How Many Alternate Timelines Were Created in Avengers: Endgame?

In just a few weeks, Spider-Man: Far From Home will hit theaters around the world and, if the trailers are any indication, introduce the Marvel Cinematic Universe to the concept of alternate realities, or the Multiverse. Mysterio's tales of an alternate dimension could be total lies, made up to try and win the trust of Nick Fury, but the events of Avengers: Endgame does make it seem as though there could be some truth to the claims.

The record-breaking team-up briefly explains how alternate realities work, and how they could be created, opening up the entire franchise to new possibilities. But were there actually any alternate timelines created in Endgame? And if so, how many are there? Well, this is a weirdly complex issue, because there are multiple ways to answer it.

First and foremost, the easiest answer here is that there are an infinite number of alternate timelines or dimensions. If you ask really smart people about these concepts you'll here all about the String Theory and how the creation of one alternate timeline automatically creates an infinite number of them because there are an infinite number of choices in a single reality. That's not exactly addressed in Avengers: Endgame, but it makes about as much sense as this topic can. It's also worth noting that the Marvel Universe in the comics contains an infinite number of realities.

That's all well and good, and it could be totally true for the MCU if there is more explanation offered in Spider-Man: Far From Home, but it wasn't mentioned in Endgame. This is where things start to get complicated, because what was mentioned on the screen offers one answer, while the creators of the film said something different.

In the movie, Ancient One explains to Bruce Banner that an alternate timeline is created when an Infinity Stone is removed from its current trajectory in time. That's why Bruce comes up with the plan to have someone return all of the stones to the exact moment where they were taken. At the end of the movie, Steve Rogers does just that (we'll come back to him in a minute). However, throughout the Time Heist there was one moment when a stone was taken from its timeline, altering its future. This occurred when Loki stole the Tesseract in New York back in 2012.

This is the only time that a stone is taken and not returned -- that we know about. He didn't take it to another time that we know of, but did alter the future using an Infinity Stone. So, following that logic, there is one main timeline in the MCU, and one alternate timeline.

Things get confusing when you look at situations like Steve Rogers staying back with Peggy, and Thanos, Nebula, and Gamora leaving 2014 to travel to the present. The issue of 2014 was never addressed in the film, nor was Steve's journey, but the latter was mentioned by directors Joe and Anthony Russo. The filmmakers claim that Steve created an alternate timeline when he stayed with Peggy, and somehow found a way back to the original timeline at the end of the movie.

One would assume that, if Steve sticking around in the past creates and alternate reality, so would the removal of several people from their place in time. With that idea in mind, it feels safe to say that there are now three additional realities, counting the one that Loki created.

So there are four total realities in the MCU that we know of. At least, that's assuming the addition of one reality doesn't create an infinite number of them. Considering Mysterio tells Peter Parker that he's from Earth-616 in the Far From Home trailer, it's entirely likely that all of these realities already exist.

Then again, he could be lying about everything, so we could continue going in circles about this until the end of time.

Anyone else need a Tylenol?