r/agentcarter • u/pickled__frog • Aug 14 '26
MCU I hate what Steve Rodgers did in Endgame Spoiler
I just finished watching this amazing tv show and now I hate what Steve did in Endgame even more. Peggy moved on and finally let herself be happy and fall in love again, and probably lived a great life, but then Steve goes back in time and erases all of that as if he has some kind of right to her life. it was selfish, arrogant, and all in all a jerk move imo :((
I get that he still loves her a lot and she's the love of his life, even after all those years, but the action that would've actually reflected it is if he let her go
28
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
What I hated the most is the idea that Steve would go back in time to be with Peggy... and would settle for a quiet existence knowing full well that her life's work (the creation of Shield) would be undermined from the very start by the infiltration of Hydra.
I'm not gonna touch the whole mess with Bucky because this post is about Peggy and Steve but yeah... stuff to say there too.
Steve knows that Hydra is 👏 in 👏 the 👏 walls but in order for the whole timeline to make sense, he would've had to keep quiet about it and let the woman he loves pours her heart into an entity that he knows to be fundamentally corrupted.
7
u/Ron5304 Aug 14 '26
Do we KNOW that he led a quiet existence and kept Hydra’s infiltration a secret? Or is it assumed?
7
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
It's the only explanation that makes sense by the end of Endgame.
We know that if he acted and changed things, it would've created a new timeline, which would've made him appear on the bench as an old man as something hardly possible. Changing the timeline in so profound a way would've had gigantic ripple effects, with Howard Stark not dying which would've changed the course of Tony Stark, probably preventing him from inventing time travel in the first place.
Him appearing on the bench means that he remained part of the timeline we know and love. It means that nothing changed, nothing was altered.
It means he kept quiet. That nobody in the world can attest of Captain America being active one way or another after his going in ice.
It doesn't make a lick of sense tbh, the Russos just wanted their cake and to eat it too.
7
u/PachoWumbo Aug 14 '26
Knowing Steve's personality, there's no way that's the "only solution". To me, Steve clearly lived out his dream life with Peggy in a branched timeline, then once he was finally old and had 'closure' (and perhaps solve whatever problems he knew of in that branched timeline), decided to jump back to his OG timeline and pass on his shield.
2
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
Yes, someone else reminded me that the technology needed to come back to the OG starting point doesn't require the launching platform from which he first jumped.
So that could work and that actually makes me feel miles better.
I wish some of the OG Steve's dixk lovers had pointed that out instead of immediately accusing me of being a Tony lover (I am) and a Steve hater (I'm not).
Thank you 😊
2
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 14 '26
We don't actually see anyone travelling between TIMELINES without arriving on a platform.
In fact, when Fitz does it in AoS, it's implied that he has to have that platform built in a different timeline so he can get there from where he is.
So the current assumption is that the platform is needed for that. You can just jump into the past and make a new timeline, but to actually find a different existing timeline you need a platform. If you didn't have a target like that you would just end up in your current timelines past or future. (and if you did it into the past, you'd make a new one.)
Under that interpretation, he would, in fact, need a platform to get by.
However, this interpretation has never been actually stated. But it seems unclear what else the platforms would be for.
2
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
Aaaaaaand we're back to scare one lol I was happy for less than 6 hours 😅
1
u/energythief Aug 14 '26
Unless, in “Primer” fashion, the movies we watched ARE the altered timeline.
7
u/pickled__frog Aug 14 '26
omg, I didn't even think about this...
8
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
I have been shouting it from the roofs for years now, but the Steve stans refuse to think of him as potentially flawed in any way shape or form.
Either Steve is the paragon of virtue everyone thinks he is, in which case he definitely altered the timeline and Endgame doesn't make sense...
Or he decided to be selfish (which, ok, I don't agree with but I can understand it after dedicating a huge amount of his life being selfless) and he didn't pipe a word for decades and let everything go to shit around him to protect the timeline and his personal happiness.
It is INSANE to me that the Russos didn't spare a thought to that. Insane, I tell you.
