'Five years later' pops up on the screen.
"Five years." Tony noted. "A lot can happen in five years. Maybe... maybe things are slightly better."
"I guess we can only hope." Steve said.
Its night time. The city looks lifeless.
"It looks deserted." Peter commented. "Like no one lives there."
"Like a ghost town." Bruce agreed.
Steve is in a support group.
"A support group." Bucky commented, looking at Steve with a sad smile. "That's good... I'm- I'm glad you're not doing this alone."
One of the members says he went on a date for the first time in five years and says he didn't even know what to talk about while they were at dinner.
"Yeah like... what do you talk about? It's not like we can go back do discussing music or mutual interests." Tony said.
Steve asks what they did talk about. The guy says they talked about how things have changed.
"The elephant in the room." Natasha said, nodding her head in understanding.
He says they talked about their jobs, how much they miss the Mets.
"Understandable. I'd probably miss my home teams games too." Ned said. "Even though I don't really watch sports, or know sports, or even like sports..."
He says it got quiet after that and his date cried when they brought the salads and says that he cried before dessert but he's seeing the guy again.
"Well that's good at least." Sam said. "I think."
Steve says it's good that he took the jump and that they have to take baby steps to become whole again and find purpose.
"He's right. There's no bouncing back from this, it is going to be a long and difficult process to probably even start thinking about moving on from this." Maria said.
Steve says he went down in the ocean in 1945 just after he met the love of his life and woe up 70 years later.
"I'm the love of your life?" Peggy asked, shocked. Steve said nothing, just letting his on-screen self's words hang in the air, hoping his conformation was implied in his silence.
Steve says they need to move on and the world is in their hands and they need to do something with it or maybe Thanos should've killed all of them.
"Well that took a turn." Sam said. It was sad seeing someone like Steve seem so pessimistic. It just wasn't a good look on him. "But you do have a point. We you can't just sit around and wait for things to get better, you gotta do the work yourself."
'San Francisco' appears on the screen. Scott's van is inside of a self-storage facility
Scott gasped suddenly. He was still trapped in the quantum realm, well unless whoever moved that van got him out. Scott doubts that, though. What if he disappeared while he was in there? What if Thanos got him too?
A rat crawls around on the van, it crawls around on the control panel, hitting some switches and frees Scott from the quantum realm.
"Oh my god." Hope breathed in relief. "You're okay."
"Remind me to thank that rat." Scott said, still a little bewildered that a rat had managed to get him out of the quantum realm.
Scott is confused, his suit powers down and he calls out for Hope.
Scott swallowed and looked around the room to distract himself from the tears in his eyes as he remembered Hope's fate.
The security guard looks at the footage only to see Scott with a sign that reads 'Help' in his hand. Later, Scott pulls a wagon of his things down an abandoned street.
Scott was shocked at how desolate the street looked. The neighborhoods used to be so full of life so normal... now everything just looks dreary and depressing and abandoned.
A kid rides past Scott on his bike. Scott calls out to him and asks what happened there.
"He probably thinks you've been living under a rock." Clint said. "Which... is actually pretty close to the truth now that I think about it, sort of."
Scott goes to the memorial for vanished persons, he immediately checks for Cassie's name on the list, only to find his own and not hers.
"I mean it makes sense they'd think you're one of the vanished. You were gone for five years." Quill said.
But, Scott wasn't paying attention to what he was saying he was too busy thanking whatever deity's he could that Cassie's name was not on that list. That had to mean she was okay, right?
Scott runs through the street and rings a doorbell. Eventually, an older Cassie answers it.
Scott started crying. "Oh my gosh. Is- is that Cassie? She's so big now."
Cassie walks onto the porch, she and Scott hug and Scott says she's so big.
'She's not my little girl anymore.' Scott thought to himself. He's missed so much of Cassie's life already and to miss even more of it? It hurt, he wanted to be there for her, always.
Hope, noticing Scott's change in mood said to him "You know it's not your fault... right? None of us could have prepared for something like that" She paused for a second and quickly added "and I'm sorry that you got stuck there because of it."
"Thank you. And that part wasn't your fault so don't go blaming yourself either." Scott said.
Hope laughed a bit. "I wasn't" She assured. "But thank you."
In the compound, Natasha makes a peanut butter sandwich and cuts it in half.
"Diagonally. The right way." Peter said. "You did good." Natasha looked confused but at this point, why not just go with it?
She's on a call with Rocket, Nebula, Carol, Rhodey and Okoye. Rocket says they boarded the warship Carol pinged.
Nebula says it was an infectious garbage scow.
"Gross." Rocket complained.
