Daredevil: Born Again wrapped up in mid-April, and an action-packed finale saw New York City placed under Martial law by Mayor Wilson Fisk. The Kingpin essentially outlawed superheroes and dispatched his Anti-Vigilante Task Force to keep the "peace."
Less than a month later, Thunderbolts* was released in theaters, and ended with the New Avengers assembling to battle The Sentry. The Void descended over New York, but there was no mention of Fisk or any indication that Yelena Belova and her team shouldn't be there.
It's an apparent continuity issue that's generated countless articles, social media posts, and fan theories, but we finally have an explanation directly from filmmaker Jake Schreier.
"We were definitely aware of it," he says in the video below when we ask how much the Thunderbolts* team knew of Daredevil: Born Again's plans for the Big Apple. "But we felt like the one thing that...obviously, these questions always come up in these movies of, 'Why wasn't this person there?' There are a lot of things in the world, and we always felt like our movie is so contained."
"The whole thing takes place within a matter of a couple of days, and so there's an immediacy to the threat [of The Void] and to the problem. So not only did we try to build a story where this particular antagonist, [the Thunderbolts] are the perfect people for it, because it's about common cause or an understanding of what that person's going through."
"I mean, no one else could even possibly get there like that," Schreier continued. "It's such a particular moment in time, and it happens so fast that those questions of martial law or this or that, I mean, it's all within an afternoon, and so we we could kind of not take that on and feel like it was still believable within that world, so that each story could kind of go on its own path, and wouldn't feel like they were stepping on each other."
This is a satisfying explanation, and something we've grown used to in a Saga where many movies and TV shows overlap. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, for example, came out months after Spider-Man: No Way Home and only mentioned the wall-crawler in passing. The Marvels, meanwhile, didn't reference Secret Invasion at all.
In this instance, The Void's attack on New York is so sudden that The Kingpin's men not being on the scene isn't overly surprising. It's also not outside the realm of possibility that Thunderbolts* takes place after Daredevil: Born Again season 2.
Either way, not even the Mayor likely has the power to veto a government-approved group of Avengers! Looking to the future, the 18-month time jump from Thunderbolts* to Avengers: Doomsday should also help Marvel Studios avoid the need to come up with any potentially convoluted explanations.
Thunderbolts* is available on Digital now and will be released on 4K and Blu-ray on July 29.