need to do in the past because it’s already happened in the future. (For example, future Harry and Hermione know they have to hit their past selves with rocks because they already felt themselves being hit with rocks at the time.) They also know they will tear apart their world if they diverge from that strict plan.

If the Avengers change something in the past, they create a parallel timeline

Time travel in Avengers: Endgame is based on a popular time travel theory in the field of quantum physics. At one point, Iron Man even drops the name David Deutsch — that’s the guy who came up with the “Many Worlds Theory” or “Multiverse Theory.” Basically, he argues that the place we conceive of as our universe is just one of many parallel universes. And if you change something in the past, you create a new timeline, branching out from the original timeline. So nothing they do in the past affects their main timeline.

For example, in the original timeline, Loki was captured and taken to Asgard by Thor in 2012. In Endgame , the 2023 Avengers accidentally facilitate Loki’s escape with the Tesseract (the Space Stone). But when they travel back to the future, Loki hasn’t used the Stone to wreak havoc for a decade. That all happened in a separate timeline. This logic eliminates the option of simply traveling back in time and killing Thanos as a baby, as Rhodes suggests, because it would not change their future, only an alternate universe.

But they have to return the Infinity Stones to their original places

The Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) insists that in order to maintain the reality of each universe that they visit, the Avengers need to return the Infinity Stones to the places they found them after they are done using them. It’s fine if they create separate timelines, but if they deprive one timeline of the gems that maintain its reality, then they essentially break that timeline. Captain America does return all the stones at the end of the movie. (He also returns Mjolnir, the hammer that Thor took from Asgard, back to Thor’s home planet for the same reason.)

Nebula can kill her past self and still survive

The movie contains an extreme example of why parallel timelines are different from the butterfly effect. Toward the end of Endgame , the new, good Nebula (Karen Gillan) from 2023 shoots and kills old, evil Nebula from 2014. And though you might expect 2023 Nebula to start bleeding out or disappear, she’s completely fine. That’s because when 2014 Nebula traveled to the future on Thanos’ orders, she created a split timeline. Thus these are two different Nebulas who exist on two different timelines. What happens to one does not directly affect the other.

Captain America was married to Peggy all along

Remember when I said earlier that there were no time loops? That’s not entirely true. There is one time loop that seems to work differently from time travel in the rest of the movie. I don’t know why. It just does.

Mid-way through the movie, Hulk promises the Ancient One that he will return the Infinity Stones to their original places in space and time. At the end of the movie, Captain America goes back in time to do this. But instead of returning after five seconds, like he agreed upon with Hulk, he stays in the past.

A few seconds later, Bucky and Sam (Anthony Mackie) see an old Captain America sitting on a nearby bench. We see in a flashback that after returning the Infinity Stones, he goes back to live out a quiet life with Peggy. We see them dancing together in their shared home.

According the logic of the movie, Captain America didn’t actually create a new timeline. If he did, he wouldn’t have been able to return to that same bench. He just lived out what had always happened to him. He was always married to Peggy (Hayley Atwell).

Back in Captain America: Winter Soldier, Peggy mentions a husband, though she never reveals his name. In a video that plays on a loop at the Captain America exhibit, Peggy says, “[Steve Rogers] saved 1,000 men, including the man who would become my husband, as it turned out. Even after he died, Steve is still changing my life.” She looks down after saying this, perhaps evasive — probably because said husband was, in fact, Steve.

Later, when Steve visits her hospital bed, we see pictures of children but none of her husband — presumably because that would give away who her husband was. Tellingly, Peggy says in that scene that “none of us can go back.” She then forgets that Steve is there — because at that point, she’s suffering from Alzheimer’s — and exclaims, “You came back!” He replies, “I couldn’t leave my best girl. Not when she owes me a dance.” Likely this is a parallel to the off-screen reunion that happens when Steve travels back in time to find Peggy.

As long as Steve maintained his false identity and didn’t interfere with anything in the past that would bring the Avengers to their fight with Thanos (like saving Bucky from being brainwashed by HYDRA) the timeline stays stable. The other version of Steve still wakes up in 2012 after being frozen during World War II and still joins the Avengers. Older Steve watches on from afar. It’s unclear whether the two Steves would have encountered one another at Peggy’s funeral: They were both alive when it happened during Captain America: Civil War , but perhaps they were both there and the younger version simply didn’t recognize the older version or his fake moniker.

Everything happened the way it did because it had to, according to Doctor Strange

Doctor Strange suggests in Infinity War that the Avengers could only beat Thanos in one possible future out of millions. In Avengers: Endgame , he tells Tony Stark, “If I tell you what happens, it won’t happen.” Given that the Avengers defeat Thanos at the end of the battle (and Doctor Strange not-so-subtly flashes one finger at Iron Man during the fight), we know that we are seeing that one single future in which the Avengers defeat Thanos.

Knowing that, old Steve would resist meddling in the Avengers’ affairs so that they would eventually win their fight against the big purple baddie.

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The quantum mechanics of “Avengers: Endgame,” fact-checked by scientists

Spoiler alert: This story contains details of the plot of Avengers: Endgame.

At the end of Avengers: Infinity War half the people (including heroes and villains) in the universe were gone in the snap of a finger from Thanos (Josh Brolin).

So how can Avengers: Endgame try to bring them back?

Well, with that tried and tested movie plot device: time travel. Plus a surprising amount of scientific jargon thrown in, including quantum mechanics , Deutsch propositions , eigenvalues , and inverted Möbius strips .

But don’t think that everything you hear during the movie was created in the minds of some crazy screenwriter. Many of the time-travel concepts in Endgame are connected, at least in name, to recent scientific theory, simulation, and speculation.

Let’s dive into the science of quantum time travel and discuss whether eigenvalues can really save the universe.

Time travel 101

The key premise of the movie is that the only thing that can reverse the deaths of half the universe are the things that caused those deaths in the first place: the powerful Infinity Stones .

Problem is, Thanos destroyed these in the present day, so the stones are only available in the past. Retrieving them will require a convoluted journey back in time to multiple locations by the remaining Avengers.

Is time travel actually possible? We’ve known since Albert Einstein posed his Theory of Special Relativity more than 100 years ago that traveling forward in time is relatively easy.

All you need to do is move at close to the speed of light and you can theoretically travel millions or even billions of years into the future within your lifetime.

But could you get back again? This feat appears to be much more difficult. Here are a few challenges and possible solutions.

The grandfather paradox

Traveling back in time can cause apparent logical inconsistencies in reality, like the well-known grandfather paradox .

If you went back in time and killed your grandfather when he was young, then you could never be born, but if you weren’t born, then how did you go back and kill him?

Scientists have several theories about these time loops (physicists call them closed timelike curves ). Some theories state that such loops are just physically impossible and therefore traveling back in time can never happen.

But we know, also thanks to Einstein, that spinning black holes can twist up both space and time , which is why one side of the black hole is brighter than the other in the first picture ever taken of one .

Time travel in Endgame

In the movie, the characters first make fun of many other time-travel movies such as Back to the Future and the Terminator series where changing your own past and future is possible.

Instead, Endgame goes with the alternative reality idea, where any changes back in time cause a whole new universe to be created, a so-called splitting or branching off of multiple timelines. In physics, this idea is called the Many Worlds Theory .

To avoid this problem, the Avengers plan to borrow the stones from past timelines, use them in the present day, but return them to exactly the same moment once they have finished with them. But will it work?

Enter quantum mechanics

Quantum mechanics is mentioned a lot in the movie and there are in fact many emerging theories about quantum time travel , including some that potentially solve the grandfather paradox .

In quantum mechanics, atomic particles are more like indistinct waves of probability . So, for example, you can never know both exactly where a particle is and what direction it’s moving. You only know there is a certain chance of it being in a certain place.

A British physicist named David Deutsch, who is mentioned in the movie, combined this idea with the Many Worlds theory , and showed that the grandfather paradox can disappear if you express everything probabilistically .

Like the particles, the person going back in time only has a certain probability of killing their grandfather, breaking the causality loop. This has been simulated successfully .

This might seem strange, and while some of the jargon used in the movie may seem a little over the top, you can be sure that real quantum science is even stranger than movie makers could ever imagine. It’s clear that even scientists are struggling to make sense of the implications of quantum theory.

Terminology for effect

The time-travel theory scenes (of which there are several) are filled with technical jargon, some out of place and some in the right ballpark.

Here are a few of the terms we hear in the movie concerning time travel:

Eigenvalues

In discussing their approach to time travel, characters Tony Stark and Bruce Banner mention eigenvalues . This is most likely an example of movie math talk for effect, as eigenvalues are a fairly low-level (basic) concept in linear algebra.

Verdict: A case of the math mumbles

Planck scale

The Planck scale is all about very small things. Planck length, time, and mass are base units used in physics. A Planck length is 1.616 × 10 −35 m. That’s very small.

It is the distance that light travels in one unit of Planck time—which is also a very small amount of time. Given the movie is about quantum mechanics-based time travel, chatting Planck scales don’t seem too far off topic.

Verdict: Planck has a point.

Inverted Möbius strip

The time-travel jargon also discusses inverting a Möbius strip. A normal Möbius strip is a surface with only one side. You can create one easily by taking a strip of paper, twisting it once, and then sticking it together.

Although a Möbius strip has a range of interesting mathematical properties, its technical relevance to time travel is tenuous, beyond some high-level attempts to explain the grandfather paradox.

Verdict: Twisting theory a little.

From a scientific perspective, it’s intriguing to have a new movie with such a heavy plot foundation in time travel, and the movie doesn’t pull many punches in diving straight into both the jargon and implications of various time-travel scenarios.

While some of the mathematical terminology is clearly there for effect, the plot makes a reasonable effort to adhere to current high level-thinking about time travel—to a point.

Time travel is one of those captivating scientific concepts that is perhaps furthest from implementation by scientists, and so its pivotal role in a movie about superheroes who can fly, go subatomic, destroy universes, and change reality is perhaps particularly apt.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .

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Avengers: Endgame explained: The logic behind the heroes' master plan

Here's how the Marvel epic's internal science avoids paradoxes

Anthony is a Senior Writer for EW.

Professor Hulk and The Ancient One do their best to make it clear, but moviegoers may still be coming out of Avengers: Endgame wondering about a key plot point.

How are the heroes able to avoid creating a looping paradox?

Let’s break down of the internal logic of the story …

***Spoilers Below Loki***

If Thanos from 2014 gets dusted in the future, then he isn’t around to do The Snap in 2018, right?

But if he’s not around to do The Snap, then the heroes never go on the mission that results in 2014 Thanos’ death — which means he survives and causes The Snap after all.

This is the peril of time travel, the possibility of an endless logic loop, doubling back on itself and undoing itself ad infinitum.

That’s why the plan the Avengers come up with isn’t about rewinding the clock.

Basically, don’t think of it as time travel. It’s dimension hopping.

According to the script by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, you can’t go back in time in your own dimension. If you do, you just end up with older or younger versions of yourself. (That’s what happened to Ant-Man. They pushed time through him.)

Think of it literally as a movie — that’s easy to do, right? It’s a continuum, and you can’t rewind your own film while you’re still moving forward. But — you can hop out of your Blu-ray and into a player spinning another disc and land at any point in that copy of that story.

That’s what the heroes do. To put it another way, they copy and paste reality.

That’s why The Ancient One explains to Bruce Banner that removing the stones basically ruins her own timeline. Why is her DVD existence any better than his DVD existence?

That’s why he promises to return the stones, to cause as little disruption to these other worlds as possible. If they can do that (as Captain American says he does at the end) those branched timelines realign with the central timeline — let’s call it the Prime Timeline — and it’s like the stones never left.

When the three teams jump back in time, they’re really jumping to three other screenings of the movie.

When Thanos 2014 — the Thanos from the time of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie — gets wind of their plot and travels forward in time to show up above upstate New York five years after the snap, he’s a different Thanos.

He can die there in a cloud of dust without creating a paradox in that timeline because he’s a visitor from another copy of the movie.

However, yes, back in his own Blu-ray, he’s now dead and The Snap never even happens. That remains a branch that can’t realign with the Prime Timeline because it has changed too much.

Loki vanished in the Avengers 2012 timeline when he grabbed the Tesseract, so even though he remains dead in the Prime Timeline, he is free to make mischief in this other branched timeline. (Expect that to be where this character’s upcoming Disney+ series is set.)

The Gamora from 2014 who ventured forward in time with Thanos and her still-evil sister Gamora has ended up trapped in the new timeline, but the Gamora we already know is still dead, sacrificed to the Soul Stone.

Gamora 2014 has no memory of any of the Guardians of the Galaxy experiences, or Peter Quill, or any of it. That Gamora is gone. New Gamora could still be a part of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 . Just expect her to have a significantly different personality.

