Black Widow Fixes An MCU Running Joke | Screen Rant
Warning! This post contains spoilers for Black Widow.
In Black Widow, Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) goes on the run but she doesn't don a baseball cap and sunglasses as a disguise, which is one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's running jokes. Black Widow is set during the tail end of and in the days after Captain America: Civil War; Natasha is a fugitive because she "attacked the King of Wakanda", i.e. King T'Challa/The Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), and Romanoff is being hunted by Secretary Ross (William Hurt) for violating the Sokovia Accords. Still, Natasha never deigns to wear a baseball cap and shades in public.
Numerous times throughout the MCU movies, the Avengers resort to wearing a ball cap and sunglasses when trying to be incognito. Captain America: Civil War is the biggest culprit as it happens multiple times throughout the film. When the Avengers commence their mission in Lagos, Nigeria, Wanda Maximoff (Scarlett Johansson) tries to blend in while wearing the cap/shades combo. Bucky Barnes/The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) also wears a baseball cap as he hides in Romania. When they violate the Sokovia Accords to find Bucky, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) and Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) are also conspicuously inconspicuous wearing their baseball caps and eyewear. In Ant-Man and the Wasp, Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) jokes about how he, Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly), and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) look like "ourselves going to a baseball game" when they're running from the FBI.
However, Natasha Romanoff never attempts to hide in plain sight using the MCU's most obvious and overused disguise. Nat absconds to Norway to hide from Secretary Ross but she doesn't wear any type of hat or use any method to hide her face. When Romanoff travels to Budapest, which is a much more crowded urban center, Black Widow still rides a train and blends into the crowd without a baseball cap and sunglasses. While Nat is certainly concerned with being spotted by the authorities - she's reminded several times that she's a global fugitive as if she wasn't aware - Romanoff never bothering with a baseball cap and sunglasses is actually a hilarious rebuke of her fellow Avengers' favorite disguise.
Instead, Natasha uses her skills as a spy to remain alert and avoid detection, even in major population centers. It's actually even more impressive that Romanoff is able to maneuver undetected considering that she's a world-famous Avenger who's in the news because she's a fugitive. Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) even mocks Nat for being "a poser" who's on magazine covers who is idolized by little girls. Natasha's record is also public after she was instrumental in dumping all of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s files into the open in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, plus she infamously blew off Congress during a hearing.
More than any of the other Avengers, Natasha is well-traveled around the world and was trained as an espionage agent, first by the Red Room and then by S.H.I.E.L.D. Romanoff is comfortable on the run, living on her own, and she's also extremely confident in her abilities and methods. This includes being wily enough to avoid the most highly surveilled cities in the world like London and New York in Black Widow. By her admission, Nat has "lived a lot of lives" and knows what to do when law enforcement agencies are hunting you. Which, in Romanoff's spy playbook, doesn't include wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses to "blend in".
In fact, when Natasha and Steve Rogers were on the run from Hydra in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Romanoff didn't join Cap in wearing a baseball cap either, opting instead for a simple hoodie. Rogers was already wearing his favorite headgear to move about incognito earlier in the film when he visited the Captain America exhibit - and he was spotted by a little kid which should have proved to him his disguise doesn't really work. Still, it's not surprising that Steve Rogers would continue to rely on an All-American baseball cap to hide his identity. When Natasha, who became blonde, flew her Quinjet to find Steve Rogers at the end of Black Widow, she probably started by looking for someone wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.