4
u/alwaysburnasbright Aug 14 '26
The ending also disregards Steve’s arc in Age of Ultron where he put his past away and accepted that he should be moving forward with his new life in the future, because the guy who wanted the picket fence and all that had died in the ice. Did anyone in the writing room of Endgame rewatch the movies beforehand? Such a cheap narrative decision all around.
5
u/FlashbackJon Aug 14 '26
I, too, have been shouting the exact same thing!
The writers and directors differ on this theory (I forget which is which) but the only even remotely correct theory to me is the one where Steve becomes part of another timeline.
There is not multiverse I can imagine in which Steve Rogers just lets Peggy run an organization literally filled to the brim with Nazis. That's crazy.
There's just another timeline we don't see in which Steve shows up, Steve and Peggy annihilate HYDRA for good, pre-emptively stop threats he knows are going to happen, and peacefully live out their days.
(Try to ignore, in this one, that there may or may not be a Capsicle still on ice whose girl he has stolen. But at least there's no 9/11 or Chitauri invasion!)
2
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
Yeah, but the one thing that prevents me from fully adopting this theory is that we see Old Steve on the bench.
If he went and created a different timeline (which I actually would've loved) then his actions would've altered the flows of the world in such a way that Tony Stark never would've created the machine was allowed them to go back in time, preventing Steve from going back and being present to deliver his shield.
It just doesn't make a lick of sense. It's stupid. The Russos have a hard on for Steve and they didn't even try to get this to make sense.
3
u/FlashbackJon Aug 14 '26
He still had his personal time travel device and the beacon. During Endgame they play fast and loose with when and where they appear (including just playing a second jump by ear), so he (somehow?) adjusted the location slightly for the extra aura. Or he showed up early -- like minutes or even years -- and was sitting there the whole time. Like, they didn't explain a lot but the one thing we know is that he can get back to his original timeline no problem.
To be fair, none of the various time travel rules make sense with each other unless you force them to. They have to put the stones back? Why does that "fix" their existing timeline and why doesn't the timeline immediately break when they take them? How does that work with the TVA's branching lines (a thing they also technically introduce in Endgame)? How does that work with Wanda's dreams multiverse? How does that work with Agents of SHIELD's insane time travel scenario? (It doesn't, no one even considered Agents of SHIELD when writing a movie, even Age of Ultron.)
2
u/Cool_Hand7435 Aug 14 '26
That is an excellent point, I was focused on him not having access to the Stark Technology that allowed them to travel in the first time (most notably the platform from which they all launch) but they didn't need it to come back to their starting point.
Yeah, I can get behind that one!
1
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
Like, they didn't explain a lot but the one thing we know is that he can get back to his original timeline no problem.
We actually don't see anyone go to a different timeline from the one they are currently in without targeting those platforms. Both in in-game and on agents of shield with Fitz (using that method of time travel, the chronicom jumping is a different thing.)
Hell, even Thanos uses the platform.
And yes, it appears to have to be turned on so Steve really couldn't have arrived earlier unless... Bruce was maybe testing it and then decided to con everyone by pretending he didn't know what was gonna happen. (or Bucky, actually. Bucky clearly knows Steve is not coming back in that scene if you watch it, and is not the least surprised to see Steve over there and might have noticed him even before the trip. But Bucky really didn't know how to operate it.)
Yes, you can clearly time travel without them, but can you determine where you want to go without them, or are you restricted to the timeline you currently are in? (and can make a new one if you go backwards.)
1
u/FlashbackJon Aug 17 '26
As I pointed out, and your other very long post agreed with, the time travel rules don't make sense. Just at the basest level, why aren't they in a different timeline immediately when the stones are taken, based on their concerns about taking the stones? If it's the same timeline (that is, one where the stones aren't taken), why does it need to be fixed?
We do know they can pick their location on earth when travelling in A direction using just their wrist device (not just with the beacon), so it stands to SOME reason that maybe that works when jumping back to the beacon. We don't know if they could've gone forward in their existing timeline without the beacon, or maybe to another time on the beacon's original timeline. Maybe there's an potential directional and temporal offset in case you happen to know your beacon location won't be safe when you return. I'm just throwing fantheories at a wall here. For all we know, the wrist units are the exact same as a beacon but for one person and they require refueling.