This is also why Nebula can kill her 2014 self without disappearing. She’s not killing herself from the past, she’s killing a counterpart from another Blu-ray. To draw another metaphor, think of it like Toy Story , when Buzz Lightyear meets another Buzz Lightyear toy. It’s a version of him, yeah, but a different one from the Buzz we know.

Again — that separate 2014 timeline then branches off without Thanos, no Nebula, and also absent Gamora.

When Captain America goes back to return all the borrowed gems, he stays behind not in the past we know, but technically in a different branched reality.

Basically, he goes to live in another copy of the movie.

More on that soon from directors Joe and Anthony Russo….

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• EW unveils The Original Six covers for Avengers: Endgame • The Avengers are brutal to each other in this 2012 interview • All for One: EW’s epic and emotional sit-down with the Avengers who started it all

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Avengers: Endgame and time travel: Why it all makes perfect sense

The biggest plot point leaves us with big questions, but when you really think about it, it’s pretty straightforward.

Avengers: Endgame isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, onscreen presentation of time travel . But maybe in the future it'll be the past's best representation of the clearest dissection of time travel. 

Because Endgame does good work to make sure its rules of time travel make sense, both scientifically and within Marvel Cinematic Universe canon.

Those of you who've already seen Avengers: Endgame are already aware the major plot point of Endgame involves time travel -- that's how they bring back the "snapped". As my colleague Stephen Shankland explains , according to science, " Marvel's massive superhero movie bends the rules of the universe" with this movie. 

But it's called science  fiction for a reason.

"Should be fine if we strictly follow the rules of time travel," says Scott Lang (aka Ant-Man, played by Paul Rudd ) as the surviving Avengers discuss the perils of changing what once was. "No talking to your past self, no betting on sporting events." Tony Stark (aka Iron Man , played by Robert Downey Jr. ) tells Lang that movie  (Back to the Future) is "horseshit."

Which begs the question: What *are* the rules? Well, as the Avengers educate Professor Hulk , there are more than a few pop culture, timey-wimey examples that have screwed up our notion of what time travel actually means.

According to the Avengers, here are just some of your favorite properties that didn't handle time travel properly:

• Back to the Future
• Hot Tub Time Machine
• Time After Time
• Quantum Leap
• Somewhere in Time
• A Wrinkle in Time
• Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure
• Die Hard ("Wait, no, that's not one," says Lang.) 

The group didn't even mention Doctor Who , Looper , X-Men: Days of Future Past , The Time Machine, 12 Monkeys, or Men in Black 3 . Time travel is one of the core tenets of sci-fi, but that doesn't mean it's easy (a) for a film or show to execute properly or (b) for people to understand.

Thankfully though, it is technically rooted in reality, again according to my colleague , quoting famed physicist Stephen Hawking: "General relativity can permit time travel," Hawking said. "Science fiction fans need not lose heart." Phew.

The time travel paradox

Why these other franchises are so off is relatively easy to explain: If you go back in time and affect the past or blatantly change it, your actions will change things in the future. As in Back to the Future, and as the  Grandfather Paradox  states, you could potentially prevent your own birth. Sort of like a Butterfly Effect sending ripples through your own life.

In a "typical" linear timeline of B2TF, Marty McFly's parents meet, have Marty, then grow old. Marty is born, grows up with them and then heads back to the 1950s.

But in the film, things get weird because time is a loop. We learn Marty will leave his present (Point D), to head back to the '50s and change the past (Point A). This action then affects his current present future (Point E to him, Point B to his parents) by erasing his birth in his own near-future past (Point C).

I made a perfectly simple chart so you can visualize it.

As Lang says incredulously, "So Back to the Future is a buncha bullshit."

The best representation of how the Avengers approach time, and travel within it actually comes later in the movie, after they've weighed the merits of time travel in movies. Tilda Swinton's Ancient One explains it to Professor Hulk's astral form (which takes the form of human Bruce Banner): Removing one element (or an Infinity Stone, in their linear flow example), causes a split in the timeline creating a different path for the world.

The "time travel paradox" doesn't make sense, because that's not how time works -- in the real world or in Endgame. Changing a thing in the past that prevents a future thing, just means nothing happens. (But that's a boring movie, so I get it.)

Using the B2TF example, that means if Marty wasn't born at Point C, then he couldn't go back to Point A during his own current timeline of Point D, so he couldn't have had any effect on his parents getting together at Point B, and therefore wouldn't be able to make it to Point E to change anything.

See? It's simple.

As Prof. Hulk says: "I have no idea! We're talking about time travel here. It's either all a joke, or none of it is."

Quantum tunnel, quantum bridge, quantum everything

"Have either of you guys studied quantum physics?" Lang asks Natasha (aka Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson ) and Captain America (aka Steve Rogers, played by Chris Evans ). "Only to make conversation," says Natasha.

With the word "quantum" still thrown in front of everything in this movie, it gets confusing deciphering what's actually real science and what's comic book science.

In the movie, Tony Stark describes the EPR Paradox, or the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox . Stark explains that it means Lang wasn't actually going anywhere inside the quantum tunnel: "Instead of Lang going through time, time is going through Lang," he tells Steve Rogers.

Stark solves this with a "time-space GPS," a way for the team to travel through the quantum bridge without getting lost in it. None of any current science suggests that this is possible, writes Shankland . But then he leaves the door open a tiiiiiiiny bit, giving us hope that maybe that ugly brown van's quantum bridge was actually a wormhole (!!!).

With a form of so-called exotic matter -- something with negative energy density -- you could prop wormholes open, but nobody knows if this is even possible, except at the minutest quantum-mechanical scales .

What I'm hearing is that Hank Pym (the original Ant-Man, played by Michael Douglas ) and co. created a wormhole, accidentally left Scott in it, and then the Avengers used the same wormhole and their GPS devices to save this single universe.

We're all cool with that right?

More spoiler-filled Endgame pieces

• Deaths, twists and ending: Our biggest questions
• The Avengers' quest for the Infinity Stones explained
• Diving into the real science of Endgame's biggest paradox

The Avengers made use of the same wormhole Scott was accidentally left in. Right?

Lingering questions

Cool with it or not, that's what happened in Endgame, leaving some people with a lot of questions. Here are a few I've gotten since the movie's record-breaking opening . 

Can the Avengers only go back to their own pasts, or could they go back even further?

Honestly, it's unclear. Maybe they only have enough Pym Particles to go back a certain amount? But it's not like any team members needed to go back further -- all the Stones were spotted in the team's last decade-ish. 

How did Cap end up old when everyone stayed the same age?

TL;DR: 2023Cap took the long way back to the present.

After fighting with 2014Cap and remembering (yet again) what he gave up for the good of the universe, and after glimpsing Peggy Carter in 1970, 2023Cap (the one who swears) makes a defining decision. As 2023Cap is using the quantum bridge to go back and replace the Stones and Mjolnir from exactly when they were stolen, he realizes he's done his service and that his future can be a different past. Cap drops off all the heisted items and instead of going forward with the final vial of Pym particles, he heads back to make that date with Peggy. (Or maybe a couple years later, after season two of Agent Carter .) 

Does this mean, as some have claimed , that he "stood by" while Hydra took over, or prevented Peggy from marrying her other love and having kids?

Not at all, first and foremost because 2023Cap would never stand by while injustices raged on. Cap knew Hydra and other threats would be taken care of because he took care of them . Literally, his past self dealt with Loki and Hydra and Thanos, and he knew it would happen because he'd already done it. (You'll recall this because your future self can't affect the past, as mentioned above.)

And second, Peggy's husband is *never directly named or shown.* That's huge and means it could easily be 2023Cap disguised and/or hiding if he ever needs to, or when his past self visits Peggy.

Fact is, Shankland answered this in his scientific strip-down of Endgame: 

Hollywood could have another big beef with physics: Time travel strips away any actual control any of us has on our own future, said  Richard Muller , a physics professor at the University of California, Berkeley. "If wormholes exist and we can go backward in time, it's a consequence in physics that we would be not be able to exercise free will. We would not be able to change our minds," he said.

It's this simple: 2023Cap went back in time because he was always meant to go back in time .

2023Cap would never stand by while injustices raged on.

Wait, how does Nebula and Thanos dying work? And how is Gamora living now?

Yes, 2014Nebula and 2014Thanos are dead. D-E-D, dead. So is 2018Vision, 2018Heimdall and 2018Loki, 2023Natasha and 2014Gamora. So is this  whole list of people .

While I agree it seems strange that 2014Nebula would be dead even as 2023Nebula survives, it's still for the same reason as Prof. Hulk and Nebula keep hammering: Your future self can't affect your past self -- apparently even to kill it.

We saw Loki though, where (when?) is he??

2012Loki though is alive and likely about to embark on his wild Disney Plus ride of a show. WHICH now has the option of diving deeper on the evil Loki, aka best Loki, and exploring the multiverse.

So all the timelines just coexist forever now?

Exactly. We now have a full-fledged multiverse in the MCU.

Hold onto your butts.

If multiple timelines exist, does that mean somewhere in space/time there is a timeline where everyone is still dead and they didn't succeed and we're just not seeing it? Yes. Well, maybe. In either case, aren't you glad we don't live there?

How to watch every Marvel Cinematic Universe film in the right order

If you have more questions we can talk in circles about, leave a comment and let us know!

You need to watch the most unique time-travel epic ASAP

This Marvel movie doesn’t need any more recognition, but its handling of time travel is frankly remarkable.

The most startling thing about Avengers: Endgame isn’t its victorious finale but its touching portrait of defeat.

Still one of the highest-grossing movies of all time three years later — at $2.798 billion, it is second behind James Cameron’s Avatar — Avengers: Endgame is surprisingly thoughtful and intimate at times, no matter how inconceivably massive the action is. Trying to bill the movie as a moving drama to Oscar voters was frankly hilarious, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have merit as one.

This has been a weird preamble to discuss the movie’s most out-there science fiction element: Time travel. Endgame is not just a crazy superhero crossover but a time-travel odyssey. Marvel’s ensemble of heroes — some entirely in CG — disperse throughout Marvel’s canonical history to pluck out some extra Infinity Stones to fix what they’ve broken. But one could argue that the movie’s willingness to travel back in its own time as a metaphor for self-examination makes Endgame one of the most truthful and authentically human movies in the entire Marvel canon.

For Inverse’s special issue on time travel, Avengers: Endgame is perhaps the best sci-fi movie in the time travel canon you can revisit right now on Disney+.

THE RULES OF TIME TRAVEL is an Inverse special issue exploring the evolution of science fiction's most imaginative sub-genre. From Marty McFly to Avengers: Endgame .

Avengers: Endgame is a big, unwieldy movie, even without the time travel. But somehow, the time travel element is maybe the best and most thought-out part.

Directors Joe and Anthony Russo and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely begin Endgame with a simple question: Where did we go wrong?

Picking up from the previous Avengers film, the heroes make a desperate final play to move on Thanos (Josh Brolin). But when they find him, he’s not the imposing warlord they know him to be. He’s living like the Dexter finale, alone on a farm, making stew from ingredients he grows. Thanos has also destroyed the Infinity Stones. He achieved his mission and ensured no one else could use the stones. Thor (Chris Hemsworth) beheads Thanos in a hasty moment, an act that will haunt him for at least the next five years.

The Avengers spend the next half-decade wallowing and dealing with the fallout in their individual ways. It isn’t until a rat serendipitously brings back Ant-Man (Paul Rudd) that the Avengers discover the quantum realm, and an impossible solution — traveling in time — to undo the destruction Thanos left behind.

The brilliance of Endgame isn’t merely using time travel as a means for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to high-five itself and revisit memorable corners. Nor is it how it allowed the Avengers to probe themselves, both in their wins as a superhero team and losses as individual people. Instead, it’s how Endgame interpreted time travel that makes it distinct.

Endgame was a victory lap through memory lane for the MCU, but its trip was thoughtful and careful, not braggadocious.

In subverting expectations established by literally every other sci-fi movie ever made — observe Rhodey (Don Cheadle) count them all — Endgame asks the audience to accept it on its own terms, not the preconceived notions of how this genre is supposed to work.

“If you travel to the past,” a breathless Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) explains, having synergized his big brain into the Hulk’s big green bod, “that past becomes your future. And your former present becomes the past. Which can’t now be changed by your new future.”

It’s a clumsy explanation, but apparently, the science checks out.

Sean Carroll, Research Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, author of the nonfiction science books Something Deeply Hidden and From Eternity to Here , and host of the science podcast Mindscape , was one of several consultants for Avengers: Endgame . I spoke to him recently for a story about the multiverse , but along the way, Endgame came up, and Carroll jokingly took full responsibility for the movie’s understanding of time travel.

