How Did 2014 Thanos And Gamora Arrive In The Original Timeline’s Future?
As established by Hulk and War Machine with all his movie references, Endgame‘s time travel is very different from most of pop culture as it runs with the idea that messing with the past would create different timelines not just change the one. This smooths over a lot of plotholes – e.g. how does Nebula kill her past self and live? – but it also creates a few more, too.
For instance, how does Thanos travel to 2023 to fight the Avengers when he’s from an alternate version of 2014? The heroes themselves were only able to navigate the timelines thanks to the combination of Tony’s time-GPS and the Pym Particles. Sure, 2014 Nebula hijacks the controls to guide Thanos to this timeline, but surely he’d still need his own Pym Particles and GPS device to travel there, right?
How Does Steve Return The Infinity Stones To Their Correct Times?
Once Thanos is defeated and the Snap has been reversed, it falls to Cap to return the Infinity Stones to their proper places in time lest the various splintered realities out there fall into chaos. We’ll get to the fallout of Cap’s trip in a moment but first: how the heck does Steve manage to drop the Infinity Stones back where they belong single-handedly?
The first time around, the Time Heist took numerous heroes to pull off, as it involved a lot of infiltration and improvisation. Sure, returning the Time Stone is just a question of handing it back to the Ancient One, but Steve is no doubt going to find trouble returning the Mind Stone to HYDRA in 2012 or putting the Reality Stone back with Natalie Portman on Asgard. And we really need to see his awkward reunion with Red Skull on Vormir.
There’s also the question of how much time would have been changed already by the Stones being removed at those instances. The formation of the Guardians of the Galaxy may never have happened in that timeline, so did Ronan succeed in destroying Xandar? Plus, Loki having the Space Stone in 2012 would cause a lot of damage.
Cap’s quick replacement mission is depicted as tying up loose ends, but it just raises a lot more questions.