How Did Steve Rogers Return the Infinity Stones?
By Jimigrimm
Spoilers ahead for the Avengers: Endgame Encore footage.
- What Bruce actually told him to do
- 1970: A vault, a cube and Peggy down the hall
- 2012: Hydra, two Steves and a sorcerer who expects him
- 2013: The Aether problem and a hammer to hand back
- 2014: Two planets and a price that doesn't refund
- How the trip could have gone
- What the people who made it have said
- The trip Marvel never showed
Near the end of Avengers: Endgame, Bruce Banner opens a case with six Infinity Stones in it. Steve Rogers takes the case and Mjolnir, steps onto the quantum platform and shrinks out of sight. Bruce expects him back in five seconds. He doesn’t come back. The next time anybody sees Steve, he’s an old man on a bench, and he won’t tell Sam much about the life he had.
Everything between the platform and the bench happens offscreen. Seven items, five destinations, two different planets in 2014, and a route that runs through a S.H.I.E.L.D. vault, a woman who had the Aether pulled out of her, and the cliff where Natasha died. The movie implies he got it done. It never shows a single return.
Joe Russo told CBR in late September 2026, in comments reported by ComicBook.com, that they toyed with showing the trip as a montage, and it felt like it went past the ending and got too complicated for one. Going stop by stop, it’s easy to see why.
What Bruce actually told him to do
The rule comes from Bruce’s rooftop conversation with the Ancient One. If each Stone goes back to the exact moment it was taken, then in that reality it was never missing. Her worry is a world left without its Stone, and her example is the Time Stone and Dormammu.
The rule names the moment. It says nothing about the same shelf, the same hand, the same container or the same person holding it. Steve may have rebuilt each scene exactly as it was, but nothing Bruce says requires that. A loose reading says he only has to get each Stone back into its reality at the right instant. The loose reading is closer to Bruce’s actual words, and the movie never tests either one.
Replacing a Stone also isn’t the same as undoing the heist. Hulk says early on that changing the past doesn’t rewrite your own present, and the heist changed plenty. In 2012, Loki walks off with the Tesseract. In 2014, Thanos learns the Avengers’ plan, his Nebula takes the place of the present-day one, and Gamora ends up following his army into 2023. Putting a Stone back doesn’t obviously reverse any of that.
Then there are the logistics. During the heist, everybody had Pym particles for one round trip, and Steve grabbed extras from Hank Pym’s lab in 1970. How many Steve had for the return, what each jump cost and whether Bruce preset the destinations are never shown. Bruce also says it’s five seconds for everyone watching and as long as Steve needs for Steve, so the trip could have taken him a while.
According to the published screenplay, the heist team came back with the whole Tesseract, Loki’s scepter, the Orb and the Eye of Agamotto. By the time Steve leaves, the case holds six loose Stones. Getting them out of those objects happened offscreen, and nothing shows whether the containers survived or whether Steve packed them. Nothing establishes they were destroyed either, so at almost every stop the question is whether he had the originals with him.
1970: A vault, a cube and Peggy down the hall
At Camp Lehigh, Tony took the intact Tesseract out of a secured S.H.I.E.L.D. archive while Steve stole Pym particles and caught sight of Peggy in her office. Howard Stark was on the base. Hank Pym got pulled out of his lab.
Does Steve just need the Space Stone back in 1970, or does he need it sitting inside a Tesseract, locked in that archive, right after Tony walked out with it? If the original cube survived the extraction and came along, he could put it back. If it didn’t, a bare glowing Stone sitting in a S.H.I.E.L.D. vault is its own problem. The movie shows no procedure for any of it.
Running into Peggy again is possible, since he’d already seen her there during the heist. Nothing shows it, and nothing says he decided to stay then. Putting the Space Stone back in 1970 also does nothing about Loki’s escape with the 2012 Tesseract, which is a different event in a different year.
2012: Hydra, two Steves and a sorcerer who expects him
New York in 2012 is two stops. For the Mind Stone, Steve took Loki’s scepter from Sitwell and Rumlow’s team by telling them “Hail Hydra,” then fought his 2012 self on the way out. The scepter came back to 2023 intact. By the return trip, the Stone was in the case on its own.