“So you’re saying Back to the Future is just bullshit?”

“I don’t claim too much credit,” Caroll told Inverse , acknowledging Marvel Studios had other experts to weigh in on the scripts, “but what we talked about is how time travel works.”

He continues: “If you go to the past and mess around with it, what are the effects? The law I tried to push was its simplest and most coherent. If you can go to the past and do things, you're not actually changing the past. Whatever you did back there in the past happened already, even though you don't know because it's in the past.”

Carroll said he “very strongly argued against the Back to the Future kind of time travel,” which famously popularized an idea of time travel via disappearing in a photograph. “That just makes no logical sense whatsoever,” Carroll says.

So, even in a world where there are talking raccoons and gamma radiation results in swole green biceps, Carroll insisted on grounding something in some scientific logic. “If you watch Endgame and they’re talking about time travel, and Paul Rudd says, ‘So you’re saying Back to the Future is just bullshit?’ That was my fault.”

Avengers: Endgame is a juggernaut movie, but it’s arguably underrated in the realm of time travel movies.

Avengers: Endgame is one of the biggest movies of all time, with a climax so inconceivably huge that I still can’t believe it was ever done all these years later. That the movie still works as a movie about coping with failure is all the more astonishing. I cannot say enough good things about the first hour of Endgame , which is endlessly rewatchable and maybe the first time the MCU’s dull gray and brown color palettes are actually appropriate.

But Endgame doesn’t get nearly enough praise as a time travel movie, one that’s willing to play by its own rules as informed by some actual science. That might not make it as influential as Back to the Future. But in charting its own way, Marvel decides its own future, rather than relying on what was done in the past.

Avengers: Endgame is now streaming on Disney+.

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• Marvel Universe

Avengers: Endgame Time Travel Explained

Still not clear on how time travel works in the mcu maybe we can help.

For more on Avengers, read our Endgame review , or find out about everything in the Fortnite X crossover . Learn about the post-credits scene in Endgame , or let us explain the Endgame ending for you! Find out more about that mystery kid from Iron Man's funeral . Dig into Gamora's dead or alive status in Endgame . And is Black Widow really dead? We explain here .

So now it can be confirmed. As we long suspected, yes, the Avengers use time travel in order to undo Thanos’ Snap heard round the universe. And while the circumstances of how that time travel play out might be different from what many fans had theorized, the end result is the same: The Mad Titan is defeated and everyone who was lost in the Decimation is returned, albeit after five years of non-existence.

But how exactly does the time travel work in Avengers: Endgame? Basically, it’s super confusing, and it seems like the filmmakers purposely avoid fully explaining it, instead opting to point out how it doesn’t work. That said, let’s put on our Quantum Realm Suit, adjust our time GPS, and time-heist this thing!

The Quantum Realm

At first, Tony Stark isn’t interested in pursuing the matter, as he thinks it was dumb luck that Scott made it out of the Quantum Realm at all. So Captain America and Black Widow bring Ant-Man to the Hulk, who agrees to give it a go… even if it isn’t exactly his area of expertise.

Time Travel Doesn’t Work That Way!

Eventually “Professor” Hulk comes in to help figure out how to use Scott’s discovery to send the Avengers back in time. And while everyone has their own idea of how to go about the mission, Banner reminds the group that time travel doesn’t really work the way it does in movies such as Back to the Future or The Terminator (or Time After Time or Somewhere in Time or Timecop…). War Machine suggests just going back in time and killing Baby Thanos, a twist on the old killing Baby Hitler concept, but again, that’s “movie time travel.” Or so we’re told.

According to Banner, you can’t just go back in time and change the past in order to alter the future. Because the future is already your past! You can’t change the future, because if you did, you wouldn’t be the same version of yourself who time-travelled in the first place to make that change. See, it’s confusing.

Instead, any change to history will create an alternate, or divergent, timeline. Say you did kill Baby Thanos. That wouldn’t affect the Thanos in the MCU timeline that already saw him cause the Decimation. Instead, it would just create a parallel reality where Thanos died as a baby. But the world of our heroes would remain unchanged. So what to do then?

Time Heist!

Here’s where we get to the time heist, as Tony Stark can’t help himself and basically figures out how time travel works when he has a few hours of spare time one evening. He joins his old teammates, who have been kinda/sorta getting there, though Scott Lang narrowly avoids being permanently turned into a child/baby/old man in the process, and definitely wets himself along the way. The Hulk is smart, but Stark is needed for this one.

Soon enough, the plan is hatched to send three teams back to various points in time/space in order to retrieve each Infinity Stone from a time before Thanos had them. The Avengers will then take them back to their present time of 2023 (five years after the Snap) and use them to undo the Decimation with a new Snap. But as the Ancient One explains to Banner during the Battle of New York back in 2012, removing one of the Stones from their timeline will cause said timeline to splinter off into the divergent realities mentioned above. The Stones being together, presumably in the same time if not in the same specific place, keeps the timeline intact. That’s why, once the Avengers finish undoing the Decimation in 2023, they must return the Stones to the exact moments they took them from the past. That way the Stones will not truly leave their respective past points, and hence not alter the timeline.

And that’s what Captain America apparently does with each of the Stones at the end of the film, returning them to their rightful places in the past. Though he takes a 70-year break or so along the way. Speaking of which...

Splintered Timelines

Despite the goal of not altering history, it seems that’s what happens anyway, as the Nebula of the present’s mind and memories mix with those of the Nebula of the past. This allows the Thanos from around the time of Guardians of the Galaxy 1 (in 2014) to see the future, including his own death at the beginning of Endgame and the Avengers’ time heist plan. And so he travels into the future to the “present” of Endgame, in 2023, which leads to the film’s final confrontation and Iron Man’s death as he snaps Thanos and his army out of existence.

But! How could the Thanos of the past be killed in Endgame, since now he will never be able to find the Infinity Stones, put them in the Infinity Gauntlet, and wipe out half of all life in Infinity War, leading to the Avengers coming up with the time heist plan as a result? Unless this Thanos is from a divergent timeline, created by the fact that history was altered when the Avengers travelled to the past (and Nebula inadvertently revealed the future to Thanos). Which, Endgame previously told us, should not happen as long as the Infinity Stones don’t leave their place in the timeline.

The same question applies to the Gamora of the past, who didn’t die on Vormir and is seemingly alive and well at the end of Endgame, with Star-Lord preparing to go find her in space (Guardians Vol. 3 plot line?). If she’s living in the present, how can her future self have died in the past when Thanos sacrificed her for the Soul Stone? Divergent timeline?

The Loki who escapes with the Tesseract right after the Battle of New York is another big question that comes out of the Avengers' time travel shenanigans, since not only did he disappear into a portal to points unknown, but he also took the Space Stone with him. That’s why Cap and Iron Man had to go back even further to the 1970s to find another instance of the Tesseract that they could steal. But by the end of the film, when Captain America returns all of the Stones to their rightful place (off camera), there’s no way he could’ve returned the one that past Loki made off with. Perhaps we’ll learn more about this in the Disney+ Loki show, but it sure seems like that’s another divergent timeline right there.

And then there’s Cap, who winds up living out his life with Peggy Carter in the past. This conflicts with what we know to be Peggy’s history in the MCU, as she married a man who Cap saved during World War II, a man with whom she had children. If Cap and Peggy got together in the past, then that aspect of her history would have to be altered… creating a different timeline. (Though, yes, one could argue that Steve Rogers was always the guy she married and that he and Peggy basically kept that info hidden for 70 years. But really, that’s a stretch.) And if a different timeline was created, how did elderly Cap make it back at the end of the film, as he doesn’t arrive on the Quantum platform where he left from? Perhaps the Tony Stark in that other reality gave him some kind of upgraded Quantum GPS device that allows him to pop in and out between realities.

The Bottom Line

So what can we definitively say about time travel in Endgame? It seems clear that, as the Hulk pointed out, changing the past won’t change the characters’ futures. But beyond that, it seems that despite the team’s best efforts, at least some divergent timelines were formed. All of which brings us back to the beginning, when we said that time travel in the MCU apparently doesn’t make much sense. Or at least it doesn’t make much movie sense. But Endgame is a movie. And now our heads are exploding.

What do you make of the MCU’s take on time travel? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura , or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3 . Or do both!

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Avengers: endgame's time travel explained (properly).

Avengers: Endgame sees the heroes time travel in a bid to undo Thanos' snap. And it's complicated. We explain all the loops, paradoxes and plot holes.

WARNING: Major spoilers for Avengers: Endgame .

Avengers: Endgame brings time travel to the fore of the MCU and, as predicted, it's really rather complicated.  Time travel isn't a totally new concept to the Marvel Cinematic Universe . Doctor Strange made use of the Time Stone in his solo movie to defeat the Dark Dimension's Dormammu by trapping him in a time loop, and Ant-Man and the Wasp teased that the Quantum Realm had "time vortexes". Avengers: Endgame takes that latter thread and runs with it.

After Thanos has destroyed all the Infinity Stones and been killed by Thor, the Avengers are lacking the means to undo the effects of the snap. A get around comes five years later in the form of Scott Lang, whose time in the Quantum Realm felt like only five hours; he rationalizes that, because time moves differently, it would be possible to leave and enter at different points across the timeline. A plan is formulated, leading to the entire second act of Avengers: Endgame (and a fair bit of the third) being concerned with time travel.

Related: Every Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie, Ranked (Including Endgame)

Time travel is  hard . As something theoretically possible on a quantum mechanics level but physically impossible from a human vantage point (unless you count Planet of the Apes ' use of relativity to move forward at a fast rate), it functions in fiction entirely on stated logic within the story at hand. There is no true rule to time travel, which means every movie can create new ideas. However, only a handful - The Terminator (just the first), Looper , Primer - follow their rules religiously. That's not a problem if the story a movie is telling is entertaining (see Back to the Future , which is impossible to track yet so exciting it doesn't matter), but it can still leave audiences scratching their heads.

Avengers: Endgame , as expected, doesn't make total sense . It pulls from multiple different ideas of time travel, using them all at once for different ends. This is all in service of the characters and their fight against Thanos - you can't get Captain America's incredibly satisfying ending without fudging things a bit - but it can mean making sense of what's going on a little tricky. And so here we'll explain every question you could possibly have about Avengers Endgame 's time travel.

First, though, here's a glossary of the four different types of time travel that will be important in this discussion.

• Linear timeline (with time loops): whatever happened, happened. Going into the past can't change the past because it already happened, you simply enable it to happen. Example:  Twelve Monkeys , The Terminator (just the first)
• Grandfather paradox: if you go back in time and kill your own grandfather, then you can't have existed to go back and kill him. Example: Surprisingly few,  Donnie Darko comes close. Many others (such as Looper ) subvert the idea.
• Butterfly effect: any small change in the past will have massive impacts on the future. Example: The Butterfly Effect
• Fluid timeline: a mixture of all of the above where what changes have an impact is decided based on in-story logic. Example: Back to the Future , Terminator 2: Judgement Day

How Avengers: Endgame's Time Travel Works

The justification of time travel is fundamental to Avengers: Endgame 's second act, with characters repeatedly questioning its possiblity. Of course, Tony Stark's scientific explanation - its perils are rooted in quantum chromodynamics theory, Scott turned into a baby and old man because of the EPR paradox and Deutsch proposition, the wrist devices derive from the eigenvalue of a particle field accounting for spectral decomposition under his Mobius strip configuration - glances with genuine theory but one without any real application. Yes, Mobius strip time travel is a pre-existing idea (it's at the heart of the grandfather paradox), but it's not how the film presents time travel.

There are two scenes in Avengers: Endgame where time travel is explained. First is Banner ahead of Hawkeye's test mission. Responding to Rhodey's suggestion of killing Thanos in the crib (an adaptation of the " kill Hitler " time travel theory), Bruce dismisses most time travel examples from popular culture ( Back to the Future especially, but Star Trek , Terminator , Time Cop , Time After Time ,  Quantum Leap ,  Somewhere In Time , Hot Tub Time Machine and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure are all mentioned), stating " 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. " The basic implication is that you  can't change the past because you've existed in the future; no matter what you do, the end result is the same. Even if you  were to try and kill baby Thanos, the future you have must be unchanged.

Later, when Bruce is attempting to get the Time Stone from the Ancient One, she talks to him and elaborates on his idea further: " The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time. Remove one of the stones and that flow splits. " This suggests that, while the post-Decimation future the Avengers have come from will be there when they return, their actions in the past can impact the timeline to the point that new timelines are created (which, due to the lack of Stones, are much more fraught). While it's possible  any change could do this, it's only explicitly stated that it occurs when an Infinity Stone is removed from the timeline, which Bruce proposes can be fixed if they " return each one to its own timeline at the moment it was taken so chronologically, in that reality, it never left. "

Related: Every Returning Character in Avengers: Endgame

In short, the Avengers can't change their own timeline as it already happened, so going into the past doesn't affect their own reality. However, removing the Infinity Stones from an earlier point does, creating darker timelines. To correct this, the Infinity Stones need to be returned to their original place in the timeline after use.

