Avengers: Endgame created numerous plot holes and mysteries for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but it seems Loki finally solved one timeline problem with Thanos. Before Loki, Endgame explained time a little differently. In Endgame, the Ancient One (Tilda Swinton) tells Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) that Infinity Stones create the flow of time. Because of that, the Avengers would create branched realities by removing an Infinity Stone from its timeline, leaving that reality vulnerable to dark forces. To stop those branched realities, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) goes back in time in Endgame, returning the Infinity Stones to their proper places. Because Endgame ties branched realities closely to the Infinity Stones, other anomalies, such as Thanos (Josh Brolin) leaving his 2014 timeline to fight the Avengers, don't matter as much. Instead, returning the stones should cancel problematic timeline branches.
Loki changes everything. The Marvel Disney+ series reveals He Who Remains (Jonathan Majors), a Kang the Conqueror variant, and his Time Variance Authority control Marvel's Sacred Timeline. According to He Who Remains, the Sacred Timeline is the only thing keeping an infinite number of Kang variants from starting a Multiversal War. Because of this, the TVA prunes any timeline that goes off the appropriate path. It doesn't have anything to do with Infinity Stones.
Because of Loki, Marvel seemingly creates and solves its own mystery. The Disney+ series establishes that Infinity Stones aren't necessarily needed to create branched timelines. Anyone who steps off their path in any way could cause an issue. The reveal raises a question about the 2014 timeline that Thanos vacated to fight the Avengers in Endgame. Though Steve Rogers fixes many timelines by returning Infinity Stones, he never gets a replacement Thanos for 2014. Though it seems like an issue, Loki fixes this problem too.
Since the TVA regularly prunes branched realities that go against the Sacred Timeline, the agency has Steve Rogers covered. Captain America doesn't need to worry about a missing Thanos because the TVA would clean up anything that goes against He Who Remains' plans. So everything in Endgame happened as it should. The Avengers seemingly create other branched timelines too. For instance, there's a scene where Hawkeye takes a baseball glove from his house during a time-traveling test. The missing glove would likely cause a branched reality, but Loki shows that the Avengers wouldn't have to do anything about it. If the glove were a problem, the TVA would promptly prune the issue.
Loki episode 1 confirms the Avengers didn't do anything wrong with their time-hopping. In the episode, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) tries to snitch on the Avengers in a TVA courtroom for time traveling. He noticed the pungent cologne of two Tony Starks during the Avengers' time heist in New York, so he knew some time-traveling shenanigans were happening. However, Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) confirms that everything the Avengers did was "supposed to happen." Therefore, all the possible Marvel plot holes and issues in Avengers: Endgame don't matter. Loki erases every potential problem.
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