Batman, Thor, Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and Supergirl showed up in a Charlestown hospital ward this week, and for a few hours the kids inside got to forget they were patients. The costumed visitors spent time with children being treated at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital's pediatric unit on Thursday, cracking jokes, singing jingles and wrapping plastic capes around young patients recovering from serious medical conditions.
The visit came together just before Fan Expo Boston, the massive pop-culture convention that connects hundreds of thousands of comic, sci-fi, horror, anime and gaming fans and was scheduled for the weekend following the hospital event, according to The Boston Globe. Among the cosplayers was Matches Malone, a 57-year-old retired military veteran from Dorchester who now works in security and has cosplayed Batman for 33 years. He said he relates to the Caped Crusader because, unlike other superheroes, Batman is human. Malone first started dressing up as the character for his nephew, the Globe reported.
Also on hand were Mark Robertson and Molly Virello, a married couple who met through cosplay and drove in from their home in Connecticut for the visit. Robertson, a 37-year-old United States Postal Service worker who cosplays as Thor, started dressing up more than a decade ago and has since made a habit of visiting hospitals in costume to lift the spirits of sick children. Virello cosplays as Supergirl.
A Hammer, a Thumb War and Paper Masks
During the visit, Thor battled one patient in a thumb war, while another child held Robertson's hammer after surgery, according to the patient's parents. Robertson also gave his hammer to a child who was about to enter surgery. Patients and the costumed superheroes sat together making paper masks decorated with jewels, and Supergirl, referring to Batman, quipped, “We've got the silliest goose.” Batman, for his part, told the kids, “We're going to take on a bad guy.”
Leah Terrill, a 34-year-old child life specialist at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, helped coordinate the visit and said children generally know and love the superheroes who walked the halls that day. Terrill said the event gave patients and their families a chance to breathe and catch a glimpse of normalcy inside a hospital stay defined by uncertainty. Every child in the unit had already faced hospitalization, medical trauma or other significant medical challenges before arriving in rehabilitation, the Globe reported.
Why Play Matters for Recovery
The superhero visit offered a break from hospital monotony and a genuine sense of joy for kids who spend long stretches of their childhood in treatment. That kind of structured play isn't just a nice gesture — the American Academy of Pediatrics has established clinical guidelines around Certified Child Life Specialists using evidence-based medical play and therapeutic distraction to ease anxiety during pediatric hospital stays. Separate medical research has found that structured play interventions during long pediatric recoveries can improve pain management, build emotional resilience and boost treatment compliance.
Spaulding's 14-bed inpatient pediatric rehabilitation unit in Charlestown treats children and adolescents under 21 for severe brain injuries, spinal cord trauma, oncologic conditions and complex surgical recovery. The hospital has drawn national attention beyond this one visit: it was ranked second in the country for adult rehabilitation in U.S. News & World Report's 2025-2026 Best Hospitals rankings and has remained the only New England facility continuously ranked among the nation's top rehab centers since 1995. It also serves as the official teaching partner for Harvard Medical School's Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation and holds federal Model System designations in brain injury, spinal cord injury and burn injury rehabilitation.
The pediatric unit's role has taken on added weight since 2021, when Shriners Hospital for Children closed its 20-bed inpatient acute rehabilitation unit in Springfield, leaving Spaulding as one of only two remaining specialized inpatient pediatric acute rehab providers in Eastern Massachusetts. That scarcity makes moments like Thursday's visit — set inside a $220 million, 300,000-square-foot facility in the Charlestown Navy Yard built with waterfront green spaces and therapeutic gardens for recovering patients — carry a little extra significance for the families who rely on the unit.
Part of a Growing Trend
Superhero hospital visits have become something of a national pattern in pediatric care. In September 2024, actor Ryan Reynolds made a similar Boston hospital visit in character as Deadpool, meeting an eight-year-old cancer patient at Mass General Hospital for Children. Earlier this month, costumed window washers dressed as superheroes rappelled down the outside of Maimonides Children's Hospital in Brooklyn to entertain young patients there, reflecting the same broader trend of using costumed characters as therapeutic distraction in pediatric wards.
Cosplay itself has grown into a global phenomenon, with more than 10 million cosplayers worldwide as of a 2023 Konvoy report. For Malone, Robertson and Virello, that hobby found a purpose beyond the convention floor this week — trading a weekend of panels and photo ops for a few hours making paper masks and fighting thumb wars with kids who needed the distraction most.
