1. #11921
    Merely a Setback PACOX's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Theangryone View Post
    Hawkeye is fine for being a transitional show, they are obviously replacing the old guard for the next phase. My real issues are that it seems like they are setting Clint up to be offed in the series and he and Widow only got a show in order to replace them
    Just think od both of the prijects as origins and how MCU irugins hit certain beats. Do yeah, he probably isbr going to make it to the end. He will be killed or rerired indefinitely.

    Im mire interested in all the Netflix heroes slowly being worked back in. The lockout period Disney had to honor wheb they left Netflix is over.

    Resident Cosplay Progressive

  2. #11922
    The Insane Syegfryed's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    It can't, because the branch it creates is the Sacred Timeline. And the older timeline ends at that moment, so there's no "second" timeline.

    Picture a tree, with a single major branch grafted in from where it grew lower on the tree, and the old trunk above that grafted branch cut off. It's still just one tree. One single path of growth from roots to highest point.

    Some of you seem to be operating under the idea that the Sacred Timeline is a natural flow: we know that isn't the case, it's highly artificial.
    the thing is, it is showed that even the smallest changes can alter the "sacred timeline", and a lot of minor things cause new branches, i hardly believe that thanos absence in the past would not lead to a new branch, or, the branch that was created when he left can happen without hurting/changing the sacred timeline.

    we are parting that the presupposition that 1) Thanos absence in the past didn't create a branch, i doubt, 2) the branch created does not interfere with the sacred timeline, which i also doubt or 3) it was pruned after he left.

    To me, the only way that things make sense is if they pruned that one.

    That doesn't follow, at all.

    Picture a river that splits, and then rejoins. Still one river.
    but again, we are assuming Thanos absence in the past and Steven going back to the past would create the "same" sacred timeline, can't see that being a thing with how many changes in the timeline it would be.

  3. #11923
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Syegfryed View Post
    the thing is, it is showed that even the smallest changes can alter the "sacred timeline", and a lot of minor things cause new branches, i hardly believe that thanos absence in the past would not lead to a new branch, or, the branch that was created when he left can happen without hurting/changing the sacred timeline.
    Up until the end of the Loki series, which occurs after Endgame, this is not the case; there are constant small branches, and the TVA constantly prunes those branches, and no timelines other than the Sacred Timeline exist, at all.

    Again, this is explicitly stated. There are no other branches. They literally show us the timeline and state this outright; one trunk line, no branches. Everything that happened in Endgame was exactly how Kang needed it to happen, the whole time; it wasn't a shift away from the Sacred Timeline at all. That was the Sacred Timeline. The branch where Thanos doesn't travel forward in time doesn't exist, because it gets pruned.

    Or at least, didn't. We're talking pre-Loki. Post-Loki, all bets are off, but up through Endgame, this was the status quo.

    we are parting that the presupposition that 1) Thanos absence in the past didn't create a branch, i doubt, 2) the branch created does not interfere with the sacred timeline, which i also doubt or 3) it was pruned after he left.
    No presuppositions. We know for a determinable fact that it did not create a branch. Or at least, any branching that occurred was pruned by the TVA, leaving only the timeline we all saw in the actual films, time travel included.

    To me, the only way that things make sense is if they pruned that one.
    None of the above.

    4> Thanos was always supposed to travel to the future, and if it wasn't going to happen naturally, the TVA would have ensured it did happen, by pruning away every single instance where something else happened.

    That's what the TVA does. They take the absolute chaos of "everything that could possibly happen", and trim away every possibility except what Kang decrees is the "Sacred Timeline". Which can have however many kinks and recursions and loops as Kang says it needs to have.

    but again, we are assuming Thanos absence in the past and Steven going back to the past would create the "same" sacred timeline, can't see that being a thing with how many changes in the timeline it would be.
    The Sacred Timeline doesn't have to be a straight path that flows naturally. At all. Thanos isn't "absent" in the past. And Steve always went back for Carter. We see the former; that's the Infinity War bit. The latter, we don't, but that doesn't make it less true.

    It can't help but create the same "sacred" timeline, because again, there is only one timeline. It may recurve on itself at points, or have weird unnatural kinks, but there's never been anything natural about the timeline; it's always been a manicured garden created by Kang.

    Go back to the river analogy. Thanos's time jump is the river splitting; one branch is Thanos to Infinity War, the other rejoins the first about five years after that point; it's still one river, even if there's a stretch where there's two channels. Steve is a case where there's a pump that gathers some water, pumps it back uphill, and dumps it back into the river back upstream a ways. Still the same river, even if some of the water travels the course twice.
    Last edited by Endus; 2021-11-27 at 03:21 AM.


