An interesting disagreement regarding a certain aspect of Avengers: Endgame has popped up between writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely and directors Anthony and Joe Russo.
This disagreement involves an element of Captain America’s story arc and timeline in the film, and if you haven’t seen the movie yet, you won’t want to read ahead.
At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Steve Rogers a.k.a. Captain America travels through time and space thanks to the Quantum Realm to return the Infinity Stones and instead of coming back, he goes back to make a life with Peggy Carter and live it to its fullest.
Here’s what the directors previously said about this aspect of the story:
“If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality. The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?
“Interesting question, right? Maybe there’s a story there. There’s a lot of layers built into this movie and we spent three years thinking through it, so it’s fun to talk about it and hopefully fill in holes for people so they understand what we’re thinking.”
They also said:
“For example, the old Cap at the end movie, he lived his married life in a different universe from the main one. He had to make another jump back to the main universe at the end to give the shield to Sam.”
So they are saying that Cap was in an alternate universe this whole time. But the writers do not agree with that. They believe that Steve Rogers was in the actual timeline in the real MCU and not an alternate one in another reality. This is what Markus had to say in an interview with Fandango:
“That is our theory. We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline. So I reject the ‘Steve is in an alternate reality’ theory.
I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about ’48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it’s not like they’d be running into each other.”
So that’s interesting! I’m curious to know why the writers and the directors aren’t on the same page with each other on this. You’d think they would be after all the time that they spent on developing these films together. Obviously, something wrong or different happened if there is now a multiverse!
The big question that fans want to know is if the stories of this time where Steve was with Peggy in the past will be told in the form of a film or series in the future.
Who do you side with on the matter? The writers or the directors?