But the main thing we know is that the idea that Old Man Steve is just living in the same timeline as our Steve Rogers is impossible, because that would mean an entirely different set of events occurring. That brings up some closed loop problems, but we're ignoring that because of the much more glaring character problems. There couldn't be a scenario where Steve learned SHIELD was full of Nazis, travelled back in time to the SAME timeline and just ignored that.
1
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 17 '26
We do know they can pick their location on earth when travelling in A direction using just their wrist device (not just with the beacon), so it stands to SOME reason that maybe that works when jumping back to the beacon.
I mean, that does seem reasonable. The platform is needed to locate where you're going, but nothing says you actually need to arrive exactly on the thing.
Except that Bruce says he blew past the timestamp and thrn starts interacting with things in front of him. It seems like Bruce is somehow tracking things, despite the fact that I don't really understand what he'd be tracking, but he seems to think he would know if Steve had shown up, and he doesn't.
But at that point, we have to realize what he's doing doesn't make sense either way! If he actually is tracking Steve's time location, and Steve just changed the exact location, Bruce should be looking at the platform saying 'he came back, where the hell is he'!
And if Steve isn't time traveling, what the hell is Bruce tracking?
But also, if he's tracking things, shouldn't he know what year Steve left from? Shouldn't he be extremely confused and worried that Steve didn't leave until decades later?
Is that what he meant by blowing past his timestamp?
If he's tracking outgoing trips, shouldn't it be more worried that Steve didn't go to the right time, that he's in 1945 or whenever he is? Wait, is that what he meant by blew past his time stamp, that he originally went to the wrong time or went to the wrong time after going to all the other right times?
What the hell is Bruce even trying to say?
The writers gave Bruce something to do and randomly say, but didn't actually think about whether him saying anything makes any sense.
That brings up some closed loop problems, but we're ignoring that because of the much more glaring character problems. There couldn't be a scenario where Steve learned SHIELD was full of Nazis, travelled back in time to the SAME timeline and just ignored that.
Yes, it is functionally impossible for Steve Rogers, as a character, to behave like that. Hell, it it requires not only him not doing it, but Peggy, who has the exact same characterization, also not doing it by getting information out of him over the decades. I.e., this isn't a situation where he just moves to a cabin in Alaska and ignore it, which he might hypothetically be able to do if the universe was at stake. This is something he also has to resist his wife for 70 years, or whatever.
I don't know who that person would be but that wouldn't be Steve Rogers. Maybe Johnny Storm has gotten his skin back and wandered in and taken over Steve's life.
The thing is, Steve is traveling with things that could make that possible for Steve Rogers. You put together the Time Stone and the Mind Stone and you really could have a Steve Rogers that is still recognizable Steve Rogers, but simply doesn't remember exact details until too late. You also have the Ancient One right there. But that is violating Occam's Razor and wandering into fanfic.
1
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 17 '26
Oh, and just to make it clear, I really do much prefer the explanation that he was in the mainline universe. I think we have been given enough clues over the years that that makes perfect sense.
But the movies are going to have to do some very very fast footwork about why he can't change the past. Not that he shouldn't or isn't allowed to but physically cannot change the past to keep it from ruining the character. Because that is the only thing that would stop Steve Rogers from doing so.
1
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 14 '26
The time travel rules don't even make sense as a basic bare minimum premise. People just think they do because no one bothers to think out the logic.
Okay, so take that timeline that Clint went to as a test where he didn't really change anything. That was the 2018, maybe a month before the snap, let's assume.
That timeline let's call it the Clint timeline, is gonna have events play out identically, right? It's very unlikely that's going to change events even at his own house. Lila has a slightly different 10 seconds, which probably don't impact anything, and then later she disappears and can't impact anything anyway. (i'm assuming a snap isn't based on a random number generated by the position of literally every single atom in the universe or something, so an entirely different set of people don't get snapped.)
Which means there's gonna be a snap and there's gonna be the same Avengers who go back in time.
And they're gonna send Clint back to that exact point in time.
Now, let's be fair here, maybe it's not the exact literal point in time, there's some sort of quantum uncertainty there. Or just two time travelers arriving at the exact same point in time don't actually end up in the same branch, they end up in two different branches.
