“Alright guys, so we’ve got a couple of big things on the docket today.”
Steve Rogers slaps a manila folder onto the cold glass of a sleek conference table at Avengers HQ. Tony Stark rolls his eyes and rises, making a show of whipping off the vest of his three-piece suit and folding it over his chair. “I’m sorry, is Nick Fury here?” he says, like an asshole. “Where’s the eyepatch?”
“Come on Tony, this is serious,” Rogers whines. “There’s a meeting at the U.N. coming up and we haven’t talked about disguises.”
“Steve’s right,” Hawkeye chimes in, lazily peering up from his phone after bookmarking the Google search results for “super rad haircut 2006 total badass.” “We can’t just waltz right up there.”
“Well, I mean, you could,” Tony fires back. “You’re literally a guy. But, sure, fine. I’m a team player. What do ya got, Stevie?”
“I think you guys are gonna like it. It’s pretty cool. But stick with me because it might seem a little complicated ...
“Hats.”
A hush falls over the room. The desperate smile on Steve Rogers’s face doesn’t dissipate as he looks around. Eyes are averted. Finally, Wanda Maximoff stops making out with her robot boyfriend Vision and asks, “Hats?”
“Yeah!” Rogers exclaims, way too excitedly.
“Like what kind of hats?” Wanda snaps back. “Like fedoras? I could probably do, like, a nice Panama. Or do you mean like ski masks?”
“No, no, no, no. Like hats. Like baseball caps.” More silence. “Ugh, hang on.”
Rogers dives into the green messenger bag he bought on clearance at J.Crew and pulls out a rigid, navy blue hat, the brim folded to a point of eerie perfection. He forcefully puts it on and plaintively opens his arms. Somehow he’s still smiling. “Well?!”
“There’s nothing on the hat,” Stark observes.
“I think people might be suspicious if we wear that in public, dude,” says Thor.
“Where did even you buy that, Serial Killers R Us?” Hawkeye says, piling on.
Rogers’s eyes begin to well up, though his smile remains, as the conference room breaks out in a cacophony of hat-related crosstalk.
“No!” Rogers yells. “Just, ju-just—just shut up! Blank hat, sunglasses, zip-up hoodie, vaguely military-style jacket—this. Is. The look! It totally worked when Bucky did it. I was like uhhh uhhh where’s Bucky! And then I did it one time and NO ONE knew who I was. Right Natasha? You were there!”
Silent up to this point, afraid to pick sides, Natasha swivels her chair to avoid making eye contact with Rogers, and then pretends to get a phone call.
“I swear to god this is a good plan and no one ever wants to do my plans and if we don’t do this my way then guess what I’m leaving the gang!”
Rogers wipes a tear from his cheek.
“May we leave?” Vision asks politely, hyperaware of the thick awkwardness that has filled the room, and of hurting Steve Rogers’s feelings any further. “I have a souffle in the oven.”
There are many things you can nitpick about the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a series of movies that involve time travel, sickly skinny boys becoming bulky hunks after taking super-steroids, a talking raccoon, Norse gods, and a gigantic purple alien with a skin goatee who has the same politics as Walter Berglund from Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom. But literally nothing is as unbelievable as the Avengers’ approach to blending in. These are highly intelligent people in charge of keeping Earth safe and somehow they landed on “Guy Who Is Obviously in Disguise” as their go-to disguise. Look at this:
Oh, what’s that? You need more examples, and in different colors?
Let me be blunt: These are bad disguises. If I ever saw someone on the street in a logoless hat I would think to myself, “Wow that’s pretty freakin’ weird that the guy was wearing a logoless ha—hey was that Captain America?!” Logoless hats are not normal! Do you know how hard it is to find a logoless hat? I clicked through 9,000 hats on Lids.com and couldn’t find a logoless hat. They had Hooters hats, more Jaguars hats than there are Jaguars fans, but not a single logoless hat. I Googled “logoless baseball caps,” and not only am I now on government watch lists, but I’m also not really any closer to finding out where the Avengers get these hats! (I was able to find a logoless hat from this place called Commissary, but it was much more “California cool youth” than what the Avengers have; I would, however, greatly appreciate it if Steve Rogers disguised himself as a teenager whose mom buys him rare sneakers.)
I both do and do not understand why the Avengers’ hats are so bad. I get that when you show a logo in a movie, you have to license that logo and spend money. But this is the Marvel Cinematic Universe we’re talking about! Avengers: Endgame is likely going to make nearly a billion dollars in its first week. You’re telling me Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had enough money to de-age Kurt Russell and CGI a whole presentation about how his character wanted to impregnate all the planets (I’m pretty sure this is what happened), but there’s no room in the budget for better hats? Also, Marvel is owned by Disney, which also owns ABC, ESPN, Lucasfilm, A&E Networks, and now most of 20th Century Fox. Couldn’t Marvel just make a call and get a couple of dozen Good Doctor hats or something? It’d be kinda weird—you’d be like, “Man, so Cap’s super into The Good Doctor, huh?”—but at least the superheroes wouldn’t be sporting the worst disguise known to man anymore.
I just think we can do a lot better—the Avengers can do a lot better. And at this point I just want to know why. Why must the hats be so bad? Can we toss this over to Marvel president Kevin Feige?
OH MY GOD.