Daredevil season 3 is set roughly a year before the events of Avengers: Infinity War, which may be a big clue as to how Marvel Netflix will avoid Thanos altogether. You shouldn’t expect this season to deal with the repercussions of the Mad Titan’s snap, but also don’t hold your breath on it being addressed at all.
When Daredevil launched in 2015, the Marvel Netflix shows took place pretty much in real time; season 1 was set in 2015. Since then, though, time has moved more slowly for the Defenders than for the rest of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Jessica Jones season 2, for example, was the first series to be explicitly set after the events of Captain America: Civil War. Iron Fist season 2 contained street signs and posters that suggested it was in late 2016.
Daredevil season 3, however, jumps forwards a few months. There are two occasions where the Kingpin and his lawyer explicitly state that Wilson Fisk has been incarcerated for two years. Allowing for the fact they were probably rounding up, that officially sets the series in 2017. This tracks with Matt Murdock’s recovery following The Defenders; he’s been believed dead for somewhere between six and nine months (but in reality has been recuperating under the watchful care of Sister Maggie).
A lot of viewers have argued that the events of Avengers: Infinity War should have an impact on the Marvel Netflix shows. The timing, however, explains why they don’t; they still haven’t caught up with the snap yet. And, at this point, it seems to also point to how they’ll get around it in the long-term.
By the time they get to 2018, it will be well after the release of Avengers 4. That’s believed to be a time travel story of some kind in which history is rewritten and Thanos’ snap averted altogether. As such, we can presumably assume the Marvel Netflix world will straight-up ignore the snap, and continue telling more grounded, street-level stories, only jumping to 2018 and beyond after Avengers 4’s reset. This has been suspected for a while, but the passage of time in Daredevil really backs it up.
Daredevil season 3 isn’t just avoiding clashing with the Marvel movies. Showrunner Erik Oleson has insisted that the new season stands on its own, publicly confirming that there wouldn’t be any cameos from other members of the Defenders before the series released. Given the setting, though, it makes sense that Daredevil is on his own. Jessica Jones has never been the kind to go on patrols, Luke Cage is essentially a local crime boss in Harlem now, Danny Rand has headed off on a quest to Asia, and Colleen Wing is still familiarizing herself with the Iron Fist she now bears. None of the other heroes are really in a position to be of any use to Matt anyway.