  4. #11924
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    It’s such a weird hang up on this issue. We see a single timeline in the MCU continuity even though it includes time travel. Why is it so hard to grasp that that timeline exists and requires that time travel to even do so?
    The weirdest thing about it, to me, is that time travel hypotheses aren't even clear on whether changing things can even happen. There's a whole interpretation of time travel where there's one timeline, and if you go back, you can't change anything, because whatever you try to do to change things already happened the first time around. If you go back and try and kill Hitler, you fail, for some reason. Who knows why? We just know you definitely fail, because Hitler didn't get killed by you. Time is immutable. All Loki did was establish that the MCU was a "time is mutable" universe that was being artificially regulated into a "time is immutable" universe, by the TVA. Which gets a little wonky, because the natural order and the artificial order are at odds, which is why sometimes there's a bit of a "slip", and you either get Variants or you get things like the two Thanos', where Thanos' future splits but both paths recombine into the same core timeline and thus don't represent an actual deviation of any futures; Infinity War always happens, and Endgame always happens.


  5. #11925
    If the Thanos in the past of this same universe comes forward for Endgame, and that's all part of the Sacred Timeline, how come the past of characters like Cap and Tony exist where Thanos didn't jump forward from the past, gathered the Infinity Stones, and did the Snap?

    Because by the logic y'all are presenting, that timeline would be pruned for being the branch off of the part where Thanos jumps forward in time. Is the entire MCU up until Endgame not part of the Sacred Timeline? If not, why was there so much of it before it was pruned?

  6. #11926
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    If the Thanos in the past of this same universe comes forward for Endgame, and that's all part of the Sacred Timeline, how come the past of characters like Cap and Tony exist where Thanos didn't jump forward from the past, gathered the Infinity Stones, and did the Snap?

    Because by the logic y'all are presenting, that timeline would be pruned for being the branch off of the part where Thanos jumps forward in time. Is the entire MCU up until Endgame not part of the Sacred Timeline? If not, why was there so much of it before it was pruned?
    Why would it be pruned?

    The only stuff that gets pruned is stuff that isn't part of the Sacred Timeline, and what defines that is "whatever the hell Kang wants".

    There's no real hiccups.

    1> At some point in the past, there's a Thanos Variant that was created and spent his time jumping forward to create the events in Endgame. This "variant" wasn't pruned by the TVA because his existence was intentional and necessary for the Sacred Timeline to take the path Kang needed it to take. Like, we know Variants pop off all the time; how many Lokis did we meet? There's clearly no issue with there being multiple versions of the same person around at the exact same time, or none of Loki's TV show made any sense. It's not even a TVA thing, because Loki and Sylvie don't have any complications (other than personal, at least, no timey-wimey stuff).

    2> Steve went back to some point in time with Carter, and he was always around the whole time since. He avoided involvement in the big picture because A> he knew it worked out, eventually, and any changes he made could change that, and B> any version of himself that did choose to get involved would get pruned as a Variant. They could reveal stuff he did in the background, however, without changing anything. Maybe he worked for a bit as Shield Agent Roger Steves or something; Carter could've cleared any background check stuff.

    Everything you see in the MCU is Sacred Timeline. That could mean there's more than one Thanos, if Kang says so. Because that's the other key point;

    3> None of this is natural and the only rules to any of it was "because Kang said so". The only reason variants get pruned is because Kang said so. The only reason branches are pruned is because Kang said so. So, if Kang said not to prune something, because that's part of the Sacred Timeline, it is. Because Kang said so.

    It's like the Elder Loki in the show; he lived on an asteroid for like 1000 years practicing magic and only got pruned when he decided to start doing shit that deviated from the Sacred Timeline. The branch Thanos makes to go to Endgame doesn't deviate from the Sacred Timeline at all; it's a major event that's absolutely necessary to the Sacred Timeline. There's no deviation, so no need to prune anything. That branch is like a solar flare; it dips out, jumps forward in time, and then joins back up with the core timeline, without creating a deviation that falls outside Kang's parameters (and indeed, Kang's probably responsible for it even happening in the first place).
    Last edited by Endus; 2021-11-27 at 04:39 AM.


  7. #11927
    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Why would it be pruned?

    The only stuff that gets pruned is stuff that isn't part of the Sacred Timeline, and what defines that is "whatever the hell Kang wants".

    There's no real hiccups.

