LogFAQs > #928960692

AllstarSniper32 posted...

I'm pretty sure those are considered different timelines and not different universes.

Because of how Marvel classifies things, different timelines ARE different universes.

Because of how time travel generally works in Marvel, and because of how it was presented in the movie, they effectively went back in time in their own universe, then created divergent timelines the moment they altered events, then traveled forward back to their own point of origin.

The upshot of which is, they basically created four alternate universes. Two of them are probably minor - one in which Thor basically went back and got to talk to his mother (which was mostly otherwise unchanged), and one in which SHIELD lost the Tesseract in the 1970s (and while it was returned by Cap, the infiltration itself and Tony's conversation with his dad likely creates at least minor ripple effects). In all other respects, they likely play out mostly the same way, but might result in minor shifts.

The real major change was them screwing up in 2012 and letting Loki get away with the Space stone (which is supposedly the version of Loki that's going to be in the Disney+ TV show). It likely would have altered the entire future of that reality, because Cap wouldn't have been able to return that Tesseract, meaning Thor wouldn't have been able to use it to return the two of them home, and it would have made things more complicated later.

But the last reality is the one that's really hard to judge. Cap would have had to put both the Orb and the Soul Stone back (presumably somehow preventing past Peter Quill from being too effected by the change). But the Thanos of that reality (and most of his army) is now dead, and the Gamora of that reality is now gone. Which will radically alter the future of things - Gamora will no longer be there to become part of the Guardians, Nebula and Thanos being gone may alter Ronan's behavior, and ultimately the events of Infinity War and Endgame will never happen there.

Each of those distinct timelines would wind up having a different "universe number".



AllstarSniper32 posted...

I'm not sure why people think this. When Cap stays with Peggy, that's an alternate timeline where the niece doesn't even exist.

Probably because the directors themselves explicitly said it wasn't an alternate timeline, and that Steve literally wound up being with Peggy and spending his entire life in the main timeline, only laying low (presumably under an alternate identity) to avoid causing further disruptions.

Of course, that kind of falls apart when you really think about it, but it's comic book fantasy and not hard sci-fi - we've already put more thought into the mechanics of time travel in this topic than anyone making the movie did.
---

"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family