Rocket sarcastically thanks Carol for the tip.
Carol says they were closer.
Rocket says they smell like garbage.
Rocket scowled at Carol, who jokingly put up her hands in surrender and apology.
Natasha asks Okoye about the tremors. Okoye says it was a mild subduction under the African plate. Natasha asks if they have a visual and how they're handling it. Okoye says it was an Earthquake under the ocean and they handle it by not handling it.
"Oh? She called you Nat." Clint noted. Natasha didn't let people that weren't close to her use that nickname. He was glad that she and Okoye had grown closer.
Natasha asks if Carol will be on Earth next month.
Carol says that isn't likely.
Rocket asks if she's going to get another haircut.
Carol rolled her eyes.
Carol says she's covering a lot of territory because the things that are happening on Earth are happening everywhere.
"Thanos snapping definitely has a lot more effects than we originally thought." Bruce said. "And it just keeps getting worse."
Natasha says the channel is always active and they can always open it if something goes sideways or someone is doing something they shouldn't.
"You're a good leader when you actually want to be one." Clint said. Its not that Nat was ever a bad leader, she just didn't really like to lead, said it wasn't her thing.
Everyone but Rhodey leaves, he says he's in Mexico because the Federales found a room full of bodies and that it looks like cartel guys who never even had a chance to get their guns off. Natasha writes it off as a rival gang. Rhodey tells her that it was definitely Clint.
"What?" Clint asked, paling slightly. "I-I did that?" Why would he have done that? What pushed him to do that?
Rhodey references the fact that Clint has been doing this for a few years and how the snap effected him and says that there's a part of him that doesn't want to find Clint.
"Okay so I've been going around and killing people for a few years because of- of" Clint started, but he struggled to finish because he didn't even want to remember it- even though it hasn't happened yet, it will and that's what he can't move past. It will and he can't stop it. "Good to know." He said sarcastically.
Natasha asks Rhodey to find out where Clint's going next. Rhodey says 'okay' and leaves the call. Natasha breaks down in tears.
Natasha looked away from the screen, tears shining in her eyes as well. She wasn't comfortable feeling vulnerable and she definitely wasn't comfortable watching herself cry. Clint brought Natasha in for a small and brief side hug.
"I guess you aren't coping so well either." Steve said, empathetically.
'No' Natasha silently agreed. 'It appeared that she wasn't.'
Steve is standing near her desk. He says he'd offer to cook dinner but she seems pretty miserable already.
"Never let Steve cook for you. Ever." Bucky said. "I mean it. He is the worst cook."
"Noted." Tony, Bruce, Natasha and Clint said.
Natasha asks if he's there to do his laundry.
Steve says he's there to see a friend too.
Natasha says his friend is clearly fine.
"Are you sure about that?" Steve asked, matching onscreen Natasha's tone.
Steve says he saw a pod a whales when he was coming up the bridge.
"That can't be right." Rhodey said.
"We didn't even begin to think how this would effect ecosystems." Vision said.
"The world is insane now. That's the only way I can accurately describe it." Scott said.
Steve says there's fewer ships so there's cleaner water.
"I guess that's one good thing." Sam said. "Compared to about a million bad things."
Natasha asks if he's trying to get her to look on the bright side she'll hit him in the head with her sandwich.
"And I'd bet you'd find some way to make it hurt." Steve joked.
Steve apologizes and says it's a force of habit, before taking a seat across from her.
"Sometimes it's a good habit but other times..." Peter said, abandoning his sentence midway through.
Steve says he keeps telling everyone they should move on and grow. He says some do but not them.
"Not us." Thor agreed. How could they move on?
Natasha asks who will do what she's doing if she moves on.
Steve says it might not need to be done.
"Never thought I'd ever hear Captain America say something like that." Sam said, sadness in his voice. It was strange to see his friend nearly give up.
Natasha says she used to have nothing and then she got this family and she was better because of it and even though they're gone she's still trying to be better.
Natasha blinked and looked down. She's spent the last few years running from her past while trying to make up for it. When she became an Avenger, she was given a way to finally do that. To finally try to atone for everything she's done.
The original avengers seemed shocked that Natasha referred to them as her family. Had they all actually managed to grow close before everything went to hell?
Steve says he thinks they both need to get a life.
"Maybe. Maybe not." Natasha said. "Maybe that's all the life that we need- the life that we get."
Natasha says Steve first then opens the security footage. Scott is out front and asks if anyone's home and says they met a few years ago at the airport in Germany.
