‘What If…? – Season 2’ Episode Three Recap: “What If…Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?”

Warning: the following article contains spoilers for episode three of What If…? – Season 2. 

After years (?) of speculation on whether or not Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) would return to the MCU, here he is for the first time since appearing in 2014’s All Hail the King, albeit in animated form. Time will tell if he will eventually appear in the show-turned-movie Armor Wars, though the rumor mill has heavily pointed out this will be the case. In the meantime, audiences can bask at Rockwell’s return as the iconic Iron Man 2 villain (I said what I said) in the third episode of What If…? – Season 2. 

Today’s episode riffed heavily on Die Hard, where Hammer plots his revenge against Tony Stark (Mick Wingert), who is too busy with fans on Christmas Day alongside Steve Rogers (Josh Keaton), Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner), and Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to be at Avengers tower, while Natasha Romanoff (Lake Bell) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) are celebrating the Holidays elsewhere. 

At Avengers Tower, Happy Hogan (Jon Favreau), Darcy Lewis (Kat Dennings), and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders) are currently setting up a Christmas party, which gets attacked by Hammer and his goons. The tower then gets hijacked as Hammer takes control of the Iron Legion, looking to inject himself with Hulk’s blood to kill Stark. However, Happy accidentally injects himself with the blood, causing him to transform into The Freak. He then uses his newfound powers to his advantage to bring down Hammer and his current operation on Christmas Eve. 

Fittingly enough, the episode’s release was timed to Christmas Eve, making it the perfect bite-sized watch as families gather during the Holiday season for festivities. As a Christmas watch, it worked well to put me in the spirit of the holidays, but as a self-contained episode of What If…? it isn’t the season’s strongest so far. 

The best part of the episode occurs with its flourishes of action. It is surprisingly epic in its self-contained location and contains a particularly violent setpiece where Hogan as The Freak topples an endless army of Iron Legion bots. As much as What If…? expands the footprint of the MCU to more kid-driven entertainment, the animated series has been unafraid to target a broader audience, especially with its treatment of action scenes. While there is no blood to be found here, that doesn’t stop the action from hitting hard and the kills to be viciously felt. 

Rockwell’s return as Hammer is also a major highlight, and I sincerely hope we will see him again very soon, either through the medium of animation or in Armor Wars. There hasn’t been much development on that, but a Hammer live-action return might be what the MCU needs to crawl back from its depths. In the meantime, Rockwell has loads of fun lending his voice to Hammer and helping him become the Hans Gruber of today’s episode. 

But the episode largely fails regarding Hogan and Darcy’s arc. Dennings, once again, acts as a comic relief, and the material she has to work with is not only underwritten but painfully unfunny. Favreau does his best, but some of his jokes are too reliant on tropes from Die Hard that they feel like references being spoon-fed to audiences instead of being integrated naturally within the plot. 

There’s also the lingering problem of soundalikes. While many have currently done a decent job at capturing the essence of the live-action character’s voice (particularly Keri Tombazian, who nailed Annette Bening in yesterday’s episode), some in today’s episode just aren’t impressive. Mick Wingert sounds nothing like Robert Downey Jr, as he, unfortunately, exaggerates many of his lines in a way that makes him a completely different Tony Stark audience members grew up knowing and loving. 

As a piece of Christmas cheer, today’s episode of What If…? – Season 2 works. It may not be the best the series has to offer and the season’s weakest episode so far, but it will definitely put you in the mood for the holidays if you weren’t feeling it beforehand. Now, that’s a job well done. 

The third episode of What If…? – Season 2 is now available to stream on Disney+.