The Russo Brothers explain Captain America's ending in 'Avengers: Endgame'

Warning this article contains spoilers from Avengers: Endgame

Marvel fans had a lot of questions after watching Avengers: Endgame and one of the biggest ones concerned Captain America.

Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was tasked with returning the Infinity Stones back to the exact times they were taken, in 2012, 2014 and the 1970s, in order to defuse the time branches created by each removal. However, Cap didn’t return via the time machine rather as an old man who seemed to be sat waiting for them on a bench nearby.

One of the last scenes is of Steve and his one true Love Peggy Carter dancing together, which hints that he stayed in the past in order to be with her, however, there’s a problem.

The Ancient One makes it very clear that if you change anything in the past it creates a branch of time, a new dimension for that reality to exist, that’s why she’s so desperate to get the Time Stone back because otherwise, Doctor Strange can’t use it to defeat Dormammu in 2016.

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So where did Steve Rogers go to get so old?

“If Cap were to go back into the past and live there, he would create a branched reality,” Joe Russo explained. “The question then becomes, how is he back in this reality to give the shield away?”

That shield is another question. He couldn’t have taken it from one of the past timelines they originally travelled to as it would create a time branch, so, did he grab it from another alternate reality?

And when he gives it to Sam Wilson and responds with “it isn’t” when Sam says it feels like it belongs to someone else does that mean in that reality Falcon is actually Captain America?

Read more: What Endgame’s ending means for the MCU’s future

“Interesting question, right?” Joe added. “Maybe there’s a story there. There’s a lot of layers built into this movie and we spent three years thinking through it, so it’s fun to talk about it and hopefully fill in holes for people so they understand what we’re thinking.”

The acknowledgement of other dimensions by the Russos could mean that they will finally come into play in Marvel’s Phase 4 after being utilized for decades in the Marvel Comics.

It would certainly provide an easy way to introduce the X-Men whose absence could easily be explained using this narrative device as well as answer why mutants don’t exist in this Avengers reality. Or the may just go with this gamma radiation theory.

For now, it’s good to know that there is potential for more Captain America in the MCU even if Chris Evans has retired.

Avengers: Endgame is in cinemas now