The debate around Avengers: Endgame and its “Old Man Cap” scene continues, with one of the writers of the movie now stating his belief that the aged version of Steve Rogers (who appeared at the end of Endgame to pass his shield to Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson) attended Peggy Carter’s funeral way back in Captain America: Civil War.

This theory ties into the biggest argument about Cap’s time-travel antics: even the makers of the movie can’t agree on whether Steve lived out his later years in the main MCU timeline, or whether he created a new timeline by travelling back in time to reunite with Peggy. (Side note: if Cap did create a new timeline to be with Peggy, he must have found some way to jump back between timelines to give Sam his shield.)

The film’s writers, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, believe that Cap found a way to break the time-travel rules of the film to remain in the main MCU and live out his life with the original version of Peggy that we first met in Captain America: The First Avenger. However, directors Joe Russo and Anthony Russo believe that Cap created a new timeline by going back and reuniting with Peggy, playing by the rules that the film established, and lived out his days with a different Peggy to the one whose funeral we attended in Captain America: Civil War.

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Speaking at San Diego Comic-Con, in a panel that has since been typed up by ScreenRant, Marcus and McFeely put their feet firmly in the “Old Cap is in the main MCU and he attended Peggy’s funeral” camp. The writing duo is quoted as saying this:

“I would like to believe that through some sort of bullshit time loop paradox–throw in the words you use when you’re bullshitting science in a movie: ‘some sort of quantum paradox’–that there are indeed two Captain Americas in the MCU timeline. That Steve Rogers who looped back into time has therefore always been there, and that he is living somewhere else in the movies you’re watching….And what I really like to believe is that there’s an old man sitting in back at Peggy’s funeral in Civil War, and that’s old Steve Rogers, watching young Steve Rogers, carry old Steve Rogers’s wife up to the front of the church. Can I explain it scientifically? Not really, no.”

This screenshot of a white-haired pallbearer has also been shared widely by fans. Could this be Old Man Cap, stood mere just a few feet away from his younger self?

At another point in the panel, Markus addressed the fact that the writers “actually have a public disagreement with our directors. Again, it’s a playful one, but Stephen and I are just so taken with the idea that Steve went back and got to live his life.”

We’ll just have to keep watching everything that Marvel Studios puts out to discover whether an official in-continuity explanation is given as to where/when Old Man Cap got his happy ending with Peggy. Could the Falcon And Winter Soldier TV show hold answers? Only time will tell…

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