Would The Russo Brothers Return To Marvel To Reveal Captain America’s Time Travel Story?

Chris Evans as Captain America in Avengers: Endgame
(Image credit: (Marvel))

Ok, so Avengers: Endgame was already long. Over three hours long to be more precise. But as soon as the Russo brothers’ film reached its final moments, we admit we would have held on a bit longer just to get a few more minutes of Steve Rogers and Peggy Carter’s happy ending. As you likely remember, once Thanos is defeated at the end of the movie Cap signs himself up to return all of the Infinity Stones back to their proper places in time, and in the process decides to stay in the past and have the life he always dreamed of.

For the past year we’ve certainly been curious what Cap’s time travel trip would have been like, but we certainly understand why it wasn’t included in the blockbuster: it could easily be an entirely separate Marvel Cinematic Universe adventure to tell. But is it a story that Joe and Anthony Russo would actually want to tell? When the directors were asked if they would would be interested in exploring that specific storyline further at some point down the line, they told ComicBookMovie,

It would be a great story to tell, no question. I don't know whether it needs to be told, but it would be a great story to tell, and we'd love to tell it, but I think there are other stories to move on to now.

This is a double-edged sword of a question that is understandably complicated for the filmmaking brothers to answer. One one side of things, the Russos certainly love making movies centered on Chris Evans’ Captain America, and his time travel journey has the opportunity to create a ton of fun Easter Eggs within the MCU. But as they say, it may not need to be told due to how masterfully the writers wrapped up the First Avenger’s arc.

Since Avengers: Endgame came out, fans have been a bit confused about how exactly the time travel “science” works when Captain America uses it at the end of the film. There’s certainly been questions surrounding how Steve Rogers can end up with Peggy Carter and deal with his budding romance with Sharon Carter earlier the films. Sounds like a really awkward situation… Endgame writers Christopher McFeely and Stephen Markus once explained their reasoning for the time travel moment saying,

We are not experts on time travel, but the Ancient One specifically states that when you take an Infinity Stone out of a timeline it creates a new timeline. So Steve going back and just being there would not create a new timeline. So I reject the ‘Steve is in an alternate reality’ theory. I do believe that there is simply a period in world history from about ’48 to now where there are two Steve Rogers. And anyway, for a large chunk of that one of them is frozen in ice. So it’s not like they’d be running into each other.

It’s true that by the time the OG Steve Rogers got carved out of the ice, the other one would have already been the happy old man who gives Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson his shield. Apparently Old Man Cap was 112 years old in that scene, meaning he was probably just about one hundred around the time that the events of The Avengers occur. The MCU is coming off about a decade of focusing on Cap and Iron Man and moving forward the universe will get to explore more characters from the comics including with the Eternals, Shang-Chi, Blade and at some point maybe the X-Men and Fantastic Four since Disney has the rights to those characters now.

The upcoming Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier is sure to deal with Cap’s legacy in some way once it drops on the streaming service. As for the MCU Phase 4 in general, the first project released will be Black Widow, hitting theaters on November 6. Stay tuned here on CinemaBlend for more Marvel updates.

Sarah El-Mahmoud
Staff Writer

Sarah El-Mahmoud has been with CinemaBlend since 2018 after graduating from Cal State Fullerton with a degree in Journalism. In college, she was the Managing Editor of the award-winning college paper, The Daily Titan, where she specialized in writing/editing long-form features, profiles and arts & entertainment coverage, including her first run-in with movie reporting, with a phone interview with Guillermo del Toro for Best Picture winner, The Shape of Water. Now she's into covering YA television and movies, and plenty of horror. Word webslinger. All her writing should be read in Sarah Connor’s Terminator 2 voice over.