Doctor Strange didn't pick the 1 in 14,000,605 timeline because it was the only way to beat Thanos. he picked it because it was the only timeline that got rid of both Thanos AND Tony Stark at the same time.
go back and watch how Strange talks to Tony on the ship. he realized early on that a guy smart enough to build Ultron and time travel in a weekend was eventually going to be a bigger threat to the multiverse than Thanos ever was.
Ultron Just Farmed Aura and Reminded Jocasta Who The Real Daddy Is 💀
When Ultron enters Jocasta's mindspace, she serves him a simulated drink. He gets dizzy, and she traps him in a chair wrapped in chains.
Then she warns him: "I can slice and dice your code any which way I want."
Ultron breaks free without flinching. He tells her she is the newer code and he is the old one, and that he has been through every corner of the internet.
Then he says, "My hacks have hacks."
He ends it by saying he can strip her down until she is no more complex than a game of Pong.
Thanos lied about the Snap being random. every single person whose life was bought with an Infinity Stone in Infinity War miraculously survived the "50/50" coin flip.
think about the math. Loki traded the Space Stone to spare Thor, Gamora traded the Soul Stone to spare Nebula, and Strange traded the Time Stone to spare Tony. all three of the people who gave up a stone died, and all three people they paid to save survived the Snap. Thanos didn't leave it to chance, he just honored his contracts.
MCU conspiracy theory: What if HYDRA deliberately made sure that elevator was full so Thor and Tony would send Hulk down the stairs?
Rumlow's undercover HYDRA team knew they were about to intercept the Avengers in the lobby, where Loki and the Tesseract were about to become the center of the chaos.
The last thing they needed was Hulk stepping out of that elevator and turning their carefully planned operation into a disaster.
What if they made sure the one Avenger capable of wrecking their entire operation took a different route?
Thanos lied about the Snap being random. every single person whose life was bought with an Infinity Stone in Infinity War miraculously survived the "50/50" coin flip.
think about the math. Loki traded the Space Stone to spare Thor, Gamora traded the Soul Stone to spare Nebula, and Strange traded the Time Stone to spare Tony. all three of the people who gave up a stone died, and all three people they paid to save survived the Snap. Thanos didn't leave it to chance, he just honored his contracts.
@MarvelExrth616 even crazier when you look at Titan specifically. seven people fought Thanos on that planet, five got dusted, and the ONLY two left standing were Tony and Nebula the exact two people whose lives were bought with a stone
Hulk was too heavy for the elevator so he took the stairs and accidentally created the Loki series
He bursts out, the case gets dropped, and Loki grabs the Tesseract and disappears
That one decision put him on the path to the TVA and the entire Loki show. All because the 2012 team wouldn’t make room for the big guy.
THE REAL REASON HAWKEYE SURVIVED VORMIR
Clint Barton couldn't be the one to die on Vormir because his death wouldn't have satisfied the Soul Stone's requirements. The Soul Stone demands: "In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love. A soul for a soul." During the five-year Blip, Clint operated as Ronin, driven by self-hatred and survivor's guilt. He explicitly tells Natasha on the cliff: "You know what I've become... I don't deserve this." Natasha, however, loved Clint and his family unconditionally, they were the only family she ever had after the Red Room.
If Clint had jumped, Natasha would have lost a friend, but Clint's act would have been an act of self-sacrifice driven by guilt, not a true loss forced upon the collector. Natasha throwing herself off the cliff forced Clint to suffer the precise emotional loss required by the stone's magic.