What If... Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?

After such a great start in episode 1, What If...? Season 2 has gone very quickly downhill. Episode 2 was weak and rushed, this one was just weak. Even with such an interesting premise as "what if Die Hard was made by Marvel for the greater MCU?" it fails pretty hard.

There's some funny dialogue - maybe one or two lines of it - and VERY little changed from the mainline MCU - the established characters are all mostly the same as the ones we know from Earth-616/The Sacred Timeline - which makes for a quicker way to get into the story, but the story itself is NOT good. In ANY way.

Though we do get another, new-to-the-MCU, character that could prove interesting down the track. Maybe. But not likely, if I'm honest.

If the first series of What If... went to the darker aspects of Marvel multiverse.

The second series has been lighter and frothier so far. This Christmas episode is what if Happy Hogan did Die Hard.

As Happy Hogan the head of security for Tony Stark is getting everything ready for the Avengers Christmas party.

Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) breaks into Stark Tower with two goons just as JARVIS is off line for a defrag. It allows Hammer to reprogram the robots.

Hammer wants the Hulk serum. It's Happy Hogan who realises that he is at the wrong place at the wrong time and gets to the serum first.

With Disney purchasing 20th Century Fox, they could poke fun of their acquired properties. This was an entertaining instalment. I liked when the other Avengers show up, they go for the wrong target.

Here's an idea: let's remake a true holiday classic and put in one of the biggest superheroes to act as the lead. That's probably what Kevin Feige expected to hear when A. C. Bradley said that she wanted to pitch him a Christmas episode. It's obviously not known how that conversation went, but I can only imagine that Feige must have scratched his hat when she told him that Happy Hogan was going to be the lead. It's an amusing thought, but the amusement unfortunately wears off very quickly in an episode which shows that "Die Hard" and the MCU are better apart.

Is this a bad episode? No, it is certainly not a bad episode. However, given the smart idea it would have been easy to expect that the writing would be a little more clever. Take aside the idea of putting Happy Hogan, one of the less interesting characters of the MCU, in as the lead, but bringing back Justin Hammer in this manner could have been something very special, but is just kinda treated as a joke. Hammer is once again played by Sam Rockwell, who just loses himself in the fun of playing this maniac, and amidst all the Christmas quips, he gives this episode the soul and the fun that it needed. The macguffin is the most obvious idea anyone could have, and the use of it is also something that feels like it was thought of by a six-year-old, and the conclusion to the storyline is pretty much not existing. There's a faint joy in the episode, and it's difficult to not be entertained by a Christmas setting, but outside of the annual Christmas film reference, as well as the very funny joke involving the Avengers, it doesn't really use its setting that much, and why would they, when they can just do "Die Hard" and get some cheap thrills that way? It's nice to see Jon Favreau in his own little solo outing, but he is the least fascinating part of this episode, and gets lost in the mix of more entertaining guest stars like Rockwell, and even Kat Dennings.

"What If... Happy Hogan Saved Christmas" is a misleading title for an episode that is openly a ripoff of something better and way more entertaining. The episode isn't bad, it's just a missed opportunity in the spirit of Christmas, as it doesn't evoke any feelings of the holiday, nor offers anything interesting at all.

A second movie parody! In just three episodes! Whilst this third episode didn't exactly stick to the format, it was a lot of fun - therefore I assume has been badly reviewed by the characters on here. I thought it was a decent diversion and that Kat Jennings remains the best thing in any Marvel project she's part of.

It's Christmas time and Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau) is charged with organising the Party at Avengers Tower designed, unfortunately, to take place whilst the heroes are off site and Jarvis is down for scheduled maintenance. The building is attacked by Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) who commandeers the robotic Iron Man suits and uses them to take control. His aim is to steal a vial of Hulk's (Mark Ruffalo) blood. Hogan, with Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) and Darcy (Kat Dennings) as his only real aid, tries to get to the blood first.

So, it's difficult to say exactly what the "What if" is this time. I guess it's what if, sometime before Age of Ultron, Justin Hammer gets out of Prison and tries to steal Christmas. It's not entirely clear how he gets out, but he does and that leads us into a neat Marvel Die Hard parody, which isn't excused by name checking the film in the script, even though it's done in one of the funny moments. Kat Jennings' Darcy is the MVP again, with a laugh from almost every line she has.

Again, the animation style is good and I liked the "freak" version of Hogan Hulk (Hulk Hogan) that we see in this. The voices are mostly the MCU cast, with the exception of Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans and Scarlett Johansson. Shame that Werner Herzog doesn't do "his" voice in this, but Ross Marquand has a decent impression and it's a good punchline for a long meta joke.

It's perhaps not as deep as the first season was thus far, but it's certainly been a lot of fun.

This episode is my least favorite, it was sort of fun, but worthless mostly. It's like they made this episode just to fit Christmas. No stakes, no character development. What they should've done is make a more solid what if...? At the Avengers tower, with Christmas more as a back drop. Like, if this was a 22 episode season, why not. But this only has 9 episodes, 8 if you don't count the finale as a real what if...?. So using this episode just to make Happy Hogan something else. Not worth it.

The word count is so much, so I'm just going to keep typing on and on. So yeah, you defiantly got my review.