Captain America’s Return Can Finally Confirm Avengers: Endgame’s Best Fan Theory

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The first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday excited fans by showing Captain America’s return. Now that Steve Rogers is back, Marvel can officially confirm a popular fan theory, even though the creators of Avengers: Endgame never fully agreed on what happened.

Steve Never Returned After Endgame, Because He Never Did

The Time Loop Spent With Peggy Carter Was Fated To Happen

The ending of Avengers: Endgame presented a clear challenge: after saving the world, Steve Rogers needed to return the Infinity Stones to their original places in time, and then come back to his own time to prevent changes to the timeline. However, instead of doing that, the movie revealed Steve chose to stay in the 1950s and live a full life with Peggy Carter, a life he’d always dreamed of.

Since the evidence indicated the timeline hadn’t been altered, and most fans couldn’t believe Captain America would risk everything just to relive the past, people began searching for answers. One popular idea was that this was always meant to happen. Could Peggy Carter’s unseen husband actually have been Steve Rogers, traveling through time all along?

Although the directors, the Russo Brothers, dismissed the idea, the writers of Endgame, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, offered a more optimistic explanation. During a 2019 San Diego Comic-Con discussion about the time travel rules in Infinity War and Endgame, Markus stated that they believed an older version of Steve Rogers, or “Old Steve,” had been secretly living in the background.

Look, I’m a huge Captain America fan, and the ending of his story really got to me. We talked about it a lot, even disagreeing with the directors a little – but in a fun way! Stephen and I both really loved the idea that Steve got to go back and actually live a life he deserved. I really want to believe, even if it sounds crazy, that some kind of time loop thing means there are actually two Captain Americas out there. The Steve we saw at the end? He’s been living somewhere in the MCU all along, existing alongside the one we’ve been following. It’s just a feeling I have, but it makes his ending so much more satisfying to me.

I like to imagine that at Peggy Carter’s funeral during the Civil War, the elderly Steve Rogers was present, watching his younger self carry Peggy’s coffin to the altar.

Initially, the question felt like a sweet, unresolvable moment, leaving fans hopeful for a good future for Steve and Peggy. However, with Steve’s planned return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the importance of time travel in upcoming storylines like Doomsday and Secret Wars, it seems this mystery might soon be solved.

Captain America’s Return Can Finally Confirm (or Disprove) The Theory

Steve & Peggy Fans Need To Prepare For A Sad, Sad Answer

For a long time, it seemed like the mystery of what happened to Steve Rogers after Endgame was destined to remain unsolved. It felt like either revealing his idyllic life was a dream would completely undermine the emotional payoff of the film, or admitting he didn’t get that happy ending would tarnish his heroic image. But honestly, seeing the directors now hinting at an evil Captain America variant? It makes me think that idea of a perfect, untouchable ending for Cap is officially a thing of the past. They’re clearly willing to play with his legacy now, and that’s…interesting, to say the least.

The happier ending for Captain America might not be completely removed, even though the Russo Brothers didn’t initially discuss it with their writers. However, since Captain America is a key part of the upcoming Doomsday story, and important to the directors, they’re clearly giving it a lot of thought. This means the ‘Old Steve’ theory – the idea of a different timeline – will likely be addressed soon, either by Avengers: Doomsday or its sequel. It could be confirmed as true, or things might get even more complex.

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2026-01-27 05:18