Glen Powell wears an IWC Pilot's Watches

Glen Powell joined Top Gun: Maverick in August 2018 for what Wikipedia records as a pilot trainee role that was enlarged for him after he impressed Tom Cruise and Jerry Bruckheimer; Powell himself was reluctant at first, having read Hangman as a one-dimensional 'dick garnish.' What the film does with Jake Seresin justifies the enlargement. Hangman is talented, cocky, and rude, the constant needle in Rooster's side, and then in the final minutes he becomes the mission's emergency action pilot, arriving unannounced in his Super Hornet to shoot down the Su-57 that has Maverick and Rooster cornered with nothing left to fire.

His watch is documented at the squad level rather than the wrist level. Hodinkee called the film's property master, Robbie Duncan, who named Powell alongside Miles Teller among the actors wearing IWC, and explained the system plainly: 'Higher-ups got Portuguese, and the pilots wore Pilot's Watches.' The young aviators wore the two editions IWC reserves for real graduates of the Navy's Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor course, a Mark XVIII three-hander and a ceramic chronograph, with green straps on some and black on others to mix things up. Which of the two SFTI editions Hangman wears, no publication has ever pinned down, so this record claims only the brand and the Pilot's Watch family.

Powell's relationship with IWC outlived the character. In Devotion, released the same year, he wears a vintage IWC pilot's watch from the 1930s as Tom Hudner, and he has since fronted IWC promotional material in a flight jacket carrying the brand's patch, a blue chronograph on his wrist. For Top Gun: Maverick itself, the system Duncan described is the documented fact: the brass wore Portugieser, and the pilots wore Pilot's Watches.