    1> At some point in the past, there's a Thanos Variant that was created and spent his time jumping forward to create the events in Endgame. This "variant" wasn't pruned by the TVA because his existence was intentional and necessary for the Sacred Timeline to take the path Kang needed it to take. Like, we know Variants pop off all the time; how many Lokis did we meet? There's clearly no issue with there being multiple versions of the same person around at the exact same time, or none of Loki's TV show made any sense. It's not even a TVA thing, because Loki and Sylvie don't have any complications (other than personal, at least, no timey-wimey stuff).
    .
    I suppose the variant Thanos showing up for Endgame doesn't cause enough of a disruption (de facto, it can't, since it's part of the Sacred Timeline), and the continuing timeline from where he left is pruned? I guess it makes sense, though it doesn't make sense to me how two branches of Thanos's timeline existed in one timeline. The Steve thing isn't exactly analogous - Steve who goes into the past isn't a Variant....he's the future of Endgame Steve who just happens to be living in the past. Even though he's alive at the same time of himself in the ice (and the rest of the Cap timeline), the Cap in the ice is his past self. He still remembers the history of that Cap.

    Meanwhile, Thanos exists in two timelines at once. He is having two "present timelines" at the same time, from whenever the Nebula wires get crossed. Maybe it doesn't mean much in the course of things, because the one Thanos almost immediately decides to get killed within like a couple days, but it makes one question which one is "the real Thanos." The Thanos of the Snap, or the Thanos of Endgame? And what happens if you have two beings living their simultaneous present-timelines at the same time? What kind of instability does that lead to?

    Also, all the Loki variants we've met aren't branching selves of Tom Loki, they're Lokis which arose in different universe which branched long before, and are all pruned when things get too crazy. Miss Minutes offers to plug him back in to the matrix and make him win the Battle of New York, but that, again, would be a future self of Tom Loki that we've known, and not two Lokis existing parallel to each other.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    Because Tony’s snap made it so they never traveled in the first place. He left Gamora for Quill because he saw the absolute pain caused by losing her that caused them to lose in the first place. With the right mindset he could do anything, except maybe destroy the celestials, with that snap. That aside is yet to be truly explored.
    Wouldn't this require them to forget the happenings of the Snap? How would it be feasible for them to not have traveled at all post Tony-Snap? Are you saying Rocket/Thorl/Hawkeye/Hulk and all the others who went time travelling and survived Endgame won't remember their interdimensional time travel shenanigans? That doesn't seem to be true already - though I guess we haven't seen any of these characters post Tony's Snap except for his funeral.

  8. #11928
    The Insane Syegfryed's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Endus View Post
    Up until the end of the Loki series, which occurs after Endgame, this is not the case; there are constant small branches, and the TVA constantly prunes those branches, and no timelines other than the Sacred Timeline exist, at all.
    exactly, again, this whole deal only make sense to me if they pruned the timeline created when thanos left, they never stated that, but is the only logical option.
    Again, this is explicitly stated. There are no other branches. They literally show us the timeline and state this outright; one trunk line, no branches. Everything that happened in Endgame was exactly how Kang needed it to happen, the whole time; it wasn't a shift away from the Sacred Timeline at all. That was the Sacred Timeline. The branch where Thanos doesn't travel forward in time doesn't exist, because it gets pruned.
    there is brances, but they prune then. Thanos absence(and steven goind to the past) would lead to new abranches who would need to be pruned.

    No presuppositions. We know for a determinable fact that it did not create a branch. Or at least, any branching that occurred was pruned by the TVA, leaving only the timeline we all saw in the actual films, time travel included.
    not creating new branches = bullshit

    creating one but quickly pruned = makes sense.

    4> Thanos was always supposed to travel to the future, and if it wasn't going to happen naturally, the TVA would have ensured it did happen, by pruning away every single instance where something else happened.
    Thanos was supposed to travel to the future so the sacred timeline remains, i can endure that.

    But the moment in time that he left ultimately should lead to a new branch that would be pruned

    The Sacred Timeline doesn't have to be a straight path that flows naturally. At all. Thanos isn't "absent" in the past. And Steve always went back for Carter. We see the former; that's the Infinity War bit. The latter, we don't, but that doesn't make it less true.
    Sacred timeline is a cicle, per loki, the thing is, i can't see steven going to the past, doing all the stuff he did, including changing the past and the events, spending so much time that he gets old, then going back to the future and the sacred timeline remaining fine and that not creating any branches.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    If they deviate it creates a timeline to be pruned. Did you actually watch Loki or just come up with reasons to dislike it?
    .
    you are not even understanding what i said ant to look that pretentious lmao.

