Connie,

I think that - assuming Professor Hulk and Nebula had it right - that Loki's Great Escape didn't change their timeline, but instead created a new alternate timeline with added Loki. (I think that also means that our timeline now has a past Gamora running around, and there's a new timeline that's been missing the whole Thanos crew for a few years.)

I don't know what the deal was with Cap. I like the solution that his last stop was returning the Time Stone to SWINTON, and she then used it to mess with things - so his outcome differed from the quantum time travel rules. I don't know whether that means he hid out in our timeline with Peggy for 70 years, or if he had his own alternate timeline (where perhaps he intervened in a couple of things) and was then popped back into our timeline to say goodbye to everyone.

Either way, I would've loved to see him having a chat with Red Skull.

I am completely with you on your last line, billy.

Wow, that's a lot of Endgame references.

Spoilers abound.

[link]

Wow, that's a lot of Endgame references.

Spoilers abound.

[link]

PMM said:

I was surprised to

I was, too, and especially that it was frickin' Jon Favreau who did me in. I am going to be pretty pathetic the next time I eat a cheeseburger.

And little Morgan using her big brown eyes on Uncle Bruce.

Billytea, I've been mapping everything out on paper. This is what I'm at right now re:

I don't know what the deal was with Cap. I like the solution that his last stop was returning the Time Stone to SWINTON, and she then used it to mess with things - so his outcome differed from the quantum time travel rules. I don't know whether that means he hid out in our timeline with Peggy for 70 years, or if he had his own alternate timeline (where perhaps he intervened in a couple of things) and was then popped back into our timeline to say goodbye to everyone.

So I think he planned this. On rewatch, Bucky knew Steve wasn't coming back. You don't say I'll miss you to someone who is going to be gone for two seconds from your perspective. I'd thought about the Ancient One and 2012, but then I realized, oh, wait: he can just talk to Stephen Strange about it to see if it's even feasible. So he'd have strategized. He's Steve Rogers: this is a thing he does. He'd have figured out ahead of time what he could and could not do in that branch to keep it from having the same fate as his original timeline. Then he gets Bucky's blessing. Then, and only then, does he go. What he can safely change, he does. I like to think that he saved Bucky, that he kept SHIELD from being overtaken by Hydra, that as the Soviet Union fell, he found a way to track down a young orphan girl and save her from the Red Room.

I cried a lot this time. But, as I said on Twitter and in texting, "today was less overt sobbing, more a slow and constant leak."

I'm sure he planned it out to the last detail. Because that's what I'd do, and he's at least as smart as me. I bet he'd been thinking about it at least since he saw Peggy .

I think losing both Natasha and Tony played a role in the decision, too. He may have still done it if Tony had lived, but I don't think he'd have done it if Natasha had. (Of the OG Avengers, she was the one he was closest to and the one who he'd have felt an obligation towards.)

America's ass.

Oh yeah.

I'm very glad to have all of you here to answer my questions before I even ask them. And I'm not sure there are words to express how much I love that it ended with Steve and Peggy.