Did she have children?
Because it looks like Steve just erased them from existence.
PS: Hey, I wish I could go back in time and hook up with that married woman I fancy prior to her nuptials.
That's what a real hero would do!
No one can get erased from existence in the MCU's version of time travel. Future-Nebula kills Past-Nebula and Future-Nebula doesn't get erased from existence.
Peggy's family will continue to exist in the current MCU timeline, Steve will have just started a new timeline where she marries Steve instead of her mystery husband. Might have ruined Captain America for me if he'd been that much of a selfish asshole.
Ah, okay. I see.
Still, I don't think the multiple timelines theory of time travel make anymore sense than the Back to the Future paradox one.
The only one that makes sense is Twelve Monkeys and Looper one (i.e. there is only one timeline, and anything we do in the past is irreversible).
Also, which timeline was Old Man Steve Rogers in at the end of the film
I think Endgame's take on time travel is far more coherent than Looper, 12 Monkeys, etc. If you think about it, if you go back in time and change something and it changes the future you came from, then it could also change the circumstances that led you to travel in time. Endgame's version avoids the classic grandfather paradox: if I go back in time and murder my grandfather, I'm never born, so I can't go back in time and murder my grandfather, so then I am born after all, and I go back and murder him, and so on and so on.
shareBut Twelve Monkeys and Looper avoid the classic grandfather paradox too. They don't have anyone go back in time and kill their grandfather.
Still, it makes sense because everything the characters do in those films have consequences, even if those consequences have already been foretold so to speak.
By contrast, the MCU's take on time-travel suggests that there are multiple timelines and that in some of those timelines billions of people are going to remain dead as a consequence of The Snap. It arguably undermines the poignancy because it means various characters can simply screw around with other timelines that don't affect them. Also, what happens in those timelines they've interfered in? If The Snap took place in those time-lines, does that mean that these time-lines' Avengers also interfere in other time-lines?
Where does it end? It's almost like some type of Droste Effect take on time-travel.
My head hurts...
Looper did that. He killed himself to stop his future self kills others, but by killing himself he stops his future self to go back in time to kill others, but if he never goes back in time he has no reason to kill himself in the first place.
Looper bypasses the grandfather paradox by using self-correcting timeline. Any change done to the present by future entities would still affect the future, including the entities who present now themselves, but the change that happened to the future (including future entities that present now) would not change things that already happened now. So if someone from the future goes back in time to kill their grandfather, the future person would be erased the moment they killed him (or the moment they change the past so that their future existent is no longer possible), but the said grandfather would still be dead. So in this example, any witness would see someone walking up to a guy shooting him in the head and suddenly vanish, and the victim would be on the ground dead.
Looper didn't solve the grandfather paradox though. There's actually a good scene explaining where Looper's time travel logic falls into bunk movie scifi territory. I think they were in a cafe when the young guy gave himself a scar. Then out of nowhere the older guy sees the scar on his own body. Thats the same paradox as Marty's picture fading away in BTTF.
Where people struggle with this is they get stuck on the belief that something is being changed. There is no change being done. Traveling back through time is entering a different timeline that exists exactly the way its supposed to in the multiverse.
I was having this conversation with someone yesterday.
I cited Twelve Monkeys, which I think is the most perfect depiction of time travel in films. They voted Looper.
I can only vaguely remember Looper but I took their word for it, but for me Twelve Monkeys is the standard. Everything is set. No-one can disrupt the space-time continuum. Anything they do has been set.
Twelve Monkeys sounds like the multiverse then because thats basically how Endgame did it. Everything they did to "change" something wasn't actually changing it. It was already set. You can argue thats our reality. We perceive it as making decisions and free will but its ultimately just the timeline unfolding as its supposed to.
shareBut there was only one timeline in Twelve Monkeys, and everything done in that timeline, including going back in time, led to the same inevitable future.
In other words, time was in a loop or a continuum.
Or Twelve Monkeys simply showed you one timeline. If you are watching just one timeline then you are likely to believe that is the only timeline and nothing can be changed. We can't go by an unchanging outcome because there are going to be near infinite timelines where the outcome is the same regardless of what you tried to "change."
To me Twelve Monkeys is just another misunderstanding of how time travel works. When you change the past you are not changing anything. You are not creating a new timeline either. You are merely entering one that is new to you. It appears as change because thats how we perceived the difference.
