Directors Confirm that Captain America Did Encounter Red Skull While Returning the Soul Stone

Avengers: Endgame is almost done and dusted now as the income has drastically dropped over the last week. It has already done so much in so many different categories. Being a worthy finale and also setting up the next phase of the MCU, Endgame did amazingly well at the Box Office. But it did leave a few unanswered questions which the writers and directors of the film had to address later on. The end of Captain America, in particular, did spawn a lot of questions and the most important one was regarding the Red Skull and the Soul Stone.

Putting the Stones back to where they were, Captain America clips all the branches before he makes another choice to create an alternate reality. But those efforts to clip all the branches could make an entire movie on its own because if you think about it, Cap would have to go back to 1970 and put back the Tesseract from where he took it. He would have to give the scepter back from where he took it in the lift. Then the power stone on Morag, the time stone to the Ancient One, and the Aether back into Jane Foster.

All this can be assumed but the scene that doesn’t work on assumptions really well is Cap going back to Vormir in order to give the Soul Stone and meeting up with Red Skull. The reactions on both their faces upon seeing each other would have been priceless, but we won’t get them. Although Joe & Anthony Russo have confirmed the fact that the two arch enemies would have surely encountered each other. Here’s what they had to say while talking to Cinemablend:

“Joe – He would have to encounter Red Skull. Nobody knows what the rules are when you return the Soul Stone.

Anthony – Knowing Red Skull, he probably has a ‘no money back’ policy.”

While they took this conversation to a funny direction here, Joe Russo had previously told us how exactly their encounter would have gone. He said:

“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.”

Captain America made a choice to stay back in the past and live the life that he never got to. He was finally at piece and retired a happy man being with the love of his life. This ending was a bit controversial since it could have created a lot of plot holes, Joe Russo would not have explained it properly.

In a Q&A, he said:

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.”

Avengers: Endgame is currently playing in the theatres.