  9. #11929
    Quote Originally Posted by MrLachyG View Post
    gotta be comfy when you do crime!
    Thats how I roll!

  10. #11930
    Sacred Timeline(s) aren’t about a single perfect timeline it’s just about preventing Kang. Could be 10, 1000, or a billion timelines, and as shown when things breakdown towards the end of Loki, the process isn’t linear.

    Not having watched Hawkeye yet I haven’t the foggiest why this topic came back up, or is relevant again. Guess it’s time to catch up!

  11. #11931
    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    It’s literally what’s said in the scene. You ignoring the actual dialogue is you misreading the scene. And the fourth snap took care of the branched Thanos. Which always happened in the sacred timeline.
    No the snap ensured he would not be back in the timeline at the correct spot. The only way for that to make sense is multiverse theory. The timeline where Antman was there in Avengers 1 is an alternate timeline.

  12. #11932
    This thread over the last 6 or so pages illustrates perfectly why time travel as a plot device is a horrible idea.

  13. #11933
    Quote Originally Posted by JDL49 View Post
    This thread over the last 6 or so pages illustrates perfectly why time travel as a plot device is a horrible idea.
    Nah, it just demonstrates why taking a movie/series too seriously is a horrible idea and it's exacerbated by the internet. Back to the Future has glaring timeline issues but who the fuck cares? It's a great movie. People just shrugged and ate their popcorn and enjoyed it. Now everyone's gotta prove they figured out the particular brand of scientific laws that only apply to a particular film franchise. Sheesh.

  14. #11934
    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    No, we just didn’t see him the first time around. He was 100% there because he travelled there in Endgame. Remember, they didn’t return the tesseract to 2012 because Loki escaped with it. Even if they did they returned the stones to the point they took them from so everything before that remained in the timeline.
    No because he was not there in the original timeline, He was there in the alternate timeline. You cannot change the past was the entire point of Banner and co talking about back to the future.

  15. #11935
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Jotaux View Post
    No because he was not there in the original timeline, He was there in the alternate timeline. You cannot change the past was the entire point of Banner and co talking about back to the future.
    There was no "alternate timeline". Time travel doesn't automatically create a new divergent timeline. The only necessary split in the timeline was with Thanos, in the allowance of one particular Variant Thanos who would use time travel to jump to the Endgame, and this was only allowed to happen because Kang had decreed it necessary for the Sacred Timeline; effectively, that "branch" touches back to the "core" timeline at Endgame, and then the "regular" timeline that would have existed without that time travel would have been pruned; it does not exist (and, because timey-wimey, never did).

    Also, Banner and co don't really canonically know what they're talking about; the only reason you can't change things in the past is because Kang will have his TVA agents prune the divergent timeline, if it diverges enough. Banner and co's mistake was thinking this was some kind of natural law, when it's as "natural" as the Panama Canal.

    Here, let's try a visual, cobbled together in MS Paint;


    The red lines are the bounds of the Sacred Timeline; in the Loki show we see this represented nearly the same way, as divergences get more extreme and must be pruned. Divergences, like Old Loki, which DON'T diverge enough can last for ages (Old Loki sat around for like 1000 years before his choices made his timeline diverge enough to be a problem). Anything that is within the red is "Sacred Timeline", anything that gets too close to those lines gets pruned.

    The green is the "main" timeline, up through to the start of Endgame. Pretty basic.

    And the blue is Thanos' divergence in the past, his travel through time into the future to Endgame, and then the continued existence of that event forward in time.

    The blue timeline never got to a point where it diverged enough to be outside the Sacred Timeline. This is actually a bit misrepresented here, because it doesn't actually follow that path that directly; there's a big time jump in there, but I couldn't be arsed trying to MS Paint all that.

    The green timeline without NuThanos doesn't fit the Sacred Timeline, and any instance where Thanos didn't time travel to the future as a variant would've been pruned. That's not what Kang wanted (as we can determine because only the timeline Kang allows to exist continues forward).

    There's still just the one Sacred Timeline. There's a point here where the course splits a bit and then rejoins, but never diverges enough to be a "new" timeline, and that divergence was deemed a necessary and integral component of the Sacred Timeline (again, because if it weren't, the TVA would've pruned it). The only things that get "doubled" by this are the ones that got brought forward by Thanos. The theft and replacement of the Infinity Stones don't actually affect the past at all in any meaningful sense; we may not have seen Steve fight Steve in the original film, but we did see him fight a lot of Hydra agents and Original Steve just assumed Time Travel Steve was another agent; it wasn't a situation that seemed particularly remarkable. Those events just didn't create variants because there wasn't any meaningful deviation.

