#206 – When Perfect Endings Break the Multiverse

Welcome back to Marvel Maniac and MCU After Show. This is your host Eric Cicada, aka Mr. Honest, here with you on this wonderful Christmas Eve. I'll be having a wonderful holiday. There have been a lot of rumors lately about Chris Evans returning to play Steve Rogers in Avengers Doomsday. And I want to say this right up front, I don't want this to happen unless it works. Because Endgame gave Steve leave. What we all felt like was a perfect ending, a full circle. He returned the Infinity Stones and Thor's hammer. He stayed behind with Peggy. He chose Peggy and he finally went home to get that final dance. Beautiful ending, right? Emotionally, that ending works. But the MCU doesn't live in an emotional only universe. And these are comic book movies. And they say the only character who stays dead in the Marvel universe is Uncle Ben. MCU really lives in a consequences universe. And once you introduce the multiverse in the Multiverse saga, perfect endings don't really stay perfect if you even put a little bit of thought into it. How did Steve return those stones and the hammer without causing like five different incursions? If you don't remember what an incursion is, it's when two worlds, two realities, the lining between them erodes and only one eats the other or they eat each other alive. One or one or the other. John Kinski as Mr. Fantastic in Multiverse of Madness gave us this in a quick prompt dialogue. And it's been our rule in our rule book ever since. So the ending for Steve, it made me very happy. I thought an end game, that when he met Peggy again, it was a very sweet ending for a great character. So something that always bothered me a little bit, tiny little, It'll itsy bit is an Iron Man. I guess he didn't have as hard of a time as Steve trying to adjust to a whole new reality, a whole new 60s, whatever, years later in the future and missing the love is love of his life the whole time he was there. I still wonder and thought that Tony's sacrifice was so amazing. But at the end of the day, Cap kind of got. He got got away free and Tony was the one who had to lay down his life on the line. It's almost as if that foreshadowing was Steve dooming Tony. And at the end of the day, that's not really what it was. But honestly, it bothered me a little bit that Steve got to walk away, Tony didn't. It's not that I wanted Steve to die. It just bothered me that he made the sacrifice you know what also bothered me in a side window is that totally ate up Natasha Romanoff, AKA Black Widows ending because Iron man did the snap and he saved the universe. But it wouldn't have been able to been done without Natasha Romanoff. But that is for another episode. Let's talk about the end game problem. Let's just slow this down. Steve Rogers didn't just hand back a few shiny rocks. He traveled across multiple timelines. He carried Mir with him and he made choices inside branching realities. And then somehow he lived decades, decades in one of them before quietly re entering the prime timeline as an old man. I'll be honest, that could have been a scroll for all we know. If they're bringing him back in the mix, I don't know if old man Steve is the. I don't know what the whole deal with that even is. That's surely gonna have to be written really well to make sense of everything. And also I feel a little bad for Anthony Mackie if Steve Rogers is coming back. But the key words have been Steve Rogers, never Captain America. He definitely could come back without donning Captain America. And there are other alter egos for him in the comics. Really great channels like screen crush on YouTube have definitely speculated stuff like this before. I believe they brought up that he could be the character called the Nomad. I don't know much about it, but it's just probably an alternate Captain America. It would probably be a good way to go about it if we want to keep Anthony Mackie in his earned position. It took him 18 years, it took him a while to get into the suit. And then you have his own movie. However, the MCU has since taught us one word that changes everything. Like I said, incursions, timelines, colliding. Universe is collapsing, reality cracking because someone interfered. So here's the uncomfortable question. What if Steve Rogers final act of love was also an act of interference? This doesn't make him selfish, does not make him evil. He is a very simple mind about it. I'm not saying he's a simple minded man. I'm saying time travel is big enough to, you know, grasp on its own, not, not the consequences of it. Branching timelines, incursions, all that stuff. Steve doesn't know what's man. He thinks he did the right thing and he went home, he did his mission and he's ready to settle down with the woman of his dreams, Peggy Carter. And this only really makes Steve human. Steve didn't know the multiverse would unravel. He just knew he was Tired of fighting. And that's where the tragedy really starts. These well intended choices of. I mean, it was a choice. He was going to take the stones back. This was Bruce's idea anyway. It's kind of. It's kind of the Hulk's fault. He didn't know if. And we don't even really fully know if he caused that much trouble. Because you can reference Loki in the first. In the first episode, Ravana Renslayer is at trial with Loki and he blames the Avengers. And they said what they did was supposed to happen. So there's one single line in the MCU that kind of contradicts this theory. I think it could definitely be explained away, though. And who knows what if all of this was in Kang's plan? He who remains. I don't. I don't think so. Seems like Steve might have messed up, in my opinion. And I don't know how they could retcon that. But that, in my opinion, would have to be something involved in the return of his character. Because if he broke something, he's definitely going to be hell bent on fixing. Doesn't undo Steve's heroism. It doesn't undo any of the things from any of his movies. It just really brings him back into the fold of the story, which would make sen. So enter Doom. A villain born from consequence. Now imagine this story from the other side. You're Victor von Doom. Your world is gone. Your family's gone. Your universe erased, not by chaos, but by interference. And when you follow the fracture lines back, you don't find monsters. You find heroes. From Doom's perspective, the Avengers didn't even save reality. They played with it. They chose love. They chose hope. They chose themselves. And millions of lives paid the price. So when Doom looks at Steve Rogers, he doesn't see a legend. He sees proof that the gods don't have to be cruel. They just have to be careless. And now here's where it gets brutal. Doom doesn't confront Steve as Doom. This is my theory. He wears Tony Stark's face. Because