There were multiple timelines where they defeated Thanos

Very cool idea, but realistically I think you are reading into it too much. I feel like even if half of the avengers died defeating thanos, that would still be considered a true win. Heck even if the entire earth blew up defeating thanos, that's still a win in the grand scheme of things

I oeiginally interpreted Strange's "There was no other way" when he got dusted as him admitting that he actually saw 0 timelines where they win against Thanos and lied about seeing 1 so they'd keep their hopes. Kinda sucks that Endgame directly addressed the timeline thing instead of leaving it in the air, would've been more interesting imo. (And before you say it wouldn't make sense if they beat Thanos in Endgame when strange didn't see any timeline of this happening, it makes sense that he wouldn't look past the first snap in each timeline)

if he asks "we", why are you turning it into "I"? im confused.

eh, nah. it was a battle of outcomes. the victor is the one who's desired future comes to pass. If in the NFC championship game tonight, one of the seahawks players had died on the last play, would they declare the Rams the winners of the game? Of course not, the victor in that circumstance is the team that scores the most points. in infinity war and the beginning of endgame, Thanos snapped away half of all life, exactly like he wanted to, and shortly after, the remaining Avengers came to his hideout and removed his head. Was Thor the 'victor' in that scenario? Thanos was dead and Thor was alive, but they still lost because Thanos achieved his goal. Tony's goal was to bring everyone back and get rid of Thanos so he wouldnt dust them away again. He died, but he accomplished that goal.

I am sick of these personal lumbering thought experiments.
Every day. And in reels etc.

Honestly thought this was going to turn into

“…be the victor in. Victor von Doom is RDJ’s character in …”

Maybe it could be a path to the post-Secret Wars timeline.

Strange was labelled as “dangerous” in MoM and it’d be in line with the MCU version of him to foresee that everything goes to hell unless we get the timeline where Doom emerges and creates Battleworld.

Basically: the entire multiverse has to “die” (or converge into one, at the cost of more than trillions) for them to survive. He knows none of the heroes would go along with that, and that they’d try to find a “better way”. It’s why he’s secretly team Doom.

It eventually turns out that he couldn’t see beyond Battleworld and Emperor Doom because the MCU as a whole is going to do a soft reboot - ie, everything that is will cease to exist and then be reborn (bit like the Ragnarok cycle, which makes Loki’s involvement cool: he’s holding it all together at the moment and in the myths he’s central to the end of each cycle).

Maybe Strange thinks: our Loki is dead and could see Doom appearing in their universe, and that without Stark, Doom will be able to win and create Battleworld, which will stabilise everything and allow them to escape annihilation. He couldn’t see Loki as God of Stories (as he is now) because he’s sitting beyond time itself - perhaps beyond the Time Stone’s power to see when he looked.

Once Doom takes out the Loki he “missed” in the TVA (inversion of the myths where Loki is freed and starts Ragnarok - here he’s preventing it), Strange breathes a sigh of relief thinking it’s done and his faith in Doom was well placed: Battleworld is here and annihilation is averted. Of course, Doom is undone somehow and we get the reboot.

Could clean up the Kang issue too: he preserved the “sacred” timeline to prevent his variants from ever reaching him and usurping him, and given Loki is important, it explains why they watch each Loki variant closely. When Sylvie slips through the cracks we get the TV show.

Kang laughs at them because he thinks not even she will be audacious enough to kill him and choose chaos (which she does) and even then, he thinks more Kangs will appear and he’ll just win again anyway. It’s a cruel trick: the timeline he originally came from is one he’s since pruned, so if Sylvie kills him it’ll all come full circle and his old branch will grow back, he’ll win the war again and just laugh in their faces and oust them.

He doesn’t bank on Loki stepping in to hold everything together, leading to Doom appearing in the sacred timeline and gaining absolute power before He Who Remains can get back to the TVA. Ultimately it’s a miscalculation: one Kang was supposed to stabilise the Loom and survive until He Who Remains won the multiversal war, killed him and ruled for eternity again. He wanted a loop so he’d never lose.

This all comes back to why Strange spotted this one timeline where Battleworld is the only way to defeat Thanos AND prevent annihilation. Strange couldn’t see the “missing” Loki and Kang never foresaw Doom winning because he couldn’t see past himself at the end of time, every time.

It’s all Yggdrasil (as we see at the end of Loki): Kang wanted a tree that’s just a trunk, Loki is letting it all grow back out and Doom will chop it to a stump he presides over using Franklin’s power. At the end it’ll all be undone and then remade.

Yggdrasil in the comics has the Worldheart which Galactus tries to steal to sate his endless hunger forever. It’d explain his interest in Franklin: he selfishly wanted to relieve himself of his purpose, however, Franklin might be the one to plant the Worldheart and give it the energy to reboot the MCU (ie planting a new Yggdrasil / create a new universe).

Random thought that popped into my head.

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Tl;dr Strange withheld the whole truth because he knew the 1 timeline ends up with Doom winning and ruling Battleworld, and he knew Tony wouldn’t want to accept that outcome. Who knows … could be why we’re being told RDJ was the only one who could tell the story the Russo’s want to tell - hence the casting.

I took it as in all the other versions Thanos got the gauntlet again and used it.

Sorry, but this is splitting hairs.

And it's inconsequential anyway.

The same Dr. Strange that alerted Tony that the moment he had seen had arrived, and Tony understood. His sacrifice was with Strange's blessing/ prompting.

My interpretation is that the 14,000,605 possibilities that Strange saw were just a small fraction of the total.

Keep in mind 3 things:

1. Strange could only look forward from the point he was already at, not go back & see other options they could've done *before* arriving on Titan & meeting the Guardians.
2. Even with the time stone, Strange would not be able to see anything beyond his own death, so if there's an option where they win but he doesn't live to see it, he wouldn't know about it.
3. Strange was interrupted by the others before he was finished looking at timelines.

So yeah, I'm sure there *were* multiple possible victories. But Strange only had the means in that scenario to *FIND* just the one.

That "one" scenario wasn't about Tony dying or not but about Strange himself. Remember, The Ancient One couldn't see past her own death. Presumably, Strange also cannot see past his own death. This means that in any scenario where Strange dies before Thanos is defeated, Strange doesn't know that Thanos would have been defeated, causing him to disregard hundreds or thousands of winning scenarios because his view gets cut off early.