The Russo Bros. Explain The Mechanics of Time Travel and The Multiverse in The MCU

Ever since Avengers: Endgame was released, fans have been talking about and debating the mechanics of time travel in the film. Then it was revealed that the events of the film opened up a multiverse. These are huge elements that have been introduced to the MCU and they are things that I imagine will continue to be played with in the upcoming films.

During an interview with directors Joe and Anthony Russo, they opened up about time travel and the multiverse and how they work in this universe. When attempting to explain time travel, Anthony joked:

"Here’s the most important thing about time travel: It doesn’t exist.”

Joe went on to say:

"According by the rules of the movie, as stated by the Hulk and by The Ancient One, we go to great pains to tell you that Back to the Future is bullshit. If you’re trying to change the rules of time travel in a movie, unless you are super clear and point out that these are not the rules from Back to the Future, people just won’t understand it. We learned about this after three test screenings. We had to go back and add in more jokes about Back to the Future so that people would take our multiverse theory seriously."

Yeah, they really pushed the point home that the time travel used in the MCU is not the same kind of time travel that we’ve seen in the movies like Back to the Future. The whole time travel aspect of the film was used to set up the multiverse. In regards to the multiverse, Joe went on to say:

"The Hulk says if you’re in the present and you go back to the past, you cannot affect the present because it has already occurred. That now becomes your past. Right?. And if you’re [currently] in the past, this is now your present. And anything you do in that time shift would create a multiverse reality. It will create a new future, but it’s not going to affect your past."

Okay class, are you following along? Did that makes sense? It’s a pretty good way of explaining it. Anthony then says that everyone is going to have a different understanding of it all and how it works:

“But to be honest, talking about time travel is very similar to talking about god. Everyone’s going to have a different understanding of what it is." 

Joe added:

"At the end of the day, any thinking about time travel breaks down. What we tried to do was make sure the rules we were playing with [in regard to] time travel were honored by the plot of the movie."

While there were some complicated aspects to time travel and how they used it to set up the multiverse, they did a pretty good job of explaining it in the film. It didn’t really confuse me as much as it raised a lot of questions about how it was going to affect everything in the MCU, which will obviously be explored in future films.

What are you thoughts on all of this? Does the way its all explained make sense to you? How do you see it working in the future of the MCU?

Source: THR