Now, both of these exposition characters are shown in Avengers: Endgame to not have full knowledge of the situation - Bruce is enlightened by the Ancient One, who is herself later corrected by Doctor Strange's plan involving giving up the Time Stone - but given these are the film's prime exposition beats regarding time travel, they can be assumed to be intended as accurate by the filmmakers. The ambiguity comes with what is a big enough change to alter the timeline: taking an Infinity Stone creates a branch, but returning it would essentially uncreate it; but what does that mean of the interactions the future Avengers have with their past selves, or the full-on diversion with Thanos?

What The Avengers' Time Travel Plan Is In Endgame (& How It Goes Wrong)

The Avengers intend to go back in time to takes the Infinity Stones to attach to their own, new Infinity Gauntlet. They split into four teams: Iron Man, Captain America, Ant-Man and Hulk to New York during The Avengers to get the Tesseract, Loki's Scepter and Mind Stone; Thor and Rocket to Asgard during Thor: The Dark World to remove the Aether from Jane Foster; War Machine and Nebula to get the Power Stone from the Morag at the start of Guardians of the Galaxy ; and Hawkeye and Widow to retrieve the Soul Stone from Vormir.

There's a question of why they needed to go to the events of the movies - while the Battle of New York makes sense due to the three Infinity Stone argument, the Aether was in the Collector's museum since Thor: The Dark World and the Power Stone on Xandar following Guardians of the Galaxy , situations with fewer timeline implications. Of course, that would make for a much less interesting film and is argued away in-universe as requiring characters' knowledge of events.

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The plan goes awry in multiple cases. Clint gets the Soul Stone but has to lose Natasha (which doesn't break the timeline). Thor talks to Frigga moments before her death, getting the goodbye he was robbed and a speech about being a hero, before taking Mjolnir . War Machine gets the orb, but Nebula is stopped from traveling back to the present by 2014 Thanos. Captain America gets the scepter after a tussle with his past self and Hulk the Time Stone (as well as knowledge of the timeline issues above) but Tony and Scott fail to secure the Tesseract, which Loki uses to teleport out; they instead go to 1970 to get it from Camp Lehigh in New Jersey, as well as more Pym Particles for the return journey.

Most Of The Infinity Stones (And Mjolnir) Create A Simple Time Loop

There's a lot to break down here, so let's first look at the most simple case. The major wrinkle of taking the Infinity Stones creating multiple timelines is addressed at the end of Avengers: Endgame , with Steve Rogers returning them - along with Mjolnir - back to their original time periods. Assuming Cap does this correctly (as implied), that means the actions surrounding the Reality Stone in Thor: The Dark World , the Space Stone in 1970, the Mind Stone in The Avengers , the Time Stone in 2012 and the Soul Stone in 2014 are all reverted to normal: he erases the timelines created by their removal. The question of how exactly Steve returned the Soul Stone, or his reaction to Red Skull being its guardian, is left to audiences' imaginations.

What that does leave is a pretty startling implication: this always happened. Rocket always stole the Aether from Jane, Howard Stark always bumped into grown-up Tony on the day of his son's birth, the Ancient One always talked to Banner four years before her death. It's a linear timeline and all of this was going on in the background of the MCU all along. While that's a retcon by anyone's reasoning, it is rather tight; none of the mentioned past-future interactions directly contradict the timeline.

Loki Created A New Timeline?

The first true break (or diversion) of the Marvel timeline in Avengers: Endgame is regarding the Space Stone in 2012. Tony and Scott intend to give 2012 Tony an arc reactor failure when he meets Secretary Pierce (something that presumably always happened), allowing them to remove the Tesseract briefcase from the equation. An angry 2012 Hulk complicates matters and the Space Stone is attained by Loki , who teleports out of New York.

Related: The Tesseract Timeline (Including Captain Marvel)

Following the rules laid down by the Ancient One (and the fact that the film puts focus on the Loki moment), this a clear and intended break in the Marvel timeline that is not resolved by the time Avengers: Endgame comes to an end. In this reality, Loki escapes capture at the Battle of New York with the Tesseract.

The knock-on effects of this are serious: directly, Loki is still working for Thanos at this point so may give him the Space Stone years earlier; from a movie perspective, he isn't there for the events of Thor: The Dark World or Ragnarok , meaning Odin is never replaced and, possibly, Asgard may not be destroyed and Thor never loses Mjolnir; the Avengers also haven't completed their first mission, likely keeping them together longer and impacting solo movies up to and beyond Captain America: Civil War . The extent of all of this is speculation, sure, but the very immediate potential is massive. This would also mean that everything that happens subsequently in this time period is  not part of the prime MCU universe: Steve Rogers didn't always fight his future self because he was never looking for Loki.

Practically, this is a get around of Loki's death at the start of Avengers: Infinity War . Thanos declared " no resurrections this time " and he was right, from a certain point of view. Loki is dead in the MCU going forward, yet a version of him is alive and well for new adventures at his most malicious in another timeline, which is a topic that will surely be explored in the Tom Hiddleston-starring Disney+ Loki show .

Thanos Breaks Avengers: Endgame's Time Travel Logic

The one Infinity Stone we've not accounted for yet is the Power Stone. Already, this was a weird case as Nebula and War Machine directly interfered with the opening of Guardians of the Galaxy , although it could be explained Star-Lord being knocked out always happened, meaning Steve returning the stone at the end maintained continuity.

Related:  How Much Did Avengers: Endgame REALLY Cost To Make?

But it's the impact of Nebula being in the past that breaks things. Due to her conscious network, the past and future Nebula are connected, which alerts a Guardians of the Galaxy -era Thanos to the Avengers' mission: he swiftly learns about his victory in Avengers: Infinity War , subsequent death and an attempt to undo it via time travel. And here's where it gets actually complicated: intercepting future Nebula, Thanos time travels the Sanctuary II to the post-snap world in a bid to stop the Avengers undoing his dead future self's work. His plan is now to reclaim the Infinity Stones, wipe out  all life and build a new world with him as de facto God. In the end, though, Thanos from 2014 and all his forces are dusted by Iron Man's snap .

The temporal issues here are massive. In Guardians of the Galaxy , Thanos was sat in his throne letting minions do his bidding and yet to have a single Infinity Stone in his grasp. Avengers: Endgame gives him full knowledge of the future, takes him into the 2020s and kills him. With no Thanos or threat, the entire MCU after Guardians of the Galaxy is different, up to there not even being an Infinity War (at least not against the Mad Titan - we know the Collector is also coveting the Infinity Stones).

It's possible that this is all a result of Loki's Tesseract grab, which has already happened in the " present " of some of the future Avengers, but there's little to back that up. Conversely, it may be that Steve returning the Power Stone resets all of this timeline to make this Thanos essentially exist on a separate stream. But the most logical explanation using the film's rules is that something the Avengers changed in 2014 altered the past. This would be unrelated to an Infinity Stone, making the Ancient One's advice wrong, and mean all these smaller changes the Avengers were making in the past  do  have an impact, butterfly effect-style, leading to an infinite number of alternate timelines.

However, any of those assumptions go well beyond what's laid down explicitly by Avengers: Endgame , making big assumptions and attempting to consolidate multiple forms of time travel (linear timeline, butterfly effect, alternate dimensions) into one. The important thing is that this Thanos who learns beyond his time is defeated at the end.

Related:  Thanos' MCU Introduction Doesn't Make Sense - Here's How We'd Fix It

How Can Nebula Kill Her Past Self?

A subset of the Thanos concern is Nebula. The notion of both versions being connected is actually rather logical by itself; think of it like taking a phone to the past - which one receives calls and messages? But when things are taken through to completion, it gets confusing.

During the present-day battle in Avengers: Endgame 's finale, future Nebula convinces past Gamora to join her (a reversal of their arc in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 ), which leads to a showdown in which future Nebula kills her past counterpart. Common time travel logic would make this a grandfather paradox - Nebula can't exist to kill herself - but there's no slow fade away. This is further evidence that whatever is happening after Thanos comes to the future is from its own existent timeline, although any further exploration - or even an acknowledgment of what's happened from Gamora or Hawkeye - isn't forthcoming.

Captain America Goes Back To The Past (And Was Always There?)

The end of Avengers: Endgame has one final big time travel reveal. When Steve Rogers goes back in time to replace all the stones and, as the movie tells it, correcting every potential issue, instead of returning to the present, he uses the Pym particles to jump to the 1940s to be with Peggy. He gets that date, that dance, that life that he was forever robbed from by his duty. This is confirmed by an appearance of a much older Steve just after he leaves, saying he was happy with the life his chose and passing the shield to Falcon.

Related:  Every Captain America Movie, Ranked

Thematically perfect and tear-inducingly delivered, this moment nevertheless creates even more complications thanks to, once again, borrowing from multiple forms of time travel. Captain America has inserted himself into the past, becoming Peggy Carter's husband.

It's notable that Marvel movies have been avoiding giving much of Peggy's post- Agent Carter background even as they teased Steve's eventual fate. The only proper mention of her husband came in Captain America: The Winter Soldier where, in an archived video at the Captain America Smithsonian exhibit, she explained how he was someone Steve saved during World War II; Agent Carter  was canceled before the show could reveal his identity as promised and pictures on her bedside further showed only her children. It's distinctly possible that this ambiguity was intended to hide that it was really Steve Rogers all along.

This line of thinking comes with its own problems, many explainable. Steve and Peggy would have had to hide his return from the outside world, likely seeing him live under an alias. As spies, this would be well within their remit, and if the focus was on living a life together, a worthy sacrifice. It would also explain the now-incongruous fact that Peggy has a photo of young Steve on her desk; she's covering for him. It also doesn't make the Sharon Carter love story (too) disgusting as Steve wouldn't be her blood relative.

Of course, that would directly work against what happened to Guardians of the Galaxy -era Thanos; following that logic, Steve's return would have started a new chain of events that would surely butterfly into a totally different, possibly Avengers-less future. This solution here would that old Steve turning up straight after his disappearance isn't just him simply revealing himself but having traveled across from another reality using Pym particles for a proper goodbye.

Related:  The Evolution Of Captain America In The MCU

Frankly, the time loop where Captain America was always in the past makes the most sense, with the Thanos problem a product of twisty time travel storytelling.

What About The MCU Timeline?

From all we've discussed, Avengers: Endgame leaves the MCU timeline pretty much as it is, with only one major branch thanks to Loki and the Tesseract and a closed loop with 2014 Thanos. And, for the most part, the implication is that the timeline of the MCU as has been told for the past decade hold true. No movies have been retconned or removed from continuity, just events added just off-screen.

But, as any Marvel fan knows, the MCU timeline isn't perfect. From Phase 1, which altered along with the original Avengers plan , there were always noticeable plot holes that make nailing down a proper order of events tricky: Spider-Man: Homecoming 's "eight years later" claim  is the most well-known, but complications run through the movies, from confusion over when Iron Man is set, to a very weird post- Civil War build-up to Infinity War .

Avengers: Endgame doesn't really concern itself with addressing any of these. Avengers: Infinity War already corrected the Homecoming mistake , and the movies revisited were all set in their release years. However, the ending does leave a question. Avengers: Endgame begins in 2018, the aftermath of Thanos' snap, then jumps forward five years to 2023. This is the baseline time for the Avengers, where the final battle occurs and when the snap victims return to. This means that, from an outside perspective, half the population disappeared for five years, then everything returned to normal... sort of. Half of the population will have mourned and aged five years, while another has been thrown back into a new world. This would be upsetting for families, friends, jobs and schools.

Related:  Avengers: Endgame's Ending & Marvel Movie Future Explained In Detail

Indeed, while Peter Parker's return to Midtown High and reuniting with Ned is played as happy, this ignores that surely half of his class are now college age. This poses some major implications for Spider-Man: Far From Home - it surely must be a prequel set before Avengers: Endgame , otherwise the film will have to take place in a near-miss-dystopia 2023. It's further notable that 2020's MCU releases - Black Widow and The Eternals - are both prequels to the rest of the MCU, meaning the effects of the Infinity War don't need to be explored directly.

Time Travel's Future In The MCU After Avengers: Endgame

With Hank Pym returned, there's an unlimited amount of Pym particles, meaning the Avengers are technically able to travel into the Quantum Realm as much as they so wish. But is that something to actually expect in the MCU's future? The plot device was rather specific to Avengers: Endgame and an opportunity to revisit previous movies in a send-off Captain America and Iron Man, so it's unlikely to be immediately returned to in  future  Avengers movies . Time travel can be a narrative-breaking device (as we've already seen) and worth putting to bed.

