After watching the series finale of our beloved Agents of SHIELD there is nothing more satisfying than the validation it gives to a time travel theory we talked about back in May.
Back before season 7 premiered we all knew time travel was going to be the main theme of the season. After the devastation of their homeworld the Chronicoms used Fitz and Simmons to create their own time travel device that would give them the ultimate advantage against Shield in their pursuit to establish the Terran homeworld as Chronica 2. And as interesting as it is to watch our beloved Agents of SHIELD go back in time, save Hydra and expose Area-51 as SHIELD bases , our main interest here is in their time travel technology.
We learn that the Zephyr is programmed to follow the Chronicom ship as it travels through time. And so the Agents follow the Chronicoms whenever they go in an effort to undermine and undo any changes made to history. The timeline is changed irrevocably anyway, Fitz appears from a quantum tunnel, modifies the Zephyr to take all the Chronicom ships with them to their future present. Boom boom, bang bang: mission complete, problem solved. Right? RIGHT?
Well, let's go deep into it:
1. The SHIELD time travel technology, however advanced it may seem, is relatively crude and not thoroughly tested and researched. Hence, like Bruce Hulk, their understanding of its consequences was shallow.
The tech is first used by the Agents to escape the doomed timeline. It is, more or less, the same tech the Chronicoms "stole" from Fitz and Simmons to go into the past to destroy SHIELD before it becomes formidable enough to stop them. It is also the same tech that allows the Agents to take the Chronicom ships with them, through the quantum realm, to their supposed present. Why am I pointing this out? Because every instance the tech is used does not actually lead to any changes in their future. And why am I pointing this out, you ask?
We theorized that the Time Heist was executed in at least 4 random universes because of the simple fact that the Revengers travelled to the past without a destination anchor to, well, anchor themselves to their universe of origin, unlike Fitz who was pulled by the quantum tunnel to his team. If Fitz jumped to the past without the quantum tunnel actually pulling him to his friends, he most definitely could have arrived at alternate universe to different versions of his friends.
The Agents of SHIELD may have escaped the doomed future of a quaked Earth but what they did when they came back did not actually change their original timeline. Why? Because their time travel tech has no destination anchor. They arrived months after their departure, but IN ANOTHER UNIVERSE. They altered another Earth's fate, not their own. Much like Fitz, a quantum tunnel needed to be built by Enoch in the present in preparation for the Agents' arrival from the future. Since that didn't happen, they traversed realities while time travelling. They never arrived back.
2. Fitz's travel to the past was anchored by the quantum tunnel to the correct universe where his friends were. But their eventual return trip to the future through the quantum realm was not. Hence they never arrived in the correct universe they left.
The truth is right there. They never return to that universe they "invaded" when they escaped the doomed future. There are already four distinct realities in the Agents of SHIELD which came as a result of:
i) Daisy quaking the Earth apart;
ii) Daisy quaking Graviton to outer space;
iii) the changes made to history by the Chronicoms' attempt to destroy SHIELD;
iv) the Zephyr travelling to the future without a quantum tunnel as an anchor, as opposed to the way Past Thanos did.
So knowing all this, you should start to understand how they created all these other alternate universes as a result of time travelling without an anchor. It's clear that both the Avengers team and the SHIELD team actually have not yet understood the importance of anchors in time travel, and the consequences that follow when they are not used.
And by the time they do it will have been too late: the multiverse is already in chaos. Or should I say "madness"?
