Avengers: Endgame (2019) & X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014): Superhero Time-Heists | EP18

Superhero Time Travel.

In this episode of Journey Through Sci-Fi, we reach the end of our journey through the time travel subgenre by looking at two blockbuster superhero films that take the concept to an epic scale.

Both Avengers: Endgame and X-Men: Days of Future Past use time travel not just as a narrative twist, but as a way of reshaping entire cinematic universes.

First we discuss Avengers: Endgame (2019), the climactic finale to Marvel’s Infinity Saga. After Thanos wipes out half the universe, the surviving Avengers devise a plan to travel back through time and collect the Infinity Stones from earlier moments in the MCU timeline in order to undo the catastrophe.

Then we explore X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), the ambitious X-Men film that connects multiple timelines from across the franchise. In a dystopian future where mutants face extinction, Wolverine is sent back to 1973 to prevent an event that leads to the rise of the Sentinel robots.

Together these films show how modern blockbuster storytelling has embraced time travel as a way to reboot timelines, merge storylines and expand the idea of the multiverse.

Because here on Journey Through Sci-Fi, we explore the history of science-fiction cinema one subgenre at a time.

Listen to the full episode below:

What We Discuss In This Episode

In this episode we talk about:

• Time travel as a tool for rebooting cinematic universes

• The “Time Heist” structure of Avengers: Endgame

• How Days of Future Past connects different X-Men timelines

• The rise of multiverse storytelling in modern sci-fi

• Why superhero movies have embraced time travel

Avengers: Endgame (2019) – The Time Heist

Released in 2019, Avengers: Endgame concludes more than a decade of interconnected Marvel films.

After the villain Thanos wipes out half of all life in the universe, the remaining Avengers discover that the Quantum Realm may allow them to travel through time.

Their plan — known as the Time Heist — involves travelling back to key moments in earlier Marvel films to retrieve the Infinity Stones before Thanos can collect them.

However, the film establishes an important rule of time travel: changing the past does not alter the original timeline, but instead creates new branching timelines.

This idea draws on the concept of parallel universes and helps explain how the Avengers can revisit earlier MCU events without undoing the history audiences have already seen.

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) – Resetting the Timeline

While Avengers: Endgame explores branching timelines, X-Men: Days of Future Past focuses on rewriting history.

In the film’s dystopian future, mutants are hunted by powerful robotic Sentinels. To prevent this future from ever happening, the X-Men send Wolverine’s consciousness back in time to his younger self in 1973.

By changing key events in the past, the characters attempt to prevent the creation of the Sentinels and reshape the future of both humans and mutants.

The film was particularly important for the X-Men franchise because it effectively reset the timeline, allowing later films to move forward with a new continuity.

Time Travel and the Superhero Genre

Both Avengers: Endgame and X-Men: Days of Future Past show how time travel has become a powerful storytelling tool within the superhero genre.

Instead of simply exploring paradoxes or alternate realities, these films use time travel to:

• revisit earlier moments in their franchises

• connect characters across different timelines

• reshape entire cinematic universes.

It’s a fitting way to conclude our Journey Through Time Travel, showing how one of science fiction’s oldest ideas continues to evolve in modern blockbuster storytelling.

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 Explore more Journey Through Sci-fi series

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 About Journey Through Sci-Fi

Journey Through Sci-Fi is a podcast exploring the strange, visionary and world-changing history of science-fiction cinema.

Each series focuses on a different sci-fi subgenre, examining the films and ideas that shaped the genre - from classic cinema to modern science-fiction storytelling