However, there will still be several potential impacts of the time meddling. The most pressing is, of course, Loki. His Disney+ series will at the very least deal with the fractured timeline he created when stealing the Tesseract, although whether it's resolved (or how) is up in the air. It's also suggested that Star-Lord still hopes to find Gamora, hinting at his arc in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ; it's also unclear where 2014 Gamora has gone, meaning there could still be a survivor of that confusing time loop.

Related: Every Marvel TV Show Coming To Disney+

Captain America's ending also leaves open a rather tantalizing possibility: Steve Rogers' eventual return. While he gets his happy life with Peggy, nothing says he doesn't get called on again to help fight another reality-threatening foe at some point down the line. Already, Chris Evans' portrayal of Captain America has reached classic status, and in 5-10 years, audiences would no doubt be excited to see him return (think the original Star Wars cast in the sequel trilogy).

For now, though, Avengers: Endgame 's final moments seem intended to put a resolute end to all the temporal meddling. Thanos is defeated, the timeline is safe, Captain America got a happy ending. Just don't overthink it.

Next:  Every Marvel Movie Releasing After Avengers: Endgame

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Here’s How Time Travel Works In Avengers: Endgame

We’re about to go deep into the thick of Avengers: Endgame ’s plot details here, so if you still haven’t had a chance to watch the year’s biggest blockbuster, then you may want to turn back now.

For those of you who are still here, chances are that you’ve already seen the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, but may have left with a few questions. Specifically, you might still be trying to wrap your head around the film’s time travel plot, which operates by a distinctly different logic than, say, the Terminator movies. And if so, then perhaps we can help you out.

The concept of time travel was previously hinted at in the mid-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp , when it was suggested that the Quantum Realm holds the key to journeying into different periods. Sure enough, in this week’s release, Scott Lang emerges from the microverse after five years, and says that his period of imprisonment felt like mere hours.

From here, Scott correctly draws the conclusion that it’s possible to enter the Quantum Realm at one point in time, and exit it at a different point entirely. Our heroes gain the ability to control when and where they emerge thanks to the time GPS device invented by Tony Stark.

What really distinguishes Endgame ’s time travel logic from that of most sci-fi films, however, is that altering your past doesn’t affect your future. Bruce Banner touches on this when he explains why the Avengers can’t simply travel back in time and kill Thanos as a baby. Changing the past in such a way would only create a new timeline, while leaving the team’s current timeline (where Thanos didn’t die as a baby) unaltered. This is why Nebula was able to kill her past self without fading away Back to the Future -style – she only killed the Nebula in another timeline.

In operating by a logic of alternate realities, Avengers: Endgame has essentially opened the doors for future projects to explore a range of different timelines (yes, we’re looking at you, Loki show). No longer is Marvel Studios just dabbling in a cinematic universe. The future of the franchise is starting to look like a cinematic multiverse.

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The 7 Biggest Avengers: Endgame Time-Travel Questions, Answered

Good news: The latest Avengers movie is not confusing at all. It’s a straightforward romance set in a small town, where the superheroes spend the majority of the movie cooking meals, softly bickering, and contemplating the weather. It’s like August: Osage County , only this time Benedict Cumberbatch has a beard.

Just kidding! Avengers: Endgame isn’t the most convoluted time-travel movie of all time, but maybe that’s because we, the audience, were somehow also flung back in time at some point during the course of the movie’s 182 minutes and lost our memories of convoluted time-travel stories along the way. In the 22nd installment to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there were doppelgänger confrontations, there were conflicting rules about how said doppelgänger confrontations might alter the past or future, there was an ending that made you wonder, Huh, can he do that? In other words, you probably have more than a few lingering questions about how the hell time works in the MCU, and we’re here to answer them:

Massive spoilers ahead for Avengers: Endgame.

What are the rules of time travel according to Bruce Banner?

First, let’s explain why time travel is necessary. The Avengers’ agenda in Endgame is as follows: It’s the year 2023. The Avengers have, by this point, tried and failed to secure the Infinity Stones that Thanos brought with him to his retirement planet after he turned 50 percent of the world to dust. Turns out, in fact, he destroyed the stones, so there’s no way to reverse his deadly snap by simply stealing the rocks back in the current timeline.

Enter Ant-Man, who has finally returned to Avengers headquarters after a conveniently curious rat freed him from the Quantum Realm. He’s back to suggest that the superheroes use his girlfriend’s dad’s technology to — what else? — time travel. Scott was stuck in the microverse for five years, he asserts, but only five hours passed for him. Could his more scientifically inclined colleagues figure out a way to harness the Quantum Realm for the purpose of retrieving the stones? Yes. Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, a.k.a. Professor Hulk, figure it out. How? Not important. (Tony creates, not kidding, GPS bracelets that apparently do all the heavy lifting when it comes to navigating the “everything happened and is happening” nature of the Quantum Realm.) Just know that time is travel possible, and that this is how the Avengers will obtain the stones they need to bring them back to 2023 and correct Thano’s dustup.

Okay, so say we believe the Avengers: Time travel is possible. Fine. How does it work for the people actually traveling through time? What are the consequences of sending groups of superheroes back to various points in history, where they will inevitably encounters loads of familiar faces and alter the course of events as we know them? Well, the answer is both alarmingly simple and achingly complicated. After War Machine asks the gang why they don’t just go back in time and kill Baby Thanos, Banner outlines an early rule for time travel in the Endgame universe: “If you travel back into your own past, that destination becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past, which can’t now be changed by your new future.” If it sounds a little murky, that’s because it is. But the takeaway is: You can’t just kill Baby Thanos, because his death wouldn’t change the snapped timeline the Avengers have already lived; going into the past doesn’t affect their reality, because their reality has already happened. (If you think this sounds a little like a linear timeline, à la the time-travel rules of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban , you’re not alone.)

So, okay. That’s why Tony isn’t afraid to speak to his dad in the S.H.I.E.L.D. base in 1970, when he’s attempting to heist the tesseract, or why Captain America isn’t nervous to fight himself in an effort to snag the Space Stone in New York in 2012, or why Thor doesn’t fumble the entire endeavor by crying on his mom’s shoulder the day before she dies. There is no butterfly effect . Endgame basically tries to be like your hippest friend by telling you that everything you’ve ever heard before about time travel before this movie is bogus. “ Back to the Future is bullshit!” Ant-Man declares.

What are the rules of time travel according to Tilda Swinton?

Endgame’s easy approach to time travel gets complicated once you start wondering what Tony meant when he mentioned the EPR paradox and the Deutsch proposition, and whipped up that fancy Möbius-strip visual. Deutsch, as in David Deutsch, as in the multiverse? Are we talking about parallel realities?

Yes, we are, which is pretty standard comic-book fare. When Professor Hulk meets the Ancient One in New York in 2012 (we’ll just call her Tilda Swinton from here on out), she sets the team straight: “The Infinity Stones create what you experience as the flow of time,” she tells Banner. “Remove one of the stones and that flow splits.” Here she whips up a handy visual in midair, showing one long, healthy line shooting across the horizon. She mimics plucking a stone from the timeline and a menacing-looking black line branches out from the original. That, she says, is a parallel reality. Welcome to the multiverse.

In conclusion, the Avengers’ meddling might not affect their own timelines, but their actions will amount to new timelines — and, in the case of the stones’ removal, new timelines that lack the cosmic balance of a reality that possess all six stones. Quick on his feet, Banner promises Tilda that the Avengers will return every stone to its own timeline at the very moment it was taken, “so chronologically, in that reality, it never left.” Tilda seems pretty unconvinced, and concerned for all the people who have to live with the consequences of the Avengers’ actions in their branched realities, until Banner tells her that Dr. Strange indirectly approved the plan. And so she tacitly agrees to go along.

The big takeaway from Tilda’s speech is that it allows Endgame to say, “Hey we’re not changing the past, but we might be creating some alternate futures.” But wait: If the stones are cosmically needed to keep the universe in balance, why was it okay for Thanos to destroy them in the first place? The easy answer is: Because the rest of the movie happens.

Did Captain America’s decision to return to the 1940s contradict these rules?

The final scene of Endgame reveals that Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), who was tasked with returning the stones to their respective timelines after the Avengers defeated Thanos, did not instantly return to the present after “trimming the branches.” Instead, he traveled back on his personal timeline, to his superhero point of origin around the time of World War II, and lived out an entire life with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell). In the final scene of the movie, we see the two dancing to the song “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” one of the post popular U.S. pop songs of late 1945, essentially written as an anthem for soldiers returning from WWII. It’s sweet, but does Steve’s little time jaunt totally contradict everything that the movie has established? And what about that TV series Agent Carter ? Has its plot been totally undone?

Of all the tim- travel stuff in the movie, Steve’s decision here seems to work with Endgame ’s deliberately flexible laws governing time. The simple way to look at it is this: 2023 Steve Rogers is part of a predestination paradox, meaning, he was destined to travel back in time and be quietly reunited with Peggy. Everything in his life prior to returning to the 1940s happened, the only wrinkle being that at certain points there were two Steve Rogers alive on Earth simultaneously. We can call them Young Steve and Old Steve. Young Steve gets frozen in ice before the end of WWII only to wake up in 2012. Old Steve picked up where Young Steve left off, living out a quiet life with the woman of his dreams, approaching old age just as Young Steve wakes up from his chilly nap. As far as Peggy goes, if Steve arrives after 1947, then the events of Agent Carter aren’t impacted at all! The only question left is whether or not the 1970s Peggy we saw in Endgame was already aware of Old Steve, and we’re just going to assume the answer is yes.

Oh, and at certain points in time there were three if not more Steves running around on Earth. In 1970, you’ve got Young Steve in the ice, Time-Traveling Steve with Tony Stark, and Old Steve. Then, in 2012, there’s freshly thawed Young Steve, Time-Traveling Steve, and Old Steve. That’s not even taking into consideration the other Time-Traveling Steves putting Infinity Stones back where they belong, but you get it.

What about the two Nebulas?

Near the end of Endgame , Nebula (Karen Gillan) from 2014 faces Nebula from 2023, which results in the older and wiser Nebula killing the younger hothead Nebula. So what’s the deal with these two Nebulas? Nebulae? Grammatically this situation is about as confusing as it is paradoxically. Your brain wants to believe that as soon as 2023 Nebula shoots 2014 Nebula, that 2023 Nebula should instantly disappear, because that’s what happens in the time-travel movie Looper . If her younger self has been killed by her older self, then how can her older self exist? Wouldn’t this all fall under the grandfather paradox?

According to Professor Hulk’s linear time explanation, no. According to Tilda Swinton’s branch-reality explanation, no. But the movie plays fast and loose with its logic when it comes to the Nebulae. One creative explanation could reference the fact that the memories of the two Nebulas merged thanks to their cybernetic brain implants. If you’ve seen the other franchise Gillan is involved in, Doctor Who , this is kind of like when the Doctor creates an instant “memory” of having already done something through the course of his time travel. If you go back and watch all the various Who episodes in which there are multiple Karen Gillans, it will make Endgame seem straightforward. In any case, Nebula is one of the timey-wimey-est Avengers.

Is Gamora alive again?

Thanos infamously killed Gamora (Zoe Saldana) so he could get the Soul Stone in Infinity War . But she shows up in Endgame as a 2014 version (still bad, not yet in love with Star Lord) of herself, who ends up helping the Avengers defeat a 2014 version (still bad, not yet in possession of the Infinity Stones) of Thanos. This amounts to the reverse of the Nebulae paradox. Gamora from the past has now been put on a different path that seems to prevent her death in her own personal future. But, if future Gamora hadn’t died in Infinity War , then 2014 Gamora couldn’t be given this second chance. Could this have caused a bootstraps paradox or an information paradox? Of all the time-travel paradoxes, this one is the more confusing, and maybe the one most likely to be addressed in a future movie, given that Star Lord (Chris Pratt) was found in an attempt to track Gamora’s whereabouts at the end of Endgame .

It should be noted that the Gamora predicament and the double Nebula problem are both the result of 2014 Thanos getting in on the time-travel game, too. So, if Tony has now snapped him out of existence, it’s possible that the 2014 timeline has branched, and no longer involves Thanos killing Gamora four years later.

What happened to Loki and the tesseract?

