To illustrate precisely how Endgame went wrong with time travel, I am going to compare it to the time travel in DC’s Legends of Tomorrow TV show. Specifically the final two episodes of season 2, “Doomworld” and “Aruba”. Yeah, I’m comparing Marvel and DC, there’s a good reason, I promise.

Okay, so Endgame’s plotline is pretty well known, but in case you don’t know it, here’s a brief summary; Thanos kills half of the population of the universe, the Avengers (what’s left of them) freak and kill Thanos, who has unfortunately already destroyed the Infinity Stones, the only things that could fix the universe. 5 years pass, and Scott Lang (Antman), previously presumed dead, comes out of the Quantum Realm and tells everyone that time travel is possible and that they can use it to reverse what happened. They go back in time to get the Infinity Stones before Thanos, they do, and, long story short, one epic battle later they kill Thanos and his army. They put the stones back, and almost everyone lives happily ever after.

Now, on to the plotlines of Legends’ “Doomworld” and “Aruba”. Before I go any further, let me just say that season 2 of Legends came out in 2016, several years before Endgame OR Infinity War. Alright, so there’s this thing called the Spear of Destiny that can change reality. The bad guys, called “The Legion of Doom” manage to get it from the Legends and use it to create their perfect reality, which turns out to be a Doomworld for everyone else. The Legends exist in this world, but at first don’t remember who they are. I’m not gonna get into how they get their memories back, but most of them do, and they decide that they have to go to the past to steal the Spear of Destiny from themselves to stop the Legion from getting it. They manage to do this, but they all die, except their leader Sarah, who uses the Spear to 1. Revive her friends, 2. Get rid of the most annoying member of the Legion (Eobard Thawne, long story, watch The Flash) and 3. She uses the Spear to remove the power of the Spear, making it useless. Everyone lives, they return the Legion to their proper places in time (did I mention they’re all time travelers?) and decide to go on vacation in Aruba. Unfortunately, they do not land in Aruba, they land in Los Angeles in 2017, which is covered in dinosaurs and features Big Ben and a number of other buildings not from LA in the background. The season ends with Sarah saying, “Guys, I think we broke time.”

Okaaaaay, still with me? Good.

So, to give you my thesis statement; Endgame’s time travel was wrong because there are no consequences. This also happens to be what Legends does right.

The problem with Endgame is that you have so many people who get taken out of their proper times and not returned. A few examples; Loki stealing the Tesseract after the battle of New York, Gamora from 2014 just chilling now in the future somewhere. The Thanos that was defeated in the big battle was from the past and therefore him dying then creates a massive paradox. Like, what the heck? Other noteworthy additions; Nebula shot her past self and didn’t die. Steve Rogers went and apparently lived an entire life in the past with Peggy???? (Without telling her about Hydra, rescuing Bucky, saving the Starks, meeting young Tony, or doing a whole host of other things. Steve Rogers who in Civil War said, “If I see a situation headed south I can’t just ignore it.” Yeah, right, Marvel, that’s exactly the kind of life Steve would live in the past.)

Now, literally all of this (except the part with Steve, but that’s another post) would be fine if Endgame had shown us that there were consequences to these actions. Like, for instance, Loki leaving after the battle of New York completely changes the next two Thor movies at least. Gamora never meeting Peter Quill in the past but him still remembering her is also a paradox. But no, Marvel leaves us with the sunny, cheerful ending where everyone but Tony’s family and Bucky Barnes live happily ever after. No consequences to time or anything.

Meanwhile, Legends of Tomorrow (and The Flash, for the record) is all about consequences. It is made very clear that the Legends going back in time to meet with their past selves will have consequences, and the show delivers those consequences when the group crashes in LA and finds dinosaurs and Big Ben there, and with Sarah’s line “I think we broke time”. To diverge a little, every time Barry Allen (the Flash) has gone back in time and changed something, there have been massive consequences for his friends and family and city that he then has to deal with (black holes, portals to other universes, his friends losing family members, his friends gaining superpowers, ect.). Another way to handle this is demonstrated in Doctor Who season 3, where in the final two episodes the villain makes a “Paradox Machine” to remove the consequences of humans from the future coming back in time to kill their ancestors. 

So, by all rights we should have a third movie titled, “Avengers: We broke Time” that deals with the consequences of Endgame. Because there are consequences, even if Marvel wants to ignore them. (Also, if you’re not looking at my comparisons of the plots of Legends and Endgame and wondering of Marvel blatantly ripped off DC then, well, I don’t know what to tell you. I could be wrong, but I can’t unsee the similarities.)

One of the most poignant scenes in the MCU, to me, is Yondu’s funeral in the second Guardians. I think part of that is the emotional pay off and subtle bits of foreshadowing throughout the story. (“You’ll never hear the horns of freedom when you die, Yondu”, for example.) Nothing terribly obvious that he’s going to die, but when he does, it makes narrative sense. And the funeral, while still about honoring Yondu’s life and sacrifice, is also about what the Guardians learned from him:

Peter realizes that Yondu was the father figure he was looking for all along, Peter’s speech gives Gamora the motivation to reach out to Nebula, and Rocket realizes that it’s possible to fight and disagree with your family and still be worthy of their love and forgiveness. It’s satisfying, emotional, and memorable in terms of both character and narrative development.

(Side note, Lindsay Ellis has a fantastic video essay on this scene: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8VulkN5OLEM)

Compare this to Tony’s funeral in Endgame, and it can’t even hold a candle to the GOTG scene. It’s about Tony for roughly the first two minutes of the scene with his pre-recorded message, but even that is played over the “happy ending montage” featuring everyone but Tony and his family. You could argue that this makes sense, as Tony’s sacrifice is what enabled these happy endings to occur, so it’s honoring his legacy and showing that his sacrifice wasn't in vain. 

But after the message ends, the funeral stops being about Tony entirely. Instead, it seems to shift to showing off how many characters the studio can fit into one scene. The camera pans from the arc reactor floating away, then focuses on what is essentially the entirety of the MCU cast. (Most of which don’t even make sense to have at the funeral. Hank Pym never got along with Tony, and the Guardians/Black Panther crews barely worked with him. So those people wouldn’t logically be invited to the funeral.)

While it was undeniably cool to see all of the superheroes in one scene, it again shifts the focus away from Tony at his own funeral. And remember, we just saw everybody together in the final battle! The scene would have been much more impactful if the funeral was more intimate; with very few people besides Peter, Pepper, Morgan, Rhodey, Happy, and the OG Avengers.

To add insult to injury, of all the days Steve could have chosen to reveal his older self to the team…he chose the day of Tony’s funeral. Again, the funeral is less about honoring Tony and how he impacted the team and more about the MCU showing off all the cool stuff to come. Which, again, is undoubtedly cool! Give us the transfer of the shield/Captain America mantle to Sam! Give us Valkyrie becoming the new king of Asgard! Give us Clint and Wanda talking about how they miss the people they viewed as siblings! (I know she was technically talking about Vision, but in my mind, she was talking about Pietro.) But give it to us in a scene that isn’t supposed to be about Tony!!! The return of the infinity stones, the transfer of the shield, and the crowning of Valkyrie could have all easily been separate scenes that weren’t happening during the funeral. The entire scene just feels muddled and overloaded, and I feel that it could have been executed a lot better to honor not just Tony but also the legacy of the MCU so far.