Six Years Later and This Avengers: Endgame Moment Still Makes No Sense

It feels like only yesterday fans across the world were left howling as they watched everyone’s beloved billionaire playboy Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) sacrifice himself to take out Thanos (Josh Brolin) once and for all. The phrases “I am Iron Man” and “Love you 3,000” have since been indelibly etched in the heart of every Marvel fan. Six years later, a lot of us are still reeling and recovering from some of what went down in Avengers: Endgame. Among them is one scene that remains as iconic as it is confusing, and that is the appearance of old man Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) at the tail end of the film.

Videos by ComicBook.com

When the few remaining heroes return after placing the stones back where they belong, Steve is initially nowhere to be seen. They then notice him sitting on a bench, as if he had been there all along, just waiting for them to make their way home. But how did he end up there in the first place?

The ending of Avengers: Endgame took us on an emotional rollercoaster through the past and present. The epilogue included a scene where the OG Captain America, Steve Rogers, is seen sitting on a bench right behind the time-travel platform; only he is now old, having lived a full life with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) as his wife. When Steve went to return the Infinity Stones, he decided not to return to the present, as someone who has lived too long a life in service of the nation, the world, and the universe. For the first time, he chose to be selfish and reunited with Peggy for the dance he once promised her. The scene is appropriately thick with unbridled emotion and mostly focuses on him passing his mantle and shield to Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie). It’s the perfect sendoff for someone who always puts others’ happiness before his. Everyone shed a tear or two, satisfied that Captain America had gotten his happy ending, after all. Except… that ending just doesn’t make sense.

Captain America’s Endgame Ending is a Major MCU Mystery

Don’t get us wrong: we are all delighted for good ol’ Cap. If anyone deserved a beautiful, clever partner and a life of peace at the end of it all, it’s him. But how did he make it happen? Sure, the part where he just stayed in the past after putting back the stones makes sense, but how did he end up on that bench all those years later on Earth-616?

We know he didn’t end up with Peggy in the original “Sacred Timeline.” He is nowhere to be seen in the two seasons of Agent Carter, and even Peggy’s niece, Sharon, didn’t recognize him when they almost ended up romantically entangled. Just how well could Steve hide himself in the past that no one ever recognized him? The other possibility is that the moment he chose to stay in the past, an alternate timeline was created. But if that is true, how did he end up back on the Sacred Timeline just in time to pass on his wisdom and shield to Sam? The Pym particles do allow people to travel through time, but do they also let one jump from one reality to another? Also, how did Steve access the time travel platform in that other reality when we know it was the only one of its kind, created by the Avengers after The Snap as their one chance in a billion to stop Thanos?

Even Marvel Can’t Explain Endgame‘s Ending

The answer to this problem has remained murky so far, with Marvel Studios making little to no attempts to dispel the confusion. It certainly doesn’t help that the creative team doesn’t seem to agree with each other on what happened.

While directors Joe and Anthony Russo believe that the timeline branched off the moment the Captain decided to live in the past, the writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, are adamant that Steve was part of the Sacred timeline all along. The writers refer to the moment the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) explains the mechanics of time to Bruce Banner: she explicitly says that a new timeline is created when an Infinity Stone is removed from it. Since Steve returned the stones, no new branches were created, and he presumably lived on in the main timeline; he just never met his other self, the one who joined the OG Avengers, and hid so well from sight that no one really questioned his presence. It certainly helps that his other version was frozen and stuck undersea for a huge chunk of the time. There’s also the conspicuous fact that Peggy’s husband is pointedly absent from her bedside when she is elderly and dying in the hospital. That husband could have been Steve, at least according to the writers. Possible, but not entirely plausible.

Whatever the case may be, so far, there has been no official attempt to address the mystery of Avengers: Endgame‘s ending. So, fans have been left grasping at straws and wild speculations, none of which seem to fully answer the question. We just hope that Avengers: Doomsday will put this issue to rest once and for all. Until then, all fans can do is suspend disbelief and think it’s all just, like Doctor Who would say, “Wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.”

You can watch Avengers: Endgame on Disney+.