Umm, we don’t know. When the contemporary Avengers go back in time to steal the tesseract from themselves and Loki, they manage to screw up so badly that Loki runs away with the tesseract, again. This isn’t readdressed, but it does, maybe, seem to create the most definitive branch timeline. If Loki escapes, and is running around the universe with the tesseract, it could neatly explain why Tom Hiddleston has a Loki TV series booked on Disney+. In terms of explanations within Endgame , there are really only two that don’t involve this being a “mistake.” First, maybe Thor manages to catch up with Loki anyway, and bring him back to Asgard a bit later than expected, causing everything to proceed as close to before as possible. Second, during Captain America’s trip to “trim the branches,” perhaps he returns to this period and “fixes” the error along the way. If that explanation is true, there would be — hold onto your American butts — four different versions of Steve Rogers alive on Earth in 2012 at the same time.

Wait, can you explain this movie to me using a Back to the Future analogy?

Even though Endgame likes to make fun of Back to the Future , it does borrow directly from the beloved time-travel trilogy in two very specific ways. First, Tilda Swinton’s explanation of the “branches” and her accompanying visual diagram is pretty much exactly like Doc talking about the alternate 1985 in Back to the Future II . The only difference is that in BTTFII , Doc and Marty are trapped in an alternate branch, and in Endgame Tilda is asking Professor Hulk to prevent one of those from forming.

Second, when Captain America shows up as an old man the moment after he disappears to go back in time, this is pretty much exactly like the ending of Back to the Future II and the beginning of Back to the Future III. When Marty sees the DeLorean struck by lighting, a few seconds later some people show up with a letter, perfectly timed to be delivered at that moment. Captain America did the exact same thing at the end of Endgame . The only difference was that he didn’t send a letter. He sent himself. There you go!

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Happy 5th anniversary to Avengers: Endgame and one of the best cinema experiences of all time

Fans celebrate the 5th anniversary of Avengers: Endgame

Avengers: Endgame is five years old, which means two things: 1) We’re getting old (if we're not there already, if we’re being honest) and 2) It’s time to take a trip down memory lane on what was one of the best cinema experiences of all time.

In truth, Endgame delivered on the impossible hype. In the run-up to release, we were all distracted by debates over the three-hour runtime, the surprisingly spoiler-free marketing, and even what was then-Avengers 4 would be called (we still recall an A-shaped upright ladder in a Russos Brothers tease leading people to speculate it would be called Avengers: Annihilation).

Then, we got it. The portals. On your left. The snap. Each moment left an indelible mark on pop culture. For many, it was their Star Wars – something they’d tell the grandkids they lived through. 

For me, personally, it was the wildest audience I’ve ever seen. UK crowds are used to a quick chuckle and maybe a light applause if we’re really feeling it. This was unprecedented. People were hugging strangers when Captain America caught Mjolnir.

Marvel Studios , of course, has been chasing that high ever since – and it’s no surprise that audiences have dipped in Marvel Phases 4 and 5 given just how well they stuck the landing. It felt like the end of everything. And it’s that lightning-in-a-bottle farewell that fans are fondly remembering five years on.

"Five years ago, I walked out of AVENGERS: ENDGAME and said it was one of the best movie experiences I'd ever had. Now...I'd still say it. An event that honestly, as a kid, I thought I'd never see, and I'm glad I got to," critic Shaurya Chawla said on Twitter .

"Endgame wasn’t a film, it was an experience, you had to be there to enjoy it Pure goosebumps," another wrote . 

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Elsewhere, the praise is similarly still effusive. "It still feels like the super superhero event that no one has been able to top," one fan remarked .

@3801productions said , "A lot of people say the MCU should’ve ended with this movie. Safe to say it just hasn’t quite been the same ever since…." 

"Since today is the 5th anniversary of the release of Avengers: Endgame, I wanted to give an appreciation shoutout to the real MVP of the whole dang movie: Alan Silvestri," one tweeted , referring to Endgame’s composer. "His score absolutely MADE this movie. The ‘Portals’ theme is nothing short of iconic."

Inevitably, in the years since, there has been talk of the likes of Robert Downey Jr. and Chris Evans reprising their long-departed roles as Iron Man and Captain America respectively.

The Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo, in turn, have responded to Downey Jr’s claims that he would "happily" return to the MCU fold with some bemusement. 

"I don’t know how they would do it. I don’t know what the road to that would be [laughs]," Anthony Russo told GamesRadar+ at the Sands: International Film Festival in St Andrews, Scotland. 

Joe Russo added: "I mean we closed that book so it would be up to them to figure out how to reopen it."

Next up for Marvel is Deadpool & Wolverine , starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. For more on the MCU, check out the latest on these upcoming Marvel movies . Want to relive the road to Endgame? You’ll need our guide on how to watch the Marvel movies in order .

I'm the Senior Entertainment Writer here at GamesRadar+, focusing on news, features, and interviews with some of the biggest names in film and TV. On-site, you'll find me marveling at Marvel and providing analysis and room temperature takes on the newest films, Star Wars and, of course, anime. Outside of GR, I love getting lost in a good 100-hour JRPG, Warzone, and kicking back on the (virtual) field with Football Manager. My work has also been featured in OPM, FourFourTwo, and Game Revolution.

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Avengers: Endgame Time Travel Explained

Still not clear on how time travel works in the mcu maybe we can help.

For more on Avengers, read our  Endgame review , or find out about everything in the  Fortnite X crossover . Learn about the  post-credits scene in Endgame , or let us  explain the Endgame ending  for you! Find out more about  that mystery kid from Iron Man's funeral . Dig into  Gamora's dead or alive status in Endgame . And is  Black Widow really dead? We explain here .

So now it can be confirmed. As we long suspected, yes, the Avengers use time travel in order to undo Thanos’ Snap heard round the universe. And while the circumstances of how that time travel play out might be different from what many fans had theorized, the end result is the same: The Mad Titan is defeated and everyone who was lost in the Decimation is returned, albeit after five years of non-existence.

But how exactly does the time travel work in Avengers: Endgame? Basically, it’s super confusing, and it seems like the filmmakers purposely avoid fully explaining it, instead opting to point out how it doesn’t work. That said, let’s put on our Quantum Realm Suit, adjust our time GPS, and time-heist this thing!

The Quantum Realm

At first, Tony Stark isn’t interested in pursuing the matter, as he thinks it was dumb luck that Scott made it out of the Quantum Realm at all. So Captain America and Black Widow bring Ant-Man to the Hulk, who agrees to give it a go… even if it isn’t exactly his area of expertise.

Time Travel Doesn’t Work That Way!

According to Banner, you can’t just go back in time and change the past in order to alter the future. Because the future is already your past! You can’t change the future, because if you did, you wouldn’t be the same version of yourself who time-travelled in the first place to make that change. See, it’s confusing.

Instead, any change to history will create an alternate, or divergent, timeline. Say you did kill Baby Thanos. That wouldn’t affect the Thanos in the MCU timeline that already saw him cause the Decimation. Instead, it would just create a parallel reality where Thanos died as a baby. But the world of our heroes would remain unchanged. So what to do then?

Time Heist!

Soon enough, the plan is hatched to send three teams back to various points in time/space in order to retrieve each Infinity Stone from a time before Thanos had them. The Avengers will then take them back to their present time of 2023 (five years after the Snap) and use them to undo the Decimation with a new Snap. But as the Ancient One explains to Banner during the Battle of New York back in 2012, removing one of the Stones from their timeline will cause said timeline to splinter off into the divergent realities mentioned above. The Stones being together, presumably in the same time if not in the same specific place, keeps the timeline intact. That’s why, once the Avengers finish undoing the Decimation in 2023, they must return the Stones to the exact moments they took them from the past. That way the Stones will not truly leave their respective past points, and hence not alter the timeline.

And that’s what Captain America apparently does with each of the Stones at the end of the film, returning them to their rightful places in the past. Though he takes a 70-year break or so along the way. Speaking of which...

Splintered Timelines

But! How could the Thanos of the past be killed in Endgame, since now he will never be able to find the Infinity Stones, put them in the Infinity Gauntlet, and wipe out half of all life in Infinity War, leading to the Avengers coming up with the time heist plan as a result? Unless this Thanos is from a divergent timeline, created by the fact that history was altered when the Avengers travelled to the past (and Nebula inadvertently revealed the future to Thanos). Which, Endgame previously told us, should not happen as long as the Infinity Stones don’t leave their place in the timeline.

The same question applies to the Gamora of the past, who didn’t die on Vormir and is seemingly alive and well at the end of Endgame, with Star-Lord preparing to go find her in space (Guardians Vol. 3 plot line?). If she’s living in the present, how can her future self have died in the past when Thanos sacrificed her for the Soul Stone? Divergent timeline?

The Loki who escapes with the Tesseract right after the Battle of New York is another big question that comes out of the Avengers' time travel shenanigans, since not only did he disappear into a portal to points unknown, but he also took the Space Stone with him. That’s why Cap and Iron Man had to go back even further to the 1970s to find another instance of the Tesseract that they could steal. But by the end of the film, when Captain America returns all of the Stones to their rightful place (off camera), there’s no way he could’ve returned the one that past Loki made off with. Perhaps we’ll learn more about this in the Disney+ Loki show, but it sure seems like that’s another divergent timeline right there.

And then there’s Cap, who winds up living out his life with Peggy Carter in the past. This conflicts with what we know to be Peggy’s history in the MCU, as she married a man who Cap saved during World War II, a man with whom she had children. If Cap and Peggy got together in the past, then that aspect of her history would have to be altered… creating a different timeline. (Though, yes, one could argue that Steve Rogers was always the guy she married and that he and Peggy basically kept that info hidden for 70 years. But really, that’s a stretch.) And if a different timeline was created, how did elderly Cap make it back at the end of the film, as he doesn’t arrive on the Quantum platform where he left from? Perhaps the Tony Stark in that other reality gave him some kind of upgraded Quantum GPS device that allows him to pop in and out between realities.

The Bottom Line

What do you make of the MCU’s take on time travel? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura , or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3 . Or do both!

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Avengers: Endgame - Time Travel Timeline Explained

Still not clear on how time travel works in the mcu maybe we can help.

So now it can be confirmed. As we long suspected, yes, the Avengers use time travel in order to undo Thanos’ Snap heard round the universe. And while the circumstances of how that time travel play out might be different from what many fans had theorized, the end result is the same: The Mad Titan is defeated and everyone who was lost in the Decimation is returned, albeit after five years of non-existence.

But how exactly does the time travel work in Avengers: Endgame? Basically, it’s super confusing, and it seems like the filmmakers purposely avoid fully explaining it, instead opting to point out how it doesn’t work. That said, let’s put on our Quantum Realm Suit, adjust our time GPS, and time-heist this thing!

The Quantum Realm

At first, Tony Stark isn’t interested in pursuing the matter, as he thinks it was dumb luck that Scott made it out of the Quantum Realm at all. So Captain America and Black Widow bring Ant-Man to the Hulk, who agrees to give it a go… even if it isn’t exactly his area of expertise.

Time Travel Doesn’t Work That Way!

According to Banner, you can’t just go back in time and change the past in order to alter the future. Because the future is already your past! You can’t change the future, because if you did, you wouldn’t be the same version of yourself who time-travelled in the first place to make that change. See, it’s confusing.

Instead, any change to history will create an alternate, or divergent, timeline. Say you did kill Baby Thanos. That wouldn’t affect the Thanos in the MCU timeline that already saw him cause the Decimation. Instead, it would just create a parallel reality where Thanos died as a baby. But the world of our heroes would remain unchanged. So what to do then?

Time Heist!

Soon enough, the plan is hatched to send three teams back to various points in time/space in order to retrieve each Infinity Stone from a time before Thanos had them. The Avengers will then take them back to their present time of 2023 (five years after the Snap) and use them to undo the Decimation with a new Snap. But as the Ancient One explains to Banner during the Battle of New York back in 2012, removing one of the Stones from their timeline will cause said timeline to splinter off into the divergent realities mentioned above. The Stones being together, presumably in the same time if not in the same specific place, keeps the timeline intact. That’s why, once the Avengers finish undoing the Decimation in 2023, they must return the Stones to the exact moments they took them from the past. That way the Stones will not truly leave their respective past points, and hence not alter the timeline.

And that’s what Captain America apparently does with each of the Stones at the end of the film, returning them to their rightful places in the past. Though he takes a 70-year break or so along the way. Speaking of which...

Splintered Timelines

But! How could the Thanos of the past be killed in Endgame, since now he will never be able to find the Infinity Stones, put them in the Infinity Gauntlet, and wipe out half of all life in Infinity War, leading to the Avengers coming up with the time heist plan as a result? Unless this Thanos is from a divergent timeline, created by the fact that history was altered when the Avengers travelled to the past (and Nebula inadvertently revealed the future to Thanos). Which, Endgame previously told us, should not happen as long as the Infinity Stones don’t leave their place in the timeline.

The same question applies to the Gamora of the past, who didn’t die on Vormir and is seemingly alive and well at the end of Endgame, with Star-Lord preparing to go find her in space (Guardians Vol. 3 plot line?). If she’s living in the present, how can her future self have died in the past when Thanos sacrificed her for the Soul Stone? Divergent timeline?