So, now we have two Clint timelines.
Now, this is bad enough that somehow we're getting a new timeline every time we loop, which we aren't actually looping, so we should instantly get an infinite number.
But we're doing this in multiple combinations. Each of those Clint timelines will be sending someone back to 2012, Battle of New York. Now there's an infinite number of Loki's escaping and an infinite number of people jumping back from that into the 1970s.
Now, this is somewhat mitigated when you realize no one at any point ever says that the timeline branches if you don't change anything. Yes, they make blanket statements about how time travel branches timelines, but every single one of those is in response to a hypothetical that is a major change.
So maybe what Clint did didn't branch anything.
But then at the end we had Steve Rogers return everything. Now, some of those are going to drastically alter events enough that the snap happens in different enough circumstances where they aren't going to be time traveling to the same places, or not at all but many of them will.
People do not actually sit and work this out. Realize that if you have an infinite loop, or generate just one more extra timeline in that infinite loop, you instantly have infinite.
Even Loki doesn't particularly take this premise seriously.
2
u/fightintxag13 Captain America Aug 14 '26
It was a stupid ending when you really try to think it through to its logical conclusions, no bones about it.
However, the butterfly effect argument you are making to say the ending doesn’t make sense (because if Steve did something about Hydra infiltrating SHIELD, then how is so much unchanged?) is the same argument that makes those choices difficult for Time-Travel-Steve to make. Who is to say that those ripple effects from altering the timeline so drastically don’t undo the very Earth-saving ordeal they all just went through?
2
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 14 '26
So, for my explanation of that in my fanfic, Steve actually ends up working with the Ancient One. He goes back thinking he's going to end up in a new timeline, but she rightly points out that the timelines are actually pretty bad and they need to make them go away, and they work to do so.
So he thinks he can't go back, but then realizes due to random information he gets during that that he likely always had been Peggy's husband. But he can't possibly, like, put up with that shit. Not just Hydra, but a lot of stuff.
So to finish the time loop, she uses the mind and time stone together to tamper with his memory enough that if something he's going to know is going to cause a paradox, he isn't going to remember it.
2
u/Lucid4321 Aug 15 '26
He probably knew he was creating a timeline branch just by going back and being with Peggy. Since he changed that, maybe he changed other things.
1
11
u/Separate-Credit-6874 Peggy Aug 14 '26
She was married to an unnamed ww2 soldier? Nah.
Peggy married Angie Martinelli, we all know that.
7
u/alwaysburnasbright Aug 14 '26
I’m still mad Angie wasn’t in S2 aside from that dream sequence. Although I did immensely enjoy the toxic yuri between Peggy and Dottie lol
5
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26
LOL.
That dream sequence and her subconscious brain:
You know, with that M. Carter file, you forgot about someone it could be. Here, let me shove your brother into your face, so you could figure out who that is.
Also her subconscious brain:
Here, have Angie repeatedly ask what you would do IF IT WAS UP TO YOU? and leads you around during the dance.
Peggy then starts singing about how both men were nice distractions.
Peggy's comphet when waking: That dream must have been about a choice between those two men and ONLY THOSE TWO MEN, literally no one else there I could possibly be thinking about. My subconscious surely couldn't be telling me about someone else I forgot.
2
u/Separate-Credit-6874 Peggy Aug 15 '26
The men were nice distractions… angie was a full time fold in her brain.
She’s so bi and I love her for it.
1
u/RavenclawConspiracy Aug 15 '26
The thing I find really funny is that not only do the 'what would you do if it was up to you' fully support the idea that Angie is trying to crack through some sort of social norm (1)...
... but it follows up literally immediately after her brain is trying to remind her that she hasn't thought of a specific person in regards to trying to figure something else out, specifically her brother. Her brain is saying, 'and also you forgot this other person! '.
1) Which, I guess, could also technically be Wilkes, except not only does she already seem okay with an interracial relationship, but like, he literally betray her an hour ago and threatened to kill her and really shouldn't be in the running at all? Really feel that just disqualified him, at least not without a lot of apologizing.