It could go back into the scepter, if the casing survived and came with him. It could go back to Sitwell’s team so the scepter’s custody plays out the way it did before, which is one option and not a requirement the movie spells out. The Mind Stone matters later, since Hydra’s experiments and eventually Vision come out of it, and a Stone left somewhere else might not get there the same way. There’s also a smaller, funnier problem. Sitwell and Rumlow just watched Captain America tell them he was Hydra, and a second visit would be hard to explain.
The 2012 Steve is his own wrinkle. He touched the scepter during that fight. Whether he remembers any of it, or would notice himself showing up a second time, the movie never addresses.
The Time Stone is the closest thing this trip has to an easy stop. Bruce made a deal with the Ancient One face to face. She handed over the Stone after learning that Doctor Strange gave it away in a future she couldn’t yet see, and Bruce promised it back at the moment he took it. She understood the plan, which makes her the clearest expected handoff on the whole route, even though none is filmed.
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Some fans put this stop first on purpose. Their thinking is that Steve would go to the one person who knows the plan and could help with the harder stops, maybe even patching up the containers. It’s a clean idea with no support in the movie, and it raises its own questions, like how Steve would learn to use the Time Stone and why she’d let him.
The TVA adds a footnote. In the first episode of Loki, the TVA says the time heist was supposed to happen and Loki’s escape wasn’t. That’s about Loki, and it says nothing about where Steve was when the TVA showed up.
2013: The Aether problem and a hammer to hand back
This stop has the biggest hole in it. In 2013, the Reality Stone is the Aether, a fluid living inside Jane Foster. Rocket pulled it out of her with a device and brought it back to 2023. By the time Steve leaves, it’s a solid red Stone in the case. At San Diego Comic-Con in July 2019, writer Christopher Markus acknowledged the movie never explains how the Aether becomes a solid Stone.
If the branch needs Jane carrying the Aether again for her story to play out the same way, Steve has to turn a solid Stone back into a fluid and get it inside a person. Nothing shows how that works, and nothing shows him with Rocket’s device. The loose reading says the Stone only needs to exist in that reality at that moment, which is simpler and could change what happens to Jane, to Asgard and to the Stone’s later trip to the Collector.
The timing is rough, too. In the published screenplay, a Dark Elf warship decloaks outside the palace right after Thor and Rocket leave, and Frigga reaches for a sword. If Steve comes back to that exact moment, he’s arriving at the start of an attack. He’s never shown there.
Mjolnir came from the same visit. Thor summoned it out of 2013 Asgard, and Steve lifted it in the final battle and took it with him on the return. Bruce’s exact-moment rule covers the Stones, and nothing says Asgard falls apart without its hammer. Taking it with him strongly implies it goes back. Whether he leaves it where Thor called it from or hands it to 2013 Thor in person is open.
2014: Two planets and a price that doesn't refund
2014 means two planets, Morag and Vormir, and the heist team needed the Benatar to get between them. Whether Steve flew or made two separate jumps is never shown.
On Morag, Rhodey knocked out Peter Quill on his way to the temple, then Nebula pulled the Orb off its laser-guarded pedestal. The Orb came back to 2023 and the Stone ended up loose in the case, so the usual container question applies. There’s also a hard limit. Quill was already unconscious before the Orb was taken, so returning the Stone at the moment it was taken can’t undo the punch.
The bigger change is the one the heist set in motion. Through the two Nebulas, the 2014 Thanos learns about the future, takes the 2023 Nebula prisoner and eventually brings his army to 2023. If Steve returns the Stone at the moment the Orb was taken, that trip to 2023 is still ahead in that timeline, and putting the Stone back doesn’t obviously stop it. Whether Steve even knew those details is unknown.