The Loki who escapes with the Tesseract right after the Battle of New York is another big question that comes out of the Avengers' time travel shenanigans, since not only did he disappear into a portal to points unknown, but he also took the Space Stone with him. That’s why Cap and Iron Man had to go back even further to the 1970s to find another instance of the Tesseract that they could steal. But by the end of the film, when Captain America returns all of the Stones to their rightful place (off camera), there’s no way he could’ve returned the one that past Loki made off with. Perhaps we’ll learn more about this in the Disney+ Loki show, but it sure seems like that’s another divergent timeline right there.

And then there’s Cap, who winds up living out his life with Peggy Carter in the past. This conflicts with what we know to be Peggy’s history in the MCU, as she married a man who Cap saved during World War II, a man with whom she had children. If Cap and Peggy got together in the past, then that aspect of her history would have to be altered… creating a different timeline. (Though, yes, one could argue that Steve Rogers was always the guy she married and that he and Peggy basically kept that info hidden for 70 years. But really, that’s a stretch.) And if a different timeline was created, how did elderly Cap make it back at the end of the film, as he doesn’t arrive on the Quantum platform where he left from? Perhaps the Tony Stark in that other reality gave him some kind of upgraded Quantum GPS device that allows him to pop in and out between realities.

The Bottom Line

What do you make of the MCU’s take on time travel? Let’s discuss in the comments!

Talk to Executive Editor Scott Collura on Twitter at @ScottCollura , or listen to his Star Trek podcast, Transporter Room 3 . Or do both!

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5 Years Ago, Avengers: Endgame Took The MCU To A Record-Shattering Box Office Peak

( Welcome to Tales from the Box Office , our column that examines box office miracles, disasters, and everything in between, as well as what we can learn from them. )

"No amount of money ever bought a second of time." Those are the words uttered by Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark in "Avengers: Endgame" during a pivotal scene after he traveled back in time to save the world, only to run into his own father. It's true, money can't buy time. But in 2019, audiences shelled out money in record-breaking amounts to spend lots of time in movie theaters all around the world to see the conclusion to the Marvel Cinematic Universe up to that point. Money, in this case, bought something like 10,800 seconds of shared experience the likes of which hasn't been seen before or since.

By 2019, the MCU had become the single most popular franchise in the history of cinema by weaving together disparate, individual franchises for big crossover events, with 2012's "The Avengers" serving as a proof of concept that redefined blockbuster filmmaking . Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige had a vision, and that vision captured the attention of millions of people around the world. Those people were so wrapped up in these heroes and their battle with the Mad Titan known as Thanos that they were about to make history by turning out in droves to bring the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and moviegoing as a collective activity — to its cultural peak.

In this week's Tales from the Box Office, we're looking back at "Avengers: Endgame" in honor of its fifth anniversary. We'll go over how "Infinity War" set sky-high expectations for the follow-up, what happened when the movie hit theaters, how it briefly held a record that was stolen back by James Cameron in short order, and what lessons we can learn from it several years removed. Let's dig in, shall we?

The movie: Avengers: Endgame

Marvel Studios first announced the conclusion of Phase 3 of the MCU a decade back in 2014 at a now-legendary press event where the company laid out its plans for several years' worth of big films. It was all set to culminate in what was originally billed as "Avengers: Infinity War Part 1" and "Avengers: Infinity War Part 2." Eventually, the titles changed but the broader plans remained the same. Joe Russo and Anthony Russo, who directed both "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Captain America: Civil War," were selected to helm the films, which would meaningfully bring Thanos to the MCU.

Thanos did, indeed, make his presence known in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War," a movie that played like "The Empire Strikes Back" for Marvel fans. The Mad Titan succeeded in his quest to destroy half of all life in the universe, including a great many heroes whom audiences had come to know and love. The film was an enormous success, with "Infinity War" taking in just over $2 billion at the global box office , becoming one of just a few films to accomplish that feat up to that point.

Interestingly, "Avengers: Endgame" was known only as "Avengers 4" for months after the release of "Infinity War," leaving fans to speculate hopelessly as they pondered the fate of those who were dusted by Thanos. The title wasn't revealed until the first teaser for "Endgame" was released in December 2018. Feige, speaking in February 2019, explained that it was a matter of not spoiling anything for audiences.

"It was a spoiler, because if you knew before 'Infinity War' came out that the next movie was called 'Endgame,' then you know that there wasn't an ending to 'Infinity War.' But that had been the title of the movie from the moment we conceived of doing the two films. In large part, because ... it's seeded right there. I mean, it's seeded in '[Age of] Ultron.'"

The hectic production of Avengers: Endgame

Indeed, the whole "endgame" line was first teased in 2015's "Avengers: Age of Ultron" but, more directly, was set up when Benedict Cumberbatch's Doctor Strange says, "We're in the endgame now" in the third act of "Infinity War." As for the actual filming of "Endgame," the Russo Brothers and Marvel Studios originally planned to shoot it concurrently with "Infinity War."

Somewhat late in the game, they decided to shoot the films back-to-back instead, believing that was the best way to do the massive job before them. That, understandably, resulted in its own brand of chaos. Producer Trinh Tran described the chaos that was the production in the 2021 book "The Story of Marvel Studios: The Making of the Marvel Cinematic Universe."

"The first hour would be 'Infinity War' additional photography. The second hour would be 'Endgame,' with five units shooting across the Pinewood Atlanta Studios; The Russos would be running around with two separate filming units, while as many as three second unit directors would be shooting scenes at the same time. Then, at three o'clock, Tran and the Russos Would run across the street to postproduction and take a quick look at an Infinity War sequence that they had spent the entire previous night looking at."

Screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely had their own challenges. They didn't have a solid plan to get out of what they did at the end of "Infinity War." It wasn't until they entertained the "stupidest' idea they had, which was time travel, that things came together. As Markus explained in the "Endgame" commentary track :

"This [scene] ... sort of mirrors us sitting in a room, trying to figure out how the hell to get out of the corner we wrote ourselves in at the end of 'Infinity War,' and entertaining the idea of a time machine, and then feeling that that was the stupidest idea you could possibly have. But then realizing that the 'Ant-Man' franchise, which we hadn't dealt with yet, had legitimately — if you believe the science — the seeds of a time machine in it, which was a breakthrough."

Avengers: Endgame was sold as an ending of sorts for the MCU

One of the biggest issues Disney, Marvel Studios, and the Russos had to contend with was keeping the movie's secrets under wraps. The Russos, Markus, and MacFeely had the ending of "Endgame" set up before setting out on this journey, so they had that as a guiding light. But to help keep stuff like Tony Stark's death under wraps, they went so far as to shoot multiple fake endings, as Hulk actor Mark Ruffalo revealed in April 2019 just ahead of the release.

"I shot, like, five different endings to this movie. I didn't even get a whole script of this movie. I don't know why. The script I did get had dummy scenes in it. He [pointing to Chris Evans] gets married in this!"

There would be no wedding. There would, however, be many surprises in store for the audience. That only seemed appropriate, as the MCU had been building to this event for nearly a full decade. The enterprise wasn't going to fully come to an end — nobody had any illusions of that being the case. But Feige and the Disney marketing machine leaned into the idea of "Endgame" being, well, the end . As Feige once put it:

"Marvel Studios and the Marvel Cinematic Universe is now past their tenth anniversary and with the release of the final Avengers movie, we've finally completed a 22-movie Infinity Saga."

Disney did everything imaginable to make sure seemingly every moviegoer around the world knew that "Avengers: Endgame" was going to be a cinematic event unlike anything cinema has ever seen. This was the conclusion of a decade's worth of interconnected storytelling on the biggest scale imaginable. From an insane number of character posters boasting the tagline "avenge the fallen" to a flashy Super Bowl spot, there was no escaping the large shadow this movie was casting over the pop culture landscape at the time.

The financial journey

In 2008 when "Iron Man" became an unlikely hit that birthed the MCU , hardly anyone in the general public was familiar with the character. By 2019? Robert Downey Jr. was the biggest actor in the world and Tony Stark was an icon. Comic book culture had become so mainstream thanks to these films that "Avengers: Endgame" had become the collective cultural event of the year. Hence, the movie's three-hour runtime wasn't an issue as the moviegoing masses were all-in on seeing this story play out.

Naturally, all of Hollywood steered clear of "Endgame" when it hit theaters on April 26, 2019, exactly one year after "Infinity War" opened. Naturally, tracking was through the roof and estimates had the film pulling in as much as $800 million worldwide on its opening weekend alone. It turns out, those projections were wildly conservative. The Russo Brothers' giant superhero crossover opened to a record-shattering $357 million domestically. Globally, "Endgame" opened to an insane $1.2 billion . When we consider that only 54 movies have ever made $1 billion or more in their entire theatrical runs, that is difficult to grasp.

Even against a gigantic budget in the $350 million range (plus a gigantic marketing spend), the film was pretty much in profits by the time Monday morning rolled around. Yes, the Marvel Comics epic dropped nearly 59% in its second weekend, but that still amounted to $147 million domestically. Most movies would kill for that kind of money on opening weekend. To say that it was a hit would be an insulting understatement.

The world had never seen such feverish demand for a movie at the outset. It was a cultural phenomenon without comparison. The only thing that even came close was when "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" arrived in 2015. For what it's worth, that movie still holds the global domestic box office record with $936 million.

Avengers: Endgame comes (briefly) for Avatar

As the weeks rolled on, it became increasingly clear that "Avengers: Endgame" had a chance to do the unthinkable; defeat "Avatar." James Cameron's 2009 sci-fi smash amassed nearly $2.79 billion in its original run to become the biggest movie in history. For years, it seemed like that number was straight-up untouchable, particularly when "The Force Awakens" topped out at $2.07 billion. However, Marvel's crowd-pleasing finale to the first three phases of the MCU was reaching global audiences in a way not even a galaxy far, far away could.

Come late July 2019, it finally happened. Disney announced that "Endgame" had, indeed, surpassed "Avatar ." Cameron, for his part, took losing the record quite well. In a September 2019 interview, the filmmaker explained that "Endgame" doing what it did gave him a lot of hope in making his "Avatar" sequels .

"It gives me a lot of hope. 'Avengers: Endgame' is demonstrable proof that people will still go to movie theaters. The thing that scared me most about making 'Avatar 2' and 'Avatar 3' was that the market might have shifted so much that it simply was no longer possible to get people that excited about going and sitting in a dark room with a bunch of strangers to watch something..."

All told, "Avengers: Endgame" pulled in $858.3 million domestically to go with $1.941 billion internationally for a grand total of $2.799 billion globally. It was, for a time, the biggest movie in the history of movies. In an odd bit of poetry, Cameron had the last laugh as a re-release of "Avatar" in China in 2021 once again made it the highest-grossing movie ever , with a new running total of $2.92 billion.

Even so, what "Endgame" managed to do was nothing shy of a once-in-a-lifetime miracle. Particularly in the aftermath of the pandemic, it's almost hard to think back to a time when so many people rallied around the experience of seeing a movie together in theaters. It was Marvel's finest hour and remains the MCU's crowning achievement.

The lessons contained within

Looking back, it's dizzying to consider what the average movie can learn from "Avengers: Endgame." The fact that it came together at all is nothing shy of a miracle. The fact that it's widely considered to be a great movie on top of the fact that it merely exists? Incredible. It's a specific confluence of events that may never, ever happen again. For those who lived through it, we're probably looking at one of those "you had to be there" moments we'll all be telling the younger generation someday.

Looking at the state of the MCU five years later, there is one key lesson here worth examining. Part of what made "Endgame" so effective is that it felt like a true event that had been earned by years of cinematic storytelling. It also felt like the closest thing to a conclusion we were ever going to get. Were it not for the pandemic delaying "Black Widow" and the rest of Phase 4, the MCU would have just rolled right along. Even with the pandemic delay, the MCU has struggled, by and large, to achieve such heights again.

Yes, we had "Spider-Man: No Way Home" in 2021 pulling in $1.9 billion worldwide . That's in no small part because that film, in its own right, was teed up as the conclusion of nearly 20 years worth of Spidey on the big screen. Other than that, we've had more misfires such as "Eternals" or last year's disastrous "The Marvels." The MCU has struggled to find an identity in the post-Infinity Saga years.

I'm keenly aware that the money machine that is Disney would never allow it, but there's something to be said for taking a break. If Marvel ever wants to find its way back to the palpable excitement audiences once had for these characters and this universe, they need to have a second to breathe. Audiences need to have the chance to want it again.

The best time travel movie ever isn't 'Back to the Future,' based on data. Find out the top 25.

