In Avengers: Endgame, how was Nebula from past able to bring Thanos and the army into the future?
The Avengers who build the machine could not do this and required Pym particles which they were short of and had only limited attempts to travel time.
Movies & TV Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for movie and TV enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this communityIn Avengers: Endgame, how was Nebula from past able to bring Thanos and the army into the future?
The Avengers who build the machine could not do this and required Pym particles which they were short of and had only limited attempts to travel time.
Thanos and Maw recreated Pym particles that 2023 Nebula brought with her.
Confirmed by the directors in an interview with QQ
The Russos also explained how Thanos brought his ship to the future, and it’s exactly what we thought it’d be, he and his children recreated the Pym particles needed to travel through the Quantum Realm:
Q: How did Thanos bring his army to the future?
A: There is a guy called Maw in his army; he was a great wizard. Thanos himself was a brilliant genius as well. Those two easily reverse engineered, and mass-produced Pym Particles.
But a couple points to note here:
A reminder is that time in the past is not the same for those in the present, Thanos could have taken as much time as he wants, and it would only take 5 seconds for those in the present.
Nebula stole the Pym Particles from future Nebula and gave them to Thanos who would presumably have replicated the technology to create more as Nebula had to use them to get back.
Captain America and Tony Stark used their suits to travel back to 1970 from 2012, but the time machine was also shown as being capable of pulling people forward itself, in the tests with both Hawkeye and Scott Lang.
Instead of having to duplicate Pym Particles, all Thanos had to do was duplicate the time GPS so Nebula had a signal to lock on to (since presumably she needed hers to return to 2023). Or, since she knew where the ship was, just pull it forward manually.
They had enough Pym Particles in the present to do more time travel, since Cap stole four from 1970 but only used two to get home.
2 GPS & 2 Pym particle doses from Nebula and Black Widow + 1 dose of Pym particle from Benatar
Past-Nebula could use the Pym particle dose and space time GPS stolen from present-Nebula to perform time travel.
Since we do not see Hawkeye returning from Vormir with Black Widow's equipment or the spaceship Benatar, he presumably left those behind (he was transported away from the mountain after obtaining the Soul Stone and didn't seem to be in a state to take the trek back to it).
This leaves two doses of Pym particles and a space time GPS on Vormir for past-Thanos to find with the help of present-Nebula's memories. One dose from Black Widow and the other from Benatar, which was intended to be used to shrink the spaceship and bring it back (Rocket's quip to Hawkeye about bringing Benatar back in one peace suggests this was the plan).
Past-Thanos can use one dose of Pym particles to shrink his spaceship (army inside) and the other dose for time travel, with past-Nebula tinkering with the time machine to pull the ship to the correct location and time in the present, probably through a link with the GPS. (Actually, since there is no size limitation imposed by the physical size of the time machine in the past, the spaceship could be shrank at the moment of time travel, needing only one dose of Pym particles.)
Of course, this is only possible if the amount of Pym particles needed to shrink an object does not depend on its size or mass. From the Ant-Man movies, we know that shrinking an entire building and a manned vehicle is possible, but if the amount of required Pym particles differs in these cases, as compared to simple objects, is unclear. However, shrinking (or growing) an object consumes one Pym particle disk, suggesting that the amount might not be dependent on the properties of the target (correct me if I'm wrong, it's been some time since I saw the movies).
Though, this raises the question why didn't the Avengers headed for Morag just travel inside the Benatar to conserve Pym particles...