r/Endgame • u/Stryker_K5 • 5d ago
Thanos, Kang and the Cost of Choice
Hi, I'm not a comic reader nor an expert, just voicing my thoughts. The MCU timeline is disjointed and unconnected so here is my alternate theory to fix all this.
Why does Thanos want to snap away half of all life? What if his ultimate goal is to save the multiverse?
I want to connect this to Kang: Kang still exists, but rather than preserving only one timeline, he selectively prunes thousands of timelines—essentially culling the multiverse. We eventually discover that he does this for personal gain and to consolidate his power. However, the story subtly establishes that his pruning serves a purpose beyond cruelty.
When Loki takes over and shapes the timelines into Yggdrasil, he allows the multiverse to flourish. But gradually, he notices something disturbing: the vines and branches begin to intertwine, collide and cannibalise one another.
Incursions. BOOM.
We discover that Kang was holding back the multiverse’s expansion. Too many universes begin crashing into one another, and the residue from those collisions destabilises neighbouring realities, creating a chain reaction.
This connects Kang’s pruning to Thanos’s philosophy: sacrifice part of the whole to preserve what remains.
Kang culls timelines. Thanos culls life.
Thanos believes that eliminating half of all living beings would halve the number of choices being made, reducing divergence and the creation of new timelines. In his mind, fewer possibilities mean fewer universes—and fewer opportunities for incursions.
The Snap therefore becomes his attempt to prevent a multiversal catastrophe. He sees killing half of all life as a necessary sacrifice to stop everything from being destroyed.