Steve, Tony, Natasha, Wanda, Vision, Sam, T'Challa, Clint and Rhodey all winced. They did not want to remember that, it all got so out of hand so fast. And they involved Peter and Scott who didn't even need to be there, they were brought in as reinforcements essentially- Peter was just a kid, he had no business being there. They hadn't even bothered to approach the situation like they mature adults that they were supposed to be and instead just started throwing punches. And it destroyed them from the inside out. Just like Zemo had wanted.
Steve asks if this is an old recording.
Natasha tells him that it's the front gate.
"I guess- I guess that's where I go." Scott said, happy his question from earlier was answered.
Now inside, Scott paces nervously. Steve asks him if he's okay.
"Obviously he's not okay, Steve." Bruce said. "He spent 5 years in a quantum realm and comes back to... that" He said, referring to the state of the world in their future.
Scott asks if either of them have ever studied quantum physics.
'Where are you going with this, Scott?' Hank thought, curious to see what Scott was about to put on the table.
Natasha sarcastically says only to make conversation.
"Naturally, when hanging around a bunch of scientists, you would brush up on it. " Clint agreed, also sarcastically.
Scott tells them that he's been in the quantum realm which is like a microscopic universe and you need to be incredibly small to get in. He says that Hope was supposed to pull him out but she vanished and he got stuck there.
Scott grasped Hoped hand as an assurance that, yes, she was still right next to him. Thanos hasn't happened... yet. Hope is fine.
Natasha says it must have been a long 5 years.
Scott says it wasn't because it was only 5 hours.
"What?" Tony asked. "You moved forward in time. How is that possible?"
Scott says the rules of the quantum realm are different and everything is unpredictable, then asks if anyone's going to eat the sandwich then picks it up and takes a bite.
Steve asks Scott what he's talking about.
Scott says time works differently in the quantum realm.
"We got that part." Steve said.
"We just want to know why that specific detail matters." Gamora said.
Scott says they don't have a way to navigate it and says he can't stop thinking about what could happen if they did. He asks what of there is a way to enter the quantum realm at a certain point of time and exit at another time like before Thanos.
"What? Like time travel?" Bruce asked. That was Scott's idea? He had to admit that it wasn't a terrible one but the idea of time travel and the quantum realm is so unpredictable there's no way to be sure how it could even work.
'Time Travel using the quantum realm.' Hank thought to himself. He had to admit that it was an interesting proposal, but would it work?
Steve asks if he's talking about a time machine. Scott says its more like a- then fails to come up with a better name than time machine.
"It's- it's a time machine." Scott sighed.
Scott admits that it sounds crazy.
Natasha says nothing sounds crazy anymore because she gets e-mails from a raccoon.
"I am not a raccoon!" Rocket protested.
Scott asks who they talk to about this.
"I have a feeling I know who... and I don't think it'll end very well." Bruce said. Considering how Tony reacted the last time he was in a room with Steve... he definitely did not have high hopes for this interaction. Although, maybe in the five years since, Tony and Steve were able to make peace with one another... however it seemed unlikely.
Tony walks out of a log cabin toward Morgan's play house and says it's 'chow time. and asks Morgan if she wants lunch.
Tony and Pepper could only stare at the screen in shock.
"You have a child!? And you're wearing cardigans!?" Clint exclaimed.
Tony was still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he and Pepper had a child together, an actual child. First it was revealed to them that they get married in their future and now it seems as though they started a family together. He wasn't necessarily against the fact, he just never actually thought he'd become a father.
Next to him, Pepper was having similar thoughts. Sure, she assumed that she'd eventually feel ready to start a family, but motherhood wasn't something she'd thought about in depth before. As the situation finally caught up with her, Pepper thought back to what she remembered Tony saying in one of the previous films- about his dream and the child named Morgan.
"Congratulations, you guys." Steve said, sincerely. It seemed like Tony finally settled down, in the way his future self couldn't. Steve was happy for him.
"Domestic is not a look I thought I'd ever see on you. It's actually kinda nice." Rhodey said. "Congratulations by the way... and I'm disowning you as my best friend if I'm not the godfather."
"Congratulations, Mr. Stark." Peter said.
Morgan comes out, wearing a blue helmet. She tells Tony to define lunch or be disintegrated.
"That's adorable." Happy said. "She's just like you." He added with a chuckle.
Tony tells her that she shouldn't be wearing the helmet because it's part of an anniversary gift for Pepper, then takes the helmet off.
"You're making me a suit?" Pepper asked, shocked.
"I guess I am." Tony said.
Tony asks if she's thinking about lunch and jokingly says he can give her a handful of crickets on a bed of lettuce.
"Sounds nutritious to me." Peter said.
"Bugs are a good source of protein." Ned agreed.
