Avengers: Endgame directors attempt to explain Captain America time travel plot hole
Steve Rogers's time travel has raised questions from fans
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Your support makes all the difference.Warning: the story below contains spoilers for Avengers: Endgame.
The directors of Avengers: Endgame have addressed a confusing plot hole regarding Captain America’s travels through time.
Joe and Anthony Russo, who co-directed the Marvel film, answered fan questions during a Reddit AMA on Wednesday.
One person asked about a sequence at the end of the film, during which Steve Rogers goes back in time to return the Infinity Stones to their original timelines.
Rogers decides to remain in the past and finally experience his romance with Peggy Carter, the love of his life. He is then seen returning to the main timeline as an old man.
One fan asked the Russo brothers how Captain America managed to return to the main timeline, since he’s not wearing his quantum suit (the white suits the Avengers use to go back in time) when he makes his return.
“Can you help me/everyone understand how Captain America got back to the main timeline when he returned all the stones, because it contradicts the time travel theory stated by Banner earlier in the movie,” the fan wrote.
“Banner said that when you go back in time you make a separate timeline, so it doesn’t affect the past, but if Captain America was in a different timeline when he returned the stones, how did he back to the main timeline without the use of the quantum suits?”
The Russo brothers confirmed that Rogers would indeed have needed his quantum suit, as well as a Pym particle (named after Hank Pym, the creator of the Ant-Man suit) to travel through time.
“You are correct in that he would have had to have worn the quantum suit, using a Pym particle to make the jump,” they wrote.
“He’s not wearing the suit on the bench, because that is not the exact moment to which he returned.”
While this answer remains slightly confusing, some took it to mean that Rogers returned to the main timeline and got rid of his suit before the moment he appears on screen as an old man.
“I figured Cap lived out his life in an alternate timeline until 2023, a few minutes after he left from the original timeline, then used his Quantum Suit to travel back in time to our timeline to the moment he left, nanosuit goes back into its housing unit, bada bing bada boom!” one person wrote.
“Yeh the suit literally takes seconds to take off since nano tech so he could have arrived moments before we saw him in the bench,” someone else commented.
Endgame was released in April this year, bringing the Avengers saga to a close.
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