Avengers Tower is visible in the background of the new Daredevil season 3 poster, though, this isn’t anything more than a fun Easter egg for sharp-eyed fans. As is standard with all of Marvel’s Netflix series, Daredevil won’t be overtly referencing events in the MCU movies. Daredevil season 3 is also expected to take place before Thanos’ finger snap in Avengers: Infinity War, just like the second seasons of Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.
By this point in the MCU timeline, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes have long since abandoned Avengers Tower and Manhattan. They left NYC to make a Stark compound in upstate New York their new base at the end of Avengers: Age of Ultron. In Spider-Man: Homecoming (which was set roughly in the fall of 2016), Tony Stark had sold his arc reactor-powered landmark to an unknown buyer, and it was being vacated by Happy Hogan.
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In the poster accompanying the Daredevil season 3 trailer and release date, Avengers Tower can be spotted right above the left shoulder of the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. It’s interesting that the famous “A” logo remains on the side of the tower in the poster; either the new owner opted to keep the logo or this is (most likely) just a wink to fans confirming the uniquely shaped skyscraper is indeed the former home of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. The Avengers quit Manhattan just weeks after Daredevil season 1 premiered in April 2015, and since then the Defenders have become NYC’s protectors. See the Easter egg in the Daredevil season 3 poster below.
Some fans have taken Marvel TV to task for the way they have avoided showing or mentioning Avengers Tower in Netflix’s series. The shows have only fleetingly referred to the Battle of New York (calling it “the incident”) and they have gone out of their way not to show the most notable reminder of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes’ existence, even in aerial establishing shots of the city. Yet the Tower clearly remains a part of NYC’s skyline, as the poster reminds fans.
Marvel TV head Jeph Loeb has long touted his catchphrase that “It’s all connected” and the TV series are indeed part of the MCU, even though the films never acknowledge the existence of the TV series or its heroes. Loeb refers to the city’s geography as his explanation for why Avengers Tower is never seen in the NYC-based shows:
I think it’s much more that we look at it from the point of view of “where are we?”… Where we’re sitting right now, I can see the Empire State Building, but if we were sitting 30 blocks that way, I wouldn’t be able to see the Empire State Building. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. It just means that we can’t see it from where we are.
Loeb’s explanation has some merit. Avengers Tower is located in the east side of the city, not far from midtown and Grand Central Station. Daredevil and Jessica Jones’ Hell’s Kitchen digs are a little further north on the west side, Luke Cage’s Harlem is on the northern part of the island above Central Park, and Iron Fist’s Chinatown home base is downtown. It’s true, Avengers Tower isn’t easily visible at street level from those neighborhoods, but Loeb’s excuse weakens considering how often the Defenders have operated all over Manhattan, traveled across the East River to Brooklyn (where Avengers Tower should be visible in the skyline), watched newscasts on TV, and the myriad other ways the Tower could be seen and referenced in the various series.
Going out of their way to avoid Avengers Tower reinforces that Marvel’s TV shows exist in a bubble within the MCU and are not truly part of the greater universe. This predicament will only grow more pronounced when characters from Marvel movies like Loki and Scarlet Witch get their own TV series as part of the Disney streaming service. By then, the Defenders could be in the Avengers’ shadow even more, barely connected to the mainline MCU by words and Easter eggs.
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Daredevil season 3 premieres October 19, 2018 on Netflix.