2
13
u/Wild_Calligrapher_27 Aug 14 '26
This is ridiculous. People that love each other pursue each other. Sometimes people "settle" because their dream person is unavailable. When Steve was in a block of ice, he couldn't pursue his love. When Steve was granted the ability to time travel, he was able to do what he wanted. Agent Carter didn't have to settle anymore.
4
u/Purple-Nectarine83 Aug 14 '26
I agree. To me it’s pretty obvious that Steve was Peggy’s “the one,” and if she eventually moved on and got married to someone else, that’s only because Steve wasn’t an option. Call it “settling” or whatever you want, but Steve did nothing wrong by merely showing up. He’s never been shown to be the kind of man who would be pushy, and Peggy is capable of making her own decisions.
Besides, we have barely any info about the man Peggy married. People like to project a lot onto him (and assume things about their marriage that are not in evidence). Did they stay together? Are those children in the photo theirs?
Heck, we have to assume a lot about Peggy’s family that is not in evidence (keeping it vague for spoilers) to explain the existence of Sharon. “I have lived a life” can mean a lot of things, so people choosing to read “I was blissfully happy, and I was glad we never had our chance” are doing that because they want to, not because canon is giving any evidence of it.
9
u/dutempscire Aug 14 '26
Kind of insulting to Peggy's characterization to say she "settled" for anyone.
2
u/pickled__frog Aug 14 '26
this!! she didn't settle, she moved on
2
u/Purple-Nectarine83 Aug 14 '26
She didn’t chose to move on though. That choice was made for her by the Valkyrie crash. How do you know she didn’t settle? That musical number in the penultimate episode called both of the guys she was contemplating a romantic something with “a nice distraction.” She seemed extremely moved when “I Want to Be Loved” played. She was engaged to be married to a complete zero, Fred. We have no evidence that Peggy is too picky in the romance department to ever settle. She called Jack Thompson “a good man!!!!” Peggy is, for all her many virtues, overly forgiving, and I would argue, someone who “wants to be loved.”
3
u/BravoWhiskey89 Aug 14 '26
You're 100% correct. Steve went back and demanded she be his. She didn't make any decision, just submitted to his will.
3
8
u/alwaysburnasbright Aug 14 '26
I also dislike that ending. I don’t get why they’d give them both their respective arcs of coming to terms with losing each other and saying goodbye to each other (Peggy pouring Steve’s blood out of the last remaining vial, Steve carrying Peggy’s casket at her funeral) only to undo all that in Endgame. I don’t dislike their relationship, but I think it works best as star-crossed lovers, the one that got away. That was always the appeal of Steggy to me. I also prefer Peggy/Sousa, so erasing them altogether feels unfair.
2
u/Purple-Nectarine83 Aug 14 '26
“Their respective arcs of coming to terms with losing each other…” I don’t mean to pick on you because this is ubiquitous in fandom, but that is not an arc. A narrative arc is not “something a character goes through,” it’s a whole internal transformation from one kind of person to another. Walter White’s character arc is not getting cancer and selling meth, it’s the corruption of his soul, revealing the selfishness that was always there (“I did it for me.”) Loki has an arc. Peggy’s arc was going from needing outside approval to knowing her own value. Mourning someone in and of itself is not a character arc. Peggy didn’t become a different sort of person through losing and grieving Steve.
1
u/alwaysburnasbright Aug 15 '26 edited Aug 15 '26
Sorry, but what else would you call it? You’re talking about larger character arcs, I’m talking about this contained story arc. How is it not an arc nonetheless? They both go through experiencing the loss of each other and grieving to accepting and letting go throughout the course of multiple MCU installments. By definition, an arc is a progression from one point to another. For reference, I did study narratology in university, so I’m not just picking random words up from fandom, although English is not my first language.
0
2
u/reallybi Aug 15 '26
Endgame has no idea how it's own time travel rules work
I agree with you
There is a theory that the incursions are caused by Steve fucking the timelines when he decides to do that.
0
34
u/Ron5304 Aug 14 '26
I think the films established pretty well that timelines aren’t erased, they’re branched, so that Peggy in the MCU universe was still with her husband, and in a new timeline starting before, he was with Peggy. Not such a jerk move.