    Because that's what Banner and friends got wrong; you CAN change the past, but those changes create new timelines, and the TVA prunes them unless the new timeline is the branch the TVA wants; the Sacred Timeline. There is no "natural" flow to the Sacred Timeline. It's entirely artificial and manufactured, through constant attention and manipulation by the TVA.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    Which was them theorizing, not them being accurate.
    Seriously, both Banner and friends and the Ancient One get this wrong, because none of them have the perspective to see the truth; they're not examining an experiment from outside, they're part of that experiment. They all presume that there's a natural order to the Multiverse, and do their best to describe it. The problem is that it isn't the natural order. It's just Kang. It was always Kang and the TVA.


  16. #11936
    But again, the timeline without any Thanos time travelling isn't pruned. It's the past of all the Avengers. There's a point where the timeline branches and rejoins and neither of those are pruned. Two Thanos's living their present lives exist at the same time. The problem of this is paradoxical and universe-shattering, and is solved by the convenience of one of the Thanos's and all his forces being wiped out completely within days of branching off (in fact, the loop is closed within days as well).

    That could be a severe problem if it existed in other timelines. Old Cap isn't a branch of the timeline, it's the same Cap living simulataneously with himself.

  17. #11937
    I Don't Work Here Endus's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    But again, the timeline without any Thanos time travelling isn't pruned. It's the past of all the Avengers.
    Pruning cuts that timeline off from moving forward, it doesn't retroactively delete anything. Again, think of a tree, and cutting off a branch. The trunk isn't cut off at any point.

    There's a point where the timeline branches and rejoins and neither of those are pruned. Two Thanos's living their present lives exist at the same time. The problem of this is paradoxical and universe-shattering, and is solved by the convenience of one of the Thanos's and all his forces being wiped out completely within days of branching off (in fact, the loop is closed within days as well).
    Not really.

    We know variants can fully exist alongside each other without any complications whatsoever (in terms of the universe's stability or whatnot, at least). The only thing with antagonism towards variants is the TVA, and the TVA, canonically, wanted both Thanos' to exist. That's necessary for the Sacred Timeline.

    The only thing that triggers the TVA to act is if deviation leads far enough away from the Sacred Timeline. They don't care if a variant doesn't deviate, or if their deviation is an intended supplemental loop that's necessary (as was the case with Endgame). There's no paradoxes in play of any kind.

    That could be a severe problem if it existed in other timelines. Old Cap isn't a branch of the timeline, it's the same Cap living simulataneously with himself.
    Why is that a problem at all?


  18. #11938
    The TVA scene only shows it was part of the timeline for the stones to be brought to the main timeline. I know time travel is difficult to understand but the MCU has made it as simple as they could. Ant man was not at the battle in New York in the Hawkeye show timeline. Otherwise you don't think Hydra knowing cap knows they are hydra would be an issue?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vegas82 View Post
    Which was them theorizing, not them being accurate.
    Which is the writers telling us the rules of time travel in the MCU.

  19. #11939
    Quote Originally Posted by eschatological View Post
    But again, the timeline without any Thanos time travelling isn't pruned. It's the past of all the Avengers. There's a point where the timeline branches and rejoins and neither of those are pruned. Two Thanos's living their present lives exist at the same time. The problem of this is paradoxical and universe-shattering, and is solved by the convenience of one of the Thanos's and all his forces being wiped out completely within days of branching off (in fact, the loop is closed within days as well).

    That could be a severe problem if it existed in other timelines. Old Cap isn't a branch of the timeline, it's the same Cap living simulataneously with himself.
    The branching and the timejump are one and the same, they don't form a lenghty 'timeline' that the branch-Thanos still has to live through.
    His going to the future is what creates the branch, so there's no two Thanoses in Infinity War or before, because the branch timeline directly flows into the "Sacred Timeline" the moment it is created and from then on is part of said "Sacred Timeline". There are no two Thanoses, because the Thanos that still lived the 'normal life' is already dead at the point the other Thanos even comes into play. The variant 2014 Thanos does not live through his life up to then, only the non-variant version had to do that.

  20. #11940
    About that multiverse-timetravel-brach stuff I just thought of something.
    If the Endgame-Avengers' timetravel to 2012 created another timeline, it was still one, where the battle of New York took place just as it did in the timeline where they weren't there and from that point on, their time-branch would have been the 'Sacred Timeline', according to Kang. So that is the branch that stayed, the other got pruned. The timeline we saw in 2012 doesn't exist anymore, only the one where the Endgame Avengers were present does.

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