Now that Disney Plus series Loki has established the rules and regulations of time travel within the context of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a lot of fans have been revisiting Avengers: Endgame to try and pick some holes in the time heist, given that Earth’s Mightiest Heroes changing events in the aftermath of the Battle of New York is what allowed the 2012 version of Tom Hiddleston to escape in the first place, setting the stage for everything that happened in his solo series.
One of the biggest talking points has been the adventures of Steve Rogers at the end of the movie, when he went journeying through time and space to return the Infinity Stones to their rightful places, which resulted in him showing up as an old man having lived a life of peace and happiness with Peggy Carter.
There’s been plenty of debate in the two years since then as to where Steve went, how he accomplished his mission and what he was up to for the remaining 80 years. That only increased when Loki introduced the idea of a Nexus event, and Captain America popping up all over the place to return the Stones may have gotten the TVA’s attention.
In a new interview, Loki director Kate Herron admitted she’d been thinking about it just as much as the rest of us, and offered her take on whether or not Steve and Peggy would have been pruned for messing with the Sacred Timeline.
“I’ve been thinking about this. People are going to be annoyed because it’s not a definitive answer, but also I can only really answer as a fan, right? My theory is this: It comes down to if you’re an optimist or a pessimist. If you’re an optimist, maybe it was okay for them living that way, and the branch wasn’t so severe that it didn’t need to be pruned, and that meant that they could stay together. Maybe the romantics can say somehow that managed to exist. And then the pessimists think, ‘They probably got pruned’.
It depends on how people fall on that side of things, because in my head I guess it would be… generally branches have to be pruned and then maintained, right? But it depends. Like if it’s alternate, it would imply that it’s running alongside our main timeline, so yeah. I don’t want to definitively say that they were pruned, but by our logic in the TVA, probably. But maybe where there’s a will there’s a way, and they weren’t too disruptive and managed to live happily ever after.”
Some folks were of the belief they’d spotted Agent Carter in the background of a Loki episode, which would then tie into the theory she’d been pruned for having Steve back in her life, especially when it was also confirmed the older Cap was present at her funeral as a coffin bearer, as was his younger self. It’s all very confusing, but that’s time travel.
