Post by Deleted on May 1, 2019 18:28:43 GMT
It seems to me like everybody was brought back in the main timeline. In Endgame terms, it's like 2025 or so because of when the snap happened and the 5 year gap. So everybody involved in the final battle was either of that timeline or they're from 2014 if they're Thanos + his army, or they were resurrected from the snap if they're on the Avenger's side but not in the movie until that point. Except Valkyrie, who somehow snagged her winged horse in the midst of all this.
The alternative timelines all occur off screen. I think in Captain America's case, he lived the rest of his natural life in an alternate timeline but the moment he returned to the main timeline as an old man, he's back into the world where he never married Carter.
It's my impression that all timelines outside the main one fade when they're no longer occupied with visitors from the current one. So even though Loki picked up the Tesseract and escaped, in the main timeline he's still dead.
I think they didn't need to bring the stones back where they got them from, but where they came from does seem like ideal hiding spots. The Avengers knew the risks by collecting them and it very seriously almost backfired by gathering them all in one place for somebody to take. If not only for the strategy of hiding the stones, by taking them back, it means no other realities spun out. It'd be like the stones never left their original spot, except that there's no Thanos to got to Voromir or decimate Xandar.
At the end of the movie, I think there's only one timeline. Everything else kind of existed within that timeline but it's still the main one.