Do you think time travel literally exists?
Just say it does though, from an artistic perspective, and after all we're discussing films here, not actual science, the existence of multiple timelines arguably hurts great art, because it means that anything a time-traveller does has no real impact or consequence to themselves, but simply an alternate version on themselves.
It reduces the stakes, which is arguably anathema to grest story-telling.
As far as slight time travel we experience it every time we move... which is all the time. But extreme time travel (going backwards) may not be possible because you'd have to exceed the speed of light. But as long as its theoretical then I guess its possible.
I guess it can reduce the stakes but thats up to whoever is watching. Its all about how important the prime universe is to the audience. Witnessing tangents is common in all time travel films. I'll bet even Twelve Monkeys slips up somewhere and shows something that happened and then shows something different. What happened to that original thing? Do the stakes matter now just because the original thing is gone forever? Seems counter intuitive.
Keep in mind this movie is using the biggest cheat of all which is the quantum realm. The QR gives the MCU any latitude to do whatever they want. Whats really funny to me is the main premise of the movie is based on a function of the QR... Yet they didn't even show the QR once. lol. Probably a smart move because they knew they'd get something wrong. Even Interstellar got crap from fans for ignoring science and look at all the steps they took to try to get it right.
The movie actually did a good job explaining why the Back to the Future and other time travel movies don't work.
When you go back in time to "change" the past you are entering a different timeline. The other one still exists in the multiverse but we have no way of witnessing them without becoming part of a new timeline. If we physically went back to any timeline we would perceive it as change because our minds are kinda limited to 3rd dimensional thinking and we can't physically see the near-infinite number of tangents and cross sections in the multiverse.
The easiest way to think of it is when you go back and do something differently all you are doing is entering a timeline where you did that thing.
Well ... BttF sort of deals with this in II's alternate Biff timeline.
shareThere's is only one timeline in Back to the Future.
At different points, Doc, Marty and Biff disrupt and change it, setting on course an entirely altered but consistent timeline.
But ultimately BTTF as fun as it is, makes no sense.
By going back in time and changing history, you ultimately void the reason for going back in time.
If I go back in time to stop Hitler being born, I set a course in time that means Hitler didn't exist and thus there would be no reason for me to go back in time to stop him being born.
Going back to the past and changing things in this movie creates alternate timelines so Peggy in the main timeline did move on and get married but Steve going back to be with her created an alternate timeline where she never did move on and perhaps other events were changed too (this really makes me want to see another Captain America movie set in the past to be honest).
I think Old Steve is implied to have come back to the main timeline before Young Steve left through the Quantum Realm.
But Old Steve has returned from a different (altered) timeline, right?
I wonder how that timeline fared in the Battle of New York. Captain America would have been an old man.
Yes. Old Steve should have time traveled from an altered timeline to get back to this one. The movie didn't show him returning so people are assuming two Steves had lived in this timeline and Peggy's life is different than what we saw. It would make a giant gaping plothole. However we didn't see how old Cap got there so the MCU has the freedom to make up any excuse they want on how Cap lived with Peggy in an altered timeline and eventually- probably after her death- came back to this one.
shareSteve had already returned from multiple altered timelines, including the one where Loki ended up with the Tesseract, so why couldn't he return from this one (i.e. the one where he started a new life with Peggy)?
Still, there's a lot of things in confused about. I used to be good at this theoretical physics stuff, but I'm tired and I'm getting too old to wrap my head around it.
"Steve had already returned from multiple altered timelines, including the one where Loki ended up with the Tesseract, so why couldn't he return from this one (i.e. the one where he started a new life with Peggy)?"
Thats what I'm positing. After living his life with her in a different timeline he had plenty opportunities to come back to this (prime) timeline. But since the movie didn't show old cap returning through the machine they are assuming he's been here the whole time.
I see your point (about him not emerging via the machine). I guess there's another machine somewhere, or maybe a different portal. Maybe Strange lent him the Time Stone.
shareRight. Strange is a good example of how the MCU can come up with any explanation they want. Strange is the ultimate deus ex machina especially in the comics.
share
I think Old Steve is implied to have come back to the main timeline before Young Steve left through the Quantum Realm.