At the conclusion of Avengers: Endgame, Chris Evans’ Captain America was tasked with the job of returning the Infinity Stones to their rightful timelines.
While Hulk, Falcon, and the Winter Soldier awaited Cap’s return, they were surprised when, instead of the Avengers frontman returning seconds later, he showed up sitting beside a lake as an old man. The official story is that he went back in time after his mission to fulfill his promise to his love interest, Peggy Carter. It was assumed that Cap lived out the rest of his life with Peggy, starting a family before returning to the exact moment he went back in time in order to pass on his shield to Falcon.
However, an interesting fan theory that has made its way onto Reddit provides a different perspective. Carter was believed to have moved on after Steve’s disappearance, starting a family of her own. It turns out, that family was with Rogers all along, who had returned from the future. But the Reddit theory suggests that Rogers and Carter’s dance at the end of Avengers: Endgame was actually taking place in the Soul World, and had no effect on the family she started during Rogers’ disappearance.
I know, I know, it’s difficult to keep up with all of these time travel rules. But give the theory a read for yourself below:
“Cap’s offscreen mission at the end of Endgame was to return all the stones to their original timelines exactly at the point they were removed. Most are pretty simple like just give the time stone back to the Ancient One, put the power stone back on Morag et cetera but returning the soul stone to Vormir does not seem to be so simple. ‘A soul for a soul’ are the words the Red Skull uses when others take the stone so by that logic to return the stone surely ‘a soul for a soul’ would still apply.”
“Could this mean that Cap lived out his dance with Peggy in the Soul World, exchanging the stone for Peggys soul so he could have his dance? His return to the main timeline seems more complicated but this could then rule out the dilemma of Peggy having another husband in a different timeline and so on but perhaps he only stayed in the soul world for a dance or just for her lifetime and would then return to his real world.”
It’s certainly an interesting theory, but I don’t buy it. Personally, I like to think that Cap finally took Tony Stark’s advice and got a life of his own, finally settling down with his long lost love after saving the world several times. It was a beautiful ending to a spectacular run from Evans as the Avengers‘ leader.