Random Time Travel Works In 'Avengers: Endgame' (11 items)

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  (#1) In The MCU, Changing Things In The Past Doesn't Change The Future

  Most of us, including Scott Lang and Rhodey, get our time travel knowledge from movies like Back to the Future and Timecop. In those movies, if you change something in the past, you also change the present. For instance, in Back to the Future, Marty McFly helps his dad be less of a dweeb in the 1950s. When Marty returns to the '80s, his family is living a nice upper-class life.

  That's not how time travel works in the MCU. When Rhodey suggests offing Thanos as a child in order to undo the snap, Bruce Banner says, "I don’t know why everyone believes that, but that isn’t true. Think about it: If you travel to the past, that past becomes your future, and your former present becomes the past! Which can’t now be changed by your new future!"
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  (#9) In The Quantum Realm, Time Can Travel Through You

  Characters can't just shrink into the Quantum Realm and start zipping through time. Without the proper means of maneuvering around the QR, you can end up trapped inside. As Scott Lang discovers, time travels through you rather than you traveling through time. That means you age at odd rates, growing older or younger each time you shrink down. 

  When Lang comes back as an old man, it doesn't mean he was stuck in the Quantum Realm for 50 years, it just means the Quantum Realm instantaneously aged him 50 years. Without a roadmap for how to traverse the realm and use it to your advantage, you won't be able to get anywhere.
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  (#4) Several Parallel Universes Potentially Exist Because Of 'Endgame'

  By going back and changing minor pieces of the MCU timeline, the Avengers have likely created a series of parallel universes. While they haven't done anything in their timeline - aside from saving the universe and offing Thanos twice - they have altered other timelines, for better or worse. 

  In their trip to 2012, the crew created at least two alternate realities. Loki is now alive and in possession of the Tesseract, and HYDRA either believes Cap is one of them, or she thinks they're going to jumpstart the events of Winter Soldier. Either way, 2012 is rendered completely different. It's also possible that Loki now exists in the current MCU timeline in spite of his supposed demise at the hands of Thanos in Infinity War. 

  There's no way to know whether these new realities will affect the current MCU timeline, but now that time travel is officially on the table, anything is possible.
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  (#6) Time Travel Relies On The Quantum Realm

  To time travel in the MCU, you have to use either the Time Stone or the Quantum Realm. Barring some divergent timeline in which everyone has a Time Stone, the Avengers have to shrink down and travel through the Quantum Realm to go from point to point. 

  Unfortunately you can't just hop into the Quantum Realm and end up at the Battle of New York; you have to use Tony Stark's "reverse mobius strip" map of the QR, which spits you out at a specific point in time and allows you to return exactly when you left.
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  (#7) The MCU Timeline Is Secure

  With time travel now in the mix, it's reasonable to wonder if the entire MCU timeline has been irrevocably altered. Fortunately, that's not the case. All the moments you love from Phases 1 through 3 are preserved in amber. 

  Everything that happened in the past still occurred to make the characters who they are in Endgame. As Bruce Banner explains, their reality exists linearly, even if they aren't moving through time in a linear fashion. This means Thanos is always going to snap half the universe away, and the Avengers are always going to bring it back.
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  (#3) The Avengers Can Take The Infinity Stones To The Future As Long As They Return Them To The Past

  Many of the MCU's rules for time travel are a little contradictory, if not flat-out made up. Which is fine, by the way - the Russo brothers aren't advocating for the advancement of time travel technology; they're telling a story.

  In simple terms, the Infinity Stones stabilize time itself. The Ancient One offers some elucidation, telling Bruce Banner that removing an Infinity Stone from the timeline interrupts the flow of time. However, the forces of good need the Infinity Stones to fight back against superhuman creatures like Dormammu.

  If the Ancient One is to be believed - and she usually knows what she's talking about - removing the Infinity Stones from their point in the timeline not only makes that timeline more susceptible to the forces of evil, but creates a new reality. That's why Cap has to return the Stones to their original points on the timeline. 

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