Vormir is where this trip stops being a logistics problem. Natasha died there so Clint could get the Soul Stone. Red Skull, who used to be Johann Schmidt, guided them near the top of the mountain. After she fell, Clint woke up in a pool at the base of the mountain holding the Stone, and went home. A returned Soul Stone could go back to Skull up top, to the pool where Clint got it or to the edge where Natasha fell. The movie shows the moment it was taken and leaves the place unsettled. Whether her body is still at the foot of that cliff when Steve arrives is something it never shows.
On whether returning it brings Natasha back, the people who made the movie have been consistent. Writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely called the sacrifice a one-way exchange, and Joe Russo said the same on the home release commentary, so returning the Stone doesn’t refund her.
Red Skull is less settled. In a 2018 Q&A, the Russos said Skull was free to leave after Thanos claimed the Stone. That answer was about Thanos’s visit in Infinity War and only said Skull was free to go. It doesn’t cover Natasha and Clint’s trip in 2014, and it doesn’t say he actually left. In an April 2019 Q&A that circulated in English translation, Joe imagined Skull putting the returned Stone back and waiting for the next seeker. At Comic-Con that July, Markus said a Steve and Skull confrontation would make a fascinating play, and that he never wrote it. On the home release commentary, as GameSpot reported it, the four filmmakers went back and forth on whether Skull was even still there, and Anthony Russo landed on “fun to think about.” In the August 2019 Reddit AMA, Anthony joked that the reunion was “probably more awkward” than people imagined, with Skull slighted that Steve didn’t recognize him. Twelve days later, asked the same question on camera for WIRED, one of the brothers said, “I don’t know. That’s a good question.” That on-camera answer is a better guide than the AMA joke. None of these answers settles whether Skull would have been there for Steve.
How the trip could have gone
A few different versions of the trip fit what the movie shows. In the quiet courier version, Bruce sets Steve up with enough particles and coordinates, and he makes clean drops without talking to anybody. That lines up with Bruce’s rule, and it leaves the containers, the Aether, Quill and Thanos unexplained. The five seconds doesn’t tell you the drops were quick, since Bruce said five seconds was for the people watching and as long as Steve needed for Steve.
In the improviser version, the plan holds but a few stops go sideways: a missing host, a container to reassemble, Hydra agents, a sorcerer to ask for help. It fits the loose Stones in his case and Joe Russo’s comment about the montage getting too complicated. No actual workaround is verified.
In the encounters version, Steve faces the people the heist touched, like the Ancient One, his younger self, Frigga or Thor, and Red Skull. Every one of them was really at those places, and the filmmakers clearly thought about Skull. None of those conversations happened on screen.
In the witness version, Steve puts every Stone back into timelines the heist already knocked off course, like a 2012 where Loki escapes with the Tesseract and a 2014 where Thanos ends up following the Avengers to 2023. Returning a Stone doesn’t obviously undo either one. Whether Steve noticed or tried to do anything about them isn’t shown.
Some fans go further and say he never returned them all, or made stops nobody knows about. Nothing supports that, and the bench scene points the other way.
What the people who made it have said
Beyond the montage comment, Anthony Russo told CBR they circled the idea for a long time, and Joe was open to a movie about the return when asked. Nothing has been announced.
The Endgame Encore footage doesn’t cover this trip either. It puts Loki at Steve and Peggy’s door after the dance, and at a screening Q&A, Anthony Russo called that beat the place Doomsday is born. He didn’t say the returns caused Doomsday.
Ross Marquand, who played Red Skull in the MCU, has been pitching this story for years. In May 2023 he told Agents of Fandom he’d pitched a series built around the return where Steve meets Skull. In August 2026 he told Polygon, in an interview relayed by Popverse, that he was still pitching it as a seven-part animated show, one episode to set it up and one for each Stone, and that he hadn’t heard whether anyone was interested. That’s an actor’s pitch with no production behind it.
The trip Marvel never showed
The route, the particle count, how long it took, where each Stone was set down, whether the containers came with him and whether Skull was waiting are all unknown. What’s known is that Steve left with seven things to return, and the movie ended on an old man on a bench who wouldn’t say much about any of it.
I’m a huge Captain America fan. Which stop on that trip would you want to see?
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