Loki's Timekeepers Completely Change Captain America's Endgame Ending

Loki's introduction of the TVA's Timekeepers - led by Owen Wilson's Mobius - might have retrospectively changed Captain Americ'as Avengers: Endgame happy ending. At the end of the Infinity Saga, Steve Rogers infamously stayed in the past with Peggy Carter, reclaiming the life he'd lost before returning as an old man to pass on his shield to Sam Wilson. But his actions would have caused a new branched reality, conflicting with the TVA's whole reason for existing as laid out in the Loki trailers, which could suggest that Captain America is once more a criminal after Endgame.

Rogers enigmatically refused to tell his story to his former allies and the film also neglected to explain the actual mechanics of him creating a new branched timeline and then jumping back to the main timeline. From what was established by the Ancient One's speech in Endgame to Hulk, that wouldn't have been possible without a means to jump through realities, which itself was impossible without the Tesseract or access to Pym Particle-powered tech that Steve simply didn't have. The Russos mysteriously suggested that the answer to that particular conundrum may come up in a future MCU project, but the reported debunking of rumors that Chris Evans would be returning seems to make that unlikely.

There could be another reason for Steve Rogers being cagey about his past, however, because Loki's new information could set up a retcon that meant Steve was actually a time criminal. After being called the Man Out Of Time by Marvel, Steve's post-Endgame fate may have been a more literal adaptation of that title. Surely the TVA Timekeepers would have been upset at what they'd refer to as the Cap Variant jumping into a timeline and messing things up, just as they would Loki? Even if Cap wasn't designated as much of a key threat as Loki, the revelation of the Timekeepers does suggest that Cap's ending is a lot less of a cut and dry "happy ending" than Endgame suggested.

Chris Evans as Old Captain America in Avengers: Endgame

According to marketing, Loki is charged by Mobius with atoning for his own temporal crimes, having created multiple new MCU timelines by traveling through history without due care for the proper flow of time. The same, of course, should be said of the Avengers after their time heist in Endgame changed the course of their own timeline by disrupting other timelines (at least temporarily). Quite why the TVA didn't intervene in the Endgame time heist is yet to be disclosed, but it can easily be assumed that by restoring the Infinity Stones to their proper place in the timeline, Captain America undid the branches. The problem, of course, is that he didn't undo all of the branches. Thor caused one by stealing Mjolnir from his past self and Cap himself created another by returning to his happy ending with Peggy.

For Cap's happy ending to still ring true, the TVA has to have turned a blind eye to his temporal meddling, which makes no sense. There cannot be one rule for one super-powered character and another for someone else, simply because one is morally aligned to good and the other to evil. In establishing the TVA's existence after Endgame, the MCU has retrospectively made Steve Rogers' MCU ending less happy and more tumultuous. There's even cause for concern that Cap would have been forced on the run himself, considering the same fate befalls the God of Mischief as the setup for Loki.

Next: How Loki Can Still Appear In The MCU After His Disney+ Show