Connie, except that it seems like the reduced the resources as well? That part makes no sense to me AT ALL, but they did say "living things," not just sentient beings. Which is ridiculous. But...

Okay, let's see if I can unravel this one thing. Banner told Swinton that the divergent timelines created when they took the stones would collapse when they put the stones back and thus the original timeline would be repaired. She seemed to agree with that, her objection was that she didn't trust them not to fuck it up. (Which, fair.) But they ended up taking the tesseract twice - once when Hulk messed up the heist and Loki took off with it, and once from the army base. Steve presumably returned the tesseract he had to the place he got it, the base, leaving the Loki-tesseract unreturned and the Loki-tesseract timeline presumably intact. WHich gives us a whole new universe to play in, in the upcoming Loki tv series, presumably.

Is no one going to mention Ant-Man saying "Flick me!" and hiking his butt in the air? I almost choked on my popcorn.

They did say that Thanos dusted half of all living things in his Snap. I thought that's why Scott looked out at birds in the trees and smiled and said "I think it worked."

Still, five years is too long. Unless we're supposed to believe that everyone in the world suffered severe depression and could not move on. But that does seem to be what the writers were saying.

My understanding was the Ancient One's issue wasn't with divergent timelines in general, but rather divergent timelines in which one or more of the Stones had been removed. Which means Loki being on the run with the Space Stone isn't disasterous as the Space Stone still exists, it's just in Loki's pocket rather than Odin's Vault.

Of course, if the Stones not existing is disasterous, what does that mean for the main timeline when Thanos destroyed them? That's definitely its own problem.

I can buy Steve waiting till Peggy was dead in their timeline before triggering his return, which might have kept that timeline from collapsing until he left. Thanos' own loop is more handwavey. Only The Doctor can get away with this sort of thing because they pretty much ignore logic and I assume he's bouncing between timelines all the time.

I'm also upset about the people popping back into fatal circumstances--they poofed out of an airplane that's not there so they plummet to their deaths, patients who were under surgery appear in operating rooms and die before the doctors can figure out what's going on, people appear in streets adn get run over. I think time travel is sloppy plotting.

Thanos didn't destroy the stones in a way that fucked with the timeline, so if there's a problem with the stones not existing, they took care of that by bringing the past stones into the future where Thanos got his head chopped off, thus replacing the destroyed stones with past versions of the stones. That past version of the Soul Stone didn't have Gamora's soul, though.

Do we know for sure that the un-dusted people appeared at the same place and circumstance they disappeared from?

Connie, I don't think Steve did trigger his return - he just aged up naturally and showed up at the park. I think. Maybe. And yes, people reappearing after five years is definitely a huge problem. I've been ignoring it, but... wow, yes.

I don't think the exact nature of the Desnappening was ever made clear. Depending on the amount of control Bruce had over it, he's smart and conscientious enough to put in a "Healthy and Safe" stipulation into his "wish", for lack of a better term.

Fun for those people who disappeared with fatal diseases!