'Avengers: Endgame': Captain America's Ending Created A "Branch Reality" In The MCU, According To The Russo Brothers

This year's climactic Avengers movie saw a parting of ways for Steve Rogers, but the Russo brothers also hint that the Avengers: Endgame ending resulted in a parting of timelines. And with that a potential "branch reality" being created from the choices by Chris Evans' Steve Rogers, Marvel and Kevin Feige might have some wiggle room to return to the beloved character.

At the end of Avengers: Endgame, Captain America is sent back in time to return the Infinity Stones to their proper places and return immediately. But a few seconds later, he returns vastly changed: many decades older, retired, and ready to hand the shield to Anthony Mackie's Falcon. He has lived out his happy ending in the past with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell), peacefully reclaiming the normal life he's always desired. But in a recent interview with Fox 5 ahead of the Avengers: Endgame theatrical re-release, director Joe Russo teased alongside his co-director and brother that Old Captain America doesn't necessarily spell the end for Steve Rogers in the MCU:

"When Captain America goes back, he would create a branch reality. Now, he would exist in that branch reality with a second Captain America who is frozen in ice. What's also a story for another time is if he created a branch reality, he would then have to use a Pym Particle to come back."

The idea of those "branch realities," AKA alternate realities, was teased with Loki's disappearance with the Tesseract in 2012 New York, but Russo's comments hinting at "a story for another time" suggests that this might not be the last we see of Chris Evans as Captain America. The existence of the Disney+ streaming service allows for all kinds of MCU stories to be told without requiring too much commitment from the actors, and maybe Evans would be open to doing a one-off about Captain America going on adventures in an alternate timeline.

"The great thing about the MCU is that anything that doesn't show up on screen, anything that doesn't become text, is fodder for future storytelling," Anthony Russo said in a recent Empire Spoiler podcast.

Perhaps this is all laying the foundation for a one-off Disney+ streaming series, or the Russo brothers just miss Captain America as much as we do. Watch the full interview with the Russo brothers below.