As the beating heart of the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe for close to a decade, as well as its most purely heroic and selfless figure, it was fitting that the final shot of the entire Infinity Saga showed Steve Rogers finally getting that dance he’d been waiting 80 years for as Avengers: Endgame cut to black.
Of course, because this is the world’s biggest and most popular franchise messing with the idea of time travel, a lot of folks instantly began to pick holes in the logic of the time heist, not to mention Steve’s journey back through time and space to return the Stones to their rightful place, retire from the superhero business and live the quiet life.
It’s been over two years since Endgame was released, but fans are still finding gaps in the machinations behind the plot. Loki director Kate Herron thinks Steve and Peggy may have been pruned for creating a branched reality, and now the Disney Plus series has opened the doors to the multiverse and the TVA, even more problems have arisen.
The Russo brothers think he branched, while writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely believe he stayed on the Sacred Timeline. A new theory offers that Steve would have been unable to give up his duties as Captain America when he returned to the 1940s as the only successful super soldier, because nobody except him would have known that he’d already served his time.
Could Captain America have realistically sat on the sidelines during Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf and Afghanistan? It was confirmed that Old Man Steve was at Peggy’s funeral, just as the main timeline’s Steve Rogers was, so does that mean there were two Caps in the same reality for decades that didn’t step on each other’s toes? As always, it’s best not to read too much into time travel or else you’ll get a migraine.