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marvel - Why didn't this character die even though they shot this person in Avengers: Endgame?


Rest assured, my question is entirely Endgame spoiler-free unless you hover over the hidden quotes. Probably best not to read on.


Background:




Time travel is fickle, and Endgame's plot is centered entirely around it. Conventional time travel has a golden rule: change the past and you change the future. I am aware of what is said at the start of the film: (quoting Banner/Stark? from memory) "whatever happens in the past the future remains the same". This may explain how reality remains OK even after the un-snap with the vanished half suddenly coming back 5 years later, as the future goes on normally as if the vanished had really vanished for the last 5 years and only reappeared again without having to fill in the 5 year time gap.



My inquiry:



This begs the question, however: How is Nebula still alive and kicking at the end of the movie, after she kills (literally shooting a hole through) her past self? Logically speaking, shouldn't killing her own past self erase her from existence, completely, in the future?




Answer



The "answer" (or at least the theory upon which the answer to your query is based) is in the scene you first quoted. Based upon my one viewing of the movie (spoilers, of course):




After Stark posits this theory that the Avengers' actions in the past would not change their collective present, the other characters in the room run through a plethora of movies that instead relied on your "golden rule." In those movies, the characters' actions in the past altered their present. At the end of this rapid-fire listing of movies, Ant Man says something like, "so Back to the Future was all bullshit?" The movie then moves forward without further analysis, having laid the groundwork exposition that the past cannot be changed. The implication of all this is that, even though present-Nebula shot past-Nebula, that act did not change present-Nebula's present condition. (For what it's worth, all but one of the other events in the movie appear to conform to the theory. The one that I think may not follow the rule (SERIOUSLY, this is a SPOILER from the end of the movie, so STOP READING NOW if you don't want to spoil it!): Captain America appears at the end as an old man, having gone back in time and apparently spending a lifetime with Peggy Carter. This could have altered her timeline, unless you accept that she was actually married to Cap in the original timeline. This is a possibility as past movies did not reveal the identity of her husband. If so, I would concede this follows the in-movie rule; otherwise, it would be (TV Trope warning) New Rules as the Plot Demands.)



The theory and the result of the event in your second spoiler-block does seem to defy logic. However, it is based upon one widely accepted theory concerning the potential impact of the plan they were discussing in the movie. See, for example (warning: hovering over the following link will reveal a spoiler), Prof. Miller's essay in The Philosophers' Magazine, June 25, 2017


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