THE LAST MISSION BREAKDOWN- AVENGERS ENDGAME

Avengers Endgame does close of most of the hanging threads from the past twenty-one films from the MCU. However, there is something that I need to breakdown which wasn't entirely answered in the film, and it is something kind of significant. There are spoilers ahead for Avengers Endgame, as the ending and major plot point in the film will be spoiled, so you have been warned, and click off if you have not seen the film.


In terms of the last mission in the film that I am talking about is not the time heist, or defeating Thanos, it was something that was off screen, and that was Steve Rogers/ Captain America returning the six Infinity Stones to the timelines they took them from, and what exactly happened, because some interesting things may have happened. So let's go through each stone, and see what may have happened.


Returning the Space Stone
Since the space stone was stolen by Loki in 2012 in the splintered timeline, Steve and Tony took the Tesseract from the SSR base in the year 1970, which is where Steve went to return the stone. The space stone needed to be reverted back inside the Tesseract. Bruce may have used technology to place the space stone inside the Tesseract, or the Ancient One may have done that with magic.

Returning the Time Stone
The time stone that the Avengers received was from 2012 and was handed to them by the Ancient One. Handing the time stone back to the Ancient One would be straight forward as it goes back into the Eye of Agimotto. The Ancient One would know what has happened, that the Avengers claimed victory, and Bruce Banner held up his promise. This would also solidify the fact that Stephen Strange is definitely supposed to be the sorcerer supreme, as he saw this outcome and left the new 2012 splinter reality intact.

Returning the Mind Stone

The mind stone was taken from 2012, however, when Steve took it from 2023, it was in its purest yellow form, and not in the blue casing. Again Bruce may have had the technology to revet the stone into its blue casing so it could be slipped back into the scepter, or Steve could have potentially gotten the Ancient One to revert the mind stone into the blue casing. But other than that, returning the mind stone would have been simple and no one would notice that it was missing.

Returning the Reality Stone
Again with the Mind and Space stones, the Reality Stone needed to be reverted back to another form, and that is the Aether, which is a weird slime (I forgot how Thor described it). As I said before, either Bruce or the Ancient One reverted it back, so Steve could place it in the injection, inject it back in Jane Foster on Asgard, and that reality is intact, and is mostly the same.
Steve would have also returned Mjolnir to 2013 Asgard, so that timeline didn't break and Thor didn't cry for losing his hammer four years too early.

Returning the Power Stone
The 2014 splinter timeline was screwed up severely, with that Thanos dying in 2023. So in returning the power stone to Morag in 2014, Steve would have only had to worry about those weird rats, and Quill waking up. But that timeline just doesn't have to worry about Thanos and his forces, and Quill will probably sell the Orb and make a lot of money.

Returning the Soul Stone

Also in 2014, Steve would have had to return to Soul Stone to Vormir. However, we don't exactly know the mechanics of how this all works.
Last year when Infinity War came out, the Russo brothers did state that when Thanos got the Soul Stone (in the original timeline) Red Skull was free to leave Vormir. This entails the idea that once the Soul Stone is gone, there is no way to get a refund.

However, because Steve went to Vormir nearly immediately after Clint got the Soul Stone, we can assume Steve got to Vormir before the Red Skull got to leave.
When Steve and the Red Skull, they could either fight or the two may have just moved past everything, and they don't fight.

If the two did fight, Steve would fight Red Skull one way or another, as we do see Steve as an old man at the end film, so whatever happened didn't kill Steve.

The second possibility is that the two don't fight. If this happened it would be because they both know that the Red Skull lost, and there is nothing that the Red Skull to do to stop that and realizes that he has a bigger calling in the universe other than world domination and killing Steve.

But then from there, how does Steve hand back the Soul Stone?

Did he just drop it down the cliff?
There is no definitive answer to the question of if the Soul Stone can be traded for a soul? more specifically, the person's soul it was traded for, such as Black Widow's. Another idea is that maybe because the stone was used, her life cannot be traded back even if the stone is returned.

Or did Steve hand it to the Red Skull?
In that case, in that timeline, Red Skull may have just taken the Soul Stone for himself, and then became a gatekeeper for the stone, or just went to his old ways and wanted to use the power of the stone to take over a civilization possibly in the 2014 splinter timeline.


Anyway, that does it for this theory on what happened to the stones and how they were returned. I think everyone just wants to know what happened with the Soul Stone, and how the interaction of Red Skull and Steve went down, and whether or not the Soul Stone could be bargained for Black Widow's soul.

Comment below your thoughts on the theory on what happened to Steve when returning the stones.

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