Avengers: Endgame Director Joe Russo has answered many of the questions that we had after watching Avengers: Endgame. The way the directors chose to end the film was pretty amazing as they did give importance to end two major character arcs while serving fans in the best way possible. Amidst the fan service, was a set up for the future.
Spoilers follow.
Cap was sent back to the past to put all the Infinity Stones exactly where they were taken from so as to clip all the time branches created by the Avengers previously. This brought up the question that would Cap actually have to go back and put the Aether back in Jane Foster, go meet up with the Ancient One, go to Morag, 1970, Stark Tower, or perhaps Vormir? Also, wouldn’t he encounter with the Red Skull once he reaches Vormir?
Well, the answer we assumed to this was that Cap might not even encounter Red Skull at Vormir since the former Captain America villain had a duty to lead people to the Soul Stone. But as soon as someone gets the stone, the curse should have been lifted. But as it turns out, that wasn’t the case. According to Joe Russo, Red Skull would still be hovering Vormir like a creepy Red faced Ghost.
In the latest Q&A that Joe Russo took part in, he answered how Captain America would react to see Red Skull still being alive. We thought that Cap’s reaction should be priceless, But here’s what JR answered:
“Red Skull would probably put the Soul Stone back to its location and wait for the next unfortunate stone seeker to make the sacrifice. Cap and Red Skull probably won’t fight. It’s because it’s his mission to return the stone to its original place. The Red Skull is also no longer the same Red Skull from First Avenger. He is more like a ghost, you could almost say he’s a completely different entity now. He only exists to guard the stone, his past conscious may or may not exist anymore.”
This answer perhaps leads us to believe that we won’t be seeing Red Skull in the future. There’s actually no point because even Cap isn’t going to return perhaps. The whole Captain America ending raised a whole lot of questions. The biggest confusion was the timeline jump that Cap made at the end of the film. Here’s what Joe Russo had to say of that:
Did Captain America’s action at the end affect the timeline? Does that mean there was a time where two Captain Americas existed in the same universe?
JR: To me, Captain America’s action, in the end, wasn’t the fact he wanted to change anything, it’s more like me has made a choice. He chose to go back to the past and lived with the one he loved for the rest of his life. The time travel in this movie created an alternate reality. He lived a completely different life in that world. We don’t know how exactly his life turned out, but I’d like to believe he still helped many others when they were needed in that world. Yes, there were two Captain Americas in that reality, it’s just like what Hulk said, what happened in the past has already happened. If you go back to the past, you simply created a new reality. The characters in this movie created a new timeline when they went back to the past, but it had no effect on the prime universe. What happened in the past 22 movies was still canon.”
So there you have it. Perhaps another Captain America movie could be based upon his time travel and adventures through the second timeline that has lived in. But we cannot be certain of it because Chris Evans has already bid his farewell. The good thing is that we aren’t in a world without a Captain America because the mantle has been passed on to Falcon!