Tony asks Morgan how she found the helmet.
Morgan says it was in the garage.
Tony asks if she was looking for it.
Morgan says she wasn't but she found it.
"Oh she was definitely looking for it." Clint said.
"Oh yeah." Scott agreed.
Tony picks her up and asks if she likes going in the garage and says he does too. He tells her that it's fine because Pepper doesn't wear anything he buys her.
"That's not true." Pepper protested.
Tony gave her a look. "Why don't you wear the sweater I got you for your birthday last year?" He asked.
"Okay it's mostly not true." Pepper corrected. "But in my defense, there aren't very many places I can wear a sweater with a mushroom on it."
Tony sees Steve, Natasha and Scott pull up in his driveway.
Steve and Tony tensed, wondering how this was going to go. If these past films were anything to go off of... it wouldn't go well.
Tony and Natasha nod at each other. Tony takes Morgan inside. The others walk onto the porch. Scott says he knows what the idea sounds like.
Steve asks Tony if anything is impossible after everything he's seen.
"Look you have a point about that but time travel is one of those things that seems definitively impossible." Tony said. "There's so many things to factor in here and Scott already said that the quantum realm is unpredictable so how can we even be sure that it will work?"
Tony says quantum fluctuation messes with the Planck scale which triggers the Deutsch proposition and asks if they agree on that.
"I understood absolutely none of that. At all. Whatsoever." Clint said.
He puts it into layman's terms and says it means they aren't coming back. Scott says he did. Tony says Scott accidentally survived and it was a billion to one cosmic fluke.
"You survived because of a rat." Tony said. "You got lucky."
Tony asks what Scott called his plan.
Scott calls it a time heist.
"That's a terrible name." Ned said. "You've gotta think of something cooler."
"What's cooler than a heist?" Scott asked.
"Lots of things. You could have called it a time quest." Ned suggested.
Tony says it's laughable and a pipe dream.
"You didn't have to be so mean about it." Scott grumbled.
Steve says the stones are in the past and they could go back and get them.
Natasha says they can snap their own fingers and bring everyone back.
Tony says they could screw it up worse than it already is.
"We're going to have that risk no matter what we try." Steve said. "But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try. We have a chance at reversing what Thanos did. I think we should take it."
Steve says he doesn't believe they would. Tony says he's missed Steve's giddy optimism.
"Thank you...?" Steve said.
Tony says high hopes won't help them if there is no tangible, logical way to execute the time heist. He says the most likely outcome is their demise.
"Especially since we're pretty much going into this blind, with almost nothing." Tony said. There was next to no actual information in the world about time travel that wasn't a proposed paradox.
Scott says it wouldn't be if they followed the rules of time travel like no talking to their past selves or betting on sporting events.
"Those aren't actual rules of time travel. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that anyway." Bruce said.
Tony asks Scott if his entire time travel plan is based on Back to the Future.
Scott blushed in embarrassment. Knowing... well knowing him, his plan probably did consist of elements from Back to the Future.
Tony tells him that that's not how quantum physics works.
Natasha says they have to take a stand.
Tony says they did stand and here they were.
Tony sighed. It seemed as though his future self had given up all hope at fixing Thano's snap. It was jarring, honestly, he didn't think he'd ever be one to just not try.
Scott says he knows Tony has a lot on the line with Pepper and Morgan and says that he and a lot of others lost people too, then he gets mad at Tony for not trying.
"I am sorry that he's not- that I'm not- that I decided not to help you guys." Tony said, struggling to word it. "I really am."
Morgan comes outside and says Pepper told her to come save Tony. Tony hugs her and says he's saved.
Pepper smiled at that. Morgan was adorable and Pepper found that she couldn't wait to meet her, couldn't wait to start this family.
Tony tells them that he wishes they were coming to ask him something else and that he's happy to see them. Steve tells Tony that he gets it and he's happy for him but this is their second chance. Tony says he's got his second chance already and can't roll the dice on it.
Steve, Scott and Natasha all looked sad at having Tony shut them down like that. But they couldn't really blame him. It was a huge risk... one Tony didn't think he should take and they respected that. But it didn't mean that they weren't upset at it.
Tony invites them to stay for lunch if they don't talk shop.
Steve, Natasha and Scott leave. Natasha says Tony's scared.
"It's understandable." Clint said.
Steve says Tony's not wrong.
Scott asks what they're going to do because they need Tony then asks if they stop.
"No. We can't just give up." Steve said.
Steve says they're going to need a really big brain.
Scott asks if it's bigger than Tony's.
"Oh I'm the second choice?" Bruce asked, pretending to be hurt by that.