Steve would follow Tony anywhere into a battle at this point, especially after seeing him lay down what he thought was his life on the line. I don't know if Steve would just assume that Tony survived. I don't know how Dr. Doom would play this, but Steve would trust Tony with anything. I know that for sure. So Steve steps back into the action thinking, if Tony's here, then maybe we can actually fix this. And Doom lets him believe it. That's not a punch, and it's definitely not a beam. That's a betrayal. Tony's face is the cruelest weapon because like I said, Steve sees things straight and forward. The whole time travel thing, probably something he couldn't even get his mind around. So when he sees Tony, it's very Shakespearean, tragedy esque. Because from doom side, he lost everything. Thanks to Steve Rogers, most likely. And from Steve's side. Multiverse. What are you talking about? I don't know. Multiverse. All I know is this man is someone who I saw save the universe, and he needs my help again. It's tragic, and it's also kind of cool, let's be honest. Like, this is the type of thing that, like, gets you really curious and wondering. And, you know, we don't know how. How to the extent if this happened, see how much Steve really did mess up. Maybe he destroyed multiple universes. Maybe he made some pit stops along the way. May he helped Thor fight the dark elves for one reason or another. When he brought back the reality stone. What if he couldn't return the soul stone back to the red. Red Skull? Isn't that the fact that we know that canonically that happened, that Steve met Red Skull? He definitely did. If he were going to return the soul stone, and I don't think you could just give the soul stone back. So maybe he had to keep it, or he had to bury it or just leave it somewhere in the bottom of that water where you wake up and I have the soul stone in your hand. It's wasn't a burden of his to carry. And I don't know, maybe he secretly brought Natasha Romanov back. I don't think he did. I don't think it's possible. I'm very curious if he fought Red Skull or they just had a deep conversation and there's no receipt. You can't return the stone, sir. Now, let's think about Loki. He's not the trickster, not the villain this time around, the one who sees everything. The new he who remains. Loki understands timelines. He understands costs. And he understands that good intentions don't stop universes from collapsing. And at this point in Loki's story, he would not hate Steve Rogers. He's helped and saved and fought alongside his brother, who he loves, cherishes, and most likely misses. Like hell Loki would understand Steve. And that actually might be worse, because understanding means acknowledging that Steve didn't mean to break anything. And that doesn't undo what was broke. So Loki is total opposite here of where he was in Avengers. Original Avengers Movie and same with Tony, aka Dr. Doom. This is a visual, visual comparison that I would like to see. That standoff, the 1v1 the chat than the fight. Will Loki step in to intervene and save Steve rogers from a Dr. Doom that was maybe traveling towards him to kill him or put him up to make. Pull him out of his timeline to make up for his mistakes? There's accountability here, and it matters a little bit more than blame. But I don't think putting Steve Rogers back through the ringer is very fair. Although I think he's going to be dragged into the conflict one way or another at this point. Steve Rogers will return. That's across the rumors, across the leaks. I'm sorry if you've not heard about this leak. This seems like the leak everyone knows about. I got it spoiled for me in thumbnails. If you're coming here hoping to not get spoiled, damn, I'm sorry. You probably shouldn't have listened anyway. There's one detail, leaked or not, that really sticks with me though. The wording not Captain America will return. Not the SHIELD will return, but Steve Rogers will return. And that matters because this isn't about a symbol. It's about the man himself. This isn't Steve coming back to win another war. It's Steve coming back to face the cost of the last one. No suit, no SHIELD first entrance, just accountability. So if Avengers Doomsday is really about consequences, real consequences, then bringing Steve Rogers back doesn't ruin his ending, it completes it. Because the hardest thing a hero can do isn't fight another battle, but it's to stand in front of the aftermath, accepting what it costs. If Steve Rogers is really coming back, I don't want it to be easy. I want it to mean something. And if they get that right, then, yeah, bring them home one last time. Or give him the Hugh Jackman Wolverine treatment. He never leaves the role. He's always Captain America. I don't know how Chris Evans would feel about that. Not sure how I feel about that. I don't. I do know how I'd feel if this was pulled off in a dis. I'm gonna say disgusting, because I'm feeling extreme about it. Because there's an extreme move to bring him back in this way. I would feel very upset if they did botch this whole, whole bringing him back thing and undo the perfect ending that we did have in End Game. I think they could bring back another great ending to this character whenever they wanted to. If they make this first coming back of Steve Rogers a success. That's what we it needs to be or everything fails. It's it's a risk that I think Marvel might even need to take to give us some jaw dropping moments to do things that we don't expect them to do, to bring back people who we love and understand and then see them go through it in a way we have never seen them go through it before. Very curious about what all this means, if it even even is true. AI exists. It can make people, can make anything look real. So this might just be a rumor. I think he's really coming back though, to be honest with you. And who knows, maybe he will down the shield and the stars one more time. Or a thousand more times. Only time will tell and we have a lot to think about in the almost full year from now Release of Avengers Doomsday. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean a lot if you'd rate Marvel Maniac 5 stars and leave a quick review. It would really help the show and it helps us reach more people. If you'd like to support the podcast directly, check out the tip jar or patreon.com marvel maniac where we do exclusive minisodes every week and it helps the lights stay on and the mic stay hot. As always, thank you for listening. I've been your host Eric Cicada aka Mr. Honest and this has been Marvel Maniac and MCU after show. I hope you have a very Merry Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Thank you again for always standing by the podcast, listening to me and my rants and I hope it's a wonderful day for you. And until next time, Avengers disassemble.