The creative team behind What We Do in the Shadows has spent years fleshing out the lore of a Staten Island inhabited by three idiot blood-sucking vampires. But in the eighth episode of season four — “Go Flip Yourself†— a home-renovation show forces the vampires to take stock of their material needs and wants, and obsessive, keen-eyed fans may have noticed a major omission. When a “his-and-hers†closet with a hat rack for Laszlo is mentioned, Nadja is beside herself: “Laszlo only has one hat, and it’s bloody cursed!†she screams. “Correction, my darling, I have five hats,†he responds.
Unfortunately, this amounts to a devastating erasure of the whopping 12 hats we’ve seen Matt Berry wear on this show. Whether this was a mistake or a revelation that he has Marie Kondo’ed them out of existence, it feels wrong not to create a record of these hats for future generations. Luckily I exist, and I pay a lot of attention to fashion hats, Matt Berry, and this show. So here, without further ado, is the definitive and exhaustive (exhausting?) guide to Laszlo’s many great hats.
Cursed Witches’ Skin Hat
This is the most notorious of the hats, as it’s the only hat that can actively move plot forward, thanks to the big bloody curse on it. It’s also made from the skin of witches and has its own asshole, which is extremely rare in hats. Nadja famously hates it and has tried to throw it out, “but it keeps crawling back, literally,†while the rival Manhattan-based vampire Simon the Devious covets it madly. Narratively it’s relatable because men’s fashion often includes items people think they look great in, even as the rest of the world begs them to stop wearing them — for example, cargo shorts. It’s the cargo shorts of hats.
Yellow Ball Cap That Reads “Absolute Acesâ€
Seen here on the far-right (stage left) side of the hat rack, this was a gift from the premiere of the 2006 movie Smokin’ Aces. He’s never worn it, which is fine. A baseball cap would highly corrupt both Laszlo’s and Matt Berry’s personal aesthetic. It would be like seeing the Queen of England in shorts. No thanks!
Fancy Top Hat
No true Victorian gentleman would dare walk the Earth for all eternity without a black top hat to wear to formal events. So obviously, this hat debuts in the pilot, when Laszlo wears it on a murderous stroll through the park with Nadja, who has a matching fascinator-style top hat. We next see it in the season-two finale, “Théâtre des Vampires,†when he wears it around the house in what I’ve always considered a vain attempt to elevate the sweatpants he’s forced to wear since running out of clean clothes and losing access to Guillermo’s laundry knowledge.
Feather Fedora
This hat is a slam dunk. It is, in my opinion, the best hat of the bunch, possibly even the best hat in North America. First seen in the season-three finale, “The Portrait,†it’s a black (or dark mauve?) fedora with a long (perhaps quail?) feather. It’s like what Peter Pan would wear if he were a grown man driving an Aston Martin instead of a little boy flying around. Not only does it work well for Laszlo as a character, it just really suits Matt Berry’s whole vibe as a person. It’s period without being costumey, and also he just looks really cool in it! He should wear this hat to the Emmys!
Funeral Hat
This is a plain black hat that I don’t believe technically qualifies as a fedora because it doesn’t appear to have an indented top. It seems to be one Laszlo specifically wears for funerals, and Nadja has an almost perfect matching one. We see it at Nandor’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandaughter’s funeral, and he also wears it to Colin Robinson’s impromptu funeral in “Colin’s Promotion.â€
Black Floral Hat
According to my hat data, this hat makes its only appearance in the season-two premiere, “Resurrection,†when Laszlo wears it to the necromancer’s hut as the vampires attempt to bring Topher (Haley Joel Osment) back to life. It’s hard to examine the details because it’s a black hat with a black floral garland on it, in a very dark scene, but do take a minute to pause and reflect on how much the costumers on this show do for even the things you can barely see. It’s interesting because it feels like a festive twist on the funeral fedora, making it a fitting choice for an attempt to bring the dead back to life.
Jackie Daytona’s Cowboy Hat
We only see this snakeskin cowboy hat once, when Jackie Daytona wears it in the alley while handing out flyers for Lucky Brew’s talent show. We never see it again, perhaps because it’s part of his Jackie Daytona disguise. Or, more likely, it was lost in the tragic series of fires he sets for the insurance money at the end of that episode.
Bucket Hat
Bucket hats are huge right now because we have strayed irretrievably far from the light of God. This particular one is part of Laszlo’s “least vampire-y vampire attire†that he’s asked to wear in the episode “Private School.†It’s infamous for being such an anomalous sartorial choice for both Laszlo and the regular human man who plays him — plus it’s furry??? We see the hat referenced in the onscreen animations Go Flip Yourself puts up when Laszlo mentions his five hats, however it does not appear among the five hats we actually see hanging on the wall at the end. Interesting!
Gardening Fedora
This worn fedora is donned by Laszlo when he’s in the garden working. Most gardeners use hats with large brims to protect them from the sun. Laszlo probably wears it because he found it somewhere and thinks it looks cool. It does!
Turban That Is Not Only Accurate to the Ancient Civilizations of Persia, It Also Happens to Be a Gift From His Good Friend the Maharaja Duleep Singh
He can’t wear it anymore because the rats have been nesting in it.
Barrister’s Wig
Not all wigs are hats, but some wigs have enough hat properties that I feel safe putting them under the “hat†umbrella. For one thing, it just sits on his head — it’s not installed the way a true wig would be. It would also need to be stored the same way other hats are, in order for it to maintain the shape of the curls. It would go on the hat rack and is, therefore, a hat.
Ghost Laszlo’s Ghost Sleeping Cap
Yes, this is me being pedantic, but hats are hats, and this IS a hat that IS owned by Laszlo, wherever the ghost of him is right now.