Posted: April 27, 2024 | Last updated: April 27, 2024

Best time travel movies

Many films come with an escapism element, the ability to separate ourselves from our current timeline and reality to imagine an alternate time or place. It is a common feature in entertainment, which can serve as an outlet to explore our fears, dreams, and hopes for the future. Many movies take their characters on a journey to the past or future in hopes of teaching profound lessons, offering new perspectives, or simply presenting a challenge or a solution to a problem that they are facing in their current timeline. They expand the reach of what we think is possible in our current lives.

To celebrate these innovative and time-twisting tales, Stacker compiled data on the top time travel movies to come up with a Stacker score—a weighted index split evenly between IMDb and Metacritic scores. To qualify, the film had to involve some sort of time travel (be it literal, like "Back to the Future," or metaphysical, like "Donnie Darko"), have a Metascore, and have at least 5,000 votes. Ties were broken by Metascore and further ties were broken by IMDb votes. These films are some of the most memorable and culturally significant time-travel adventures in American cinema.

#25. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986)

- Director: Leonard Nimoy - Stacker score: 82.3 - Metascore: 71 - IMDb user rating: 7.3 - Runtime: 119 minutes

The famous space travel franchise's fourth film takes well-known USS Enterprise crew members Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and others into an interesting mission. The crew, living in 2286, must travel back in time to 1986 to find humpback whales. The extinct animals are the only species that can understand messages from a foreign probe threatening Earth.

#24. Predestination (2014)

- Directors: Michael Spierig, Peter Spierig - Stacker score: 82.3 - Metascore: 69 - IMDb user rating: 7.5 - Runtime: 97 minutes

Ethan Hawke plays a time traveler who races against time to keep a foe from killing innocent people. The film spans through several points in the 1960s and 1970s, taking its protagonist on a twisty trip that brings up surprises until the last minutes. "Predestination" is based on "All You Zombies," a science-fiction short story by Robert A. Heinlein, about paradoxes that happen due to time traveling.

#23. Pleasantville (1998)

- Director: Gary Ross - Stacker score: 83.4 - Metascore: 71 - IMDb user rating: 7.5 - Runtime: 124 minutes

This comedic film takes brother and sister duo David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) on a strange trip. David's love for 1950s television leads to him meeting a man who is able to put him and his sister inside an ongoing program. Jennifer stirs up drama among the cookie-cutter people to the chagrin of David.

#22. Source Code (2011)

- Director: Duncan Jones - Stacker score: 85.1 - Metascore: 74 - IMDb user rating: 7.5 - Runtime: 93 minutes

A military pilot (Jake Gyllenhaal) sees the last minutes of a man's life during a mission that takes him back to that point in time. He's supposed to deduce who the responsible party is in the train accident to bring him to justice. But, the pilot takes things to the next level, going against the clock to attempt to prevent things from going awry in the first place.

#21. Time Bandits (1981)

- Director: Terry Gilliam - Stacker score: 85.1 - Metascore: 79 - IMDb user rating: 7.0 - Runtime: 110 minutes

Kevin (Craig Warnock) is a preteen history lover who meets dwarves in his room. The tiny beings work for a Supreme Being and are slipping through holes in time to take treasures. Kevin goes with them as they hop around and meet famous historical people while trying to stay two steps ahead of the Supreme Being.

#20. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

- Director: Doug Liman - Stacker score: 85.7 - Metascore: 71 - IMDb user rating: 7.9 - Runtime: 113 minutes

Tom Cruise stars as William Cage, a military officer who dies and ends up in a time loop. He continues to relive his terrible (and deadly) final moments until he levels up his knowledge and skills. Cage slowly moves towards the initial mission to fight aliens threatening Earth. Emily Blunt stars opposite Cruise as a sergeant who understands what he is experiencing and works with him.

#19. Evil Dead II (1987)

- Director: Sam Raimi - Stacker score: 85.7 - Metascore: 72 - IMDb user rating: 7.8 - Runtime: 84 minutes

Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) continues his battle against demons as his girlfriend Linda (Denise Bixler) becomes possessed by an evil spirit. He realizes that he may be stuck in this remote cabin in the woods and must fight foes who arise from a mysterious audiotape. Towards the end of the film, Ash and his car travel through a portal and end up in 1300 A.D. for a bizarre ending that no one could predict.

#18. Groundhog Day (1993)

- Director: Harold Ramis - Stacker score: 86.9 - Metascore: 72 - IMDb user rating: 8.0 - Runtime: 101 minutes

What would you do if you had to live the same day over and over again? This is what happens to Phil Connors (Bill Murray), a TV weatherman covering Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney who ends up in a time loop. He begins to realize some things about himself, and others, while stuck in this seemingly endless day. The film's popularity led to the term "groundhog day" becoming synonymous with being stuck in a time loop.

#17. Run Lola Run (1998)

- Director: Tom Tykwer - Stacker score: 87.4 - Metascore: 77 - IMDb user rating: 7.6 - Runtime: 80 minutes

Manni (Moritz Bleibtreu), a Berlin criminal, brings stolen goods to his boss and loses money he owes him. The boss gives him 20 minutes to conjure the funds, leading Manni to enlist his girlfriend Lola (Franka Potente) to come up with the money in a race against the clock, which keeps running through that same period as she makes choices.

#16. Superman (1978)

- Director: Richard Donner - Stacker score: 87.4 - Metascore: 80 - IMDb user rating: 7.3 - Runtime: 143 minutes

Based on the iconic DC Comics character, this film follows Kal-El's (Christopher Reeve) journey from his home planet, Krypton, to becoming Superman, an all-American hero. He goes from being adopted by Midwestern farmers to discovering his powers and fighting an evil force while working undercover as a reporter. At one point, Superman flies around the world so quickly that the Earth spins another way, making time go back so he can undo events with tragic consequences. 

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#15. 12 Monkeys (1995)

- Director: Terry Gilliam - Stacker score: 88 - Metascore: 74 - IMDb user rating: 8.0 - Runtime: 129 minutes

Bruce Willis plays James Cole, an incarcerated man living in the 2030s. Humans live underground after an apocalyptic event nearly kills everyone. He's given a chance to travel back to the '90s and gather information about a plague that will have big future consequences. The goal is to find out more information about the Army of the Twelve Monkeys, who may have been responsible for this earth-shattering event. But things don't go as expected, a classic trope in time travel tales.

#14. X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)

- Director: Bryan Singer - Stacker score: 88 - Metascore: 75 - IMDb user rating: 7.9 - Runtime: 132 minutes

Wolverine, played by Hugh Jackman, goes back in time to 1973 to gather past X-Men to change a moment in time to help save them from the Sentinels. The latter group is a killing collective eradicating anyone who possesses a mutant gene. The film gained an Oscar nomination for its visual effects.

#13. Palm Springs (2020)

- Director: Max Barbakow - Stacker score: 89.7 - Metascore: 83 - IMDb user rating: 7.4 - Runtime: 90 minutes

Two strangers meet at a wedding in Palm Springs and end up stuck in a time loop. They relive the same day over and over again with weird circumstances taking over while they eventually fall in love with each other. The pair have to find a way to get out of this wedding day circle so they can resume their lives once again.

#12. Midnight in Paris (2011)

- Director: Woody Allen - Stacker score: 90.3 - Metascore: 81 - IMDb user rating: 7.7 - Runtime: 94 minutes

Writer Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is on vacation in Paris when he decides to traverse around the city. Gil runs into a strange collective who take him back in time every night at midnight. He meets iconic people from yesteryear and starts to reevaluate his life, and romance with his fiancée.

#11. Looper (2012)

- Director: Rian Johnson - Stacker score: 90.3 - Metascore: 84 - IMDb user rating: 7.4 - Runtime: 113 minutes

In this film, time travel is a commodity that only certain people can afford. People like Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, capitalize on it by using their hitman skills to complete jobs for a crime group. Set in 2044, Joe goes back several times in the past before his employer aims to stop his loop by sending future Joe (Bruce Willis) to kill his younger self. "Looper" is written and directed by Rian Johnson of "Star Wars" and "Knives Out" fame.

#10. Planet of the Apes (1968)

- Director: Franklin J. Schaffner - Stacker score: 90.9 - Metascore: 79 - IMDb user rating: 8.0 - Runtime: 112 minutes

A group of astronauts crash onto a planet in the far future where apes have the upper hand over humans. The primates can walk, talk, and have a complex social system that includes enslaving humans. The group finds themselves having to switch roles and become the "lesser" species. "Planet of the Apes" sparked a film franchise years later and was inducted into the Library of Congress' Film Registry in 2001.

#9. Interstellar (2014)

- Director: Christopher Nolan - Stacker score: 91.4 - Metascore: 74 - IMDb user rating: 8.6 - Runtime: 169 minutes

Set in 2067, this film shows Earth on the brink of destruction from storms and farming woes. Professor Brand, played by Michael Caine, plans to save the planet by sending people into a wormhole to another place. A few researchers test this travel plan and end up in different places and times to see where people can possibly inhabit.

#8. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

- Director: James Cameron - Stacker score: 91.4 - Metascore: 75 - IMDb user rating: 8.5 - Runtime: 137 minutes

Linda Hamilton returns as Sarah Connor, who aims to protect her young son John (Edward Furlong) from yet another (and more dangerous) Terminator. The cyborg intends to kill John, thereby preventing him from his future role in a resistance movement. Sarah, John, and T-800 (Arnold Schwarzenegger) work together to keep John, and the future resistance, alive.

#7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004)

- Director: Alfonso Cuarón - Stacker score: 92 - Metascore: 82 - IMDb user rating: 7.9 - Runtime: 142 minutes

Titular hero Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) continues his studies at the magical Hogwarts School. He realizes Sirius Black, an escaped prisoner, wants to kill him. Harry and his friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint) must work together to defend the school while Harry realizes his true connection to Black.

#6. Star Trek (2009)

- Director: J.J. Abrams - Stacker score: 92 - Metascore: 82 - IMDb user rating: 7.9 - Runtime: 127 minutes

A modern take on the classic space traveling series, this film goes back in time to show James T. Kirk, Spock, and Uhura's (Zoe Saldana) journeys in their younger days. Kirk, portrayed by Chris Pine, inadvertently makes his way onto the USS Enterprise and rises to power while they fight dangerous threats. Spock's (Zachary Quinto) future self makes an appearance to aid him in making a sage decision.

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#5. Avengers: Endgame (2019)

- Directors: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo - Stacker score: 92.6 - Metascore: 78 - IMDb user rating: 8.4 - Runtime: 181 minutes

Five years after Thanos eliminated half of the living beings across the universe, the remaining Avengers band together to bring everyone back. The film includes the Quantum Realm, where time does not pass as it does on Earth and time travel is possible. Things end with a battle royale between the purple genocidal titan and all the super beings on Earth. The film marked the penultimate offering from the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Phase Three of its release/storytelling schedule.

#4. The Terminator (1984)

- Director: James Cameron - Stacker score: 93.7 - Metascore: 84 - IMDb user rating: 8.0 - Runtime: 107 minutes

The current year is 2029. A killer cyborg known as a "Terminator" goes back to 1984 to hunt Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). The killing machine (Arnold Schwarzenegger) stays on Connor's tracks as she uncovers the truth about her role in affecting humanity's future. Sarah must protect her family and stay alive so her son can fulfill a specific role.

#3. Donnie Darko (2001)

- Director: Richard Kelly - Stacker score: 96 - Metascore: 88 - IMDb user rating: 8.0 - Runtime: 113 minutes

In 1988, the title character (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a teenager dealing with sleepwalking episodes. He goes outside one night to encounter a massive, scary rabbit who tells him that the world will end in 28 days. Donnie, unsure of what is real or not, starts to go into a dark direction as time seems to go into flux for him, taking him into a different timeline.

#2. Back to the Future (1985)

- Director: Robert Zemeckis - Stacker score: 98.3 - Metascore: 87 - IMDb user rating: 8.5 - Runtime: 116 minutes

Michael Fox stars as Marty McFly, a teenager in 1985 who is friends with a strange scientist (Christopher Lloyd) named Doc. The latter's latest experiment goes wrong, throwing him back into 1955. He must find a young Doc and try to help him figure out how to get back to his correct timeline. Meanwhile, Marty also encounters his parents as their younger selves. The film has become a sci-fi classic, spawning its own franchise.

#1. It's a Wonderful Life (1946)

- Director: Frank Capra - Stacker score: 100 - Metascore: 89 - IMDb user rating: 8.6 - Runtime: 130 minutes

George Bailey is a man who is in over his head with family and general life problems. He considers dying by suicide but his family's prayers reach the heavens. His life is shown in flashbacks and an angel comes down to show him how much he matters to those closest to him. The now-iconic Christmas film was shot during the summer—in a heat wave, no less.

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