‘What If…?’ Season 2 Episode 3 Summary & Ending Explain: What if Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?

‘What If…?’ Season 2 continues with its daily release of episodes. Following Nebula’s story as part of the Nova Corps and Peter Quill’s return to Earth following Ego’s attempt to destroy it, the third episode is a true Christmas wonder. Let’s see what would happen if Happy Hogan saved Christmas.

The Avengers Christmas party is ruined

The episode opens up in medias res. We can see that the Avengers Tower is attacked during a Christmas party, and Black Widow and Iron Man appear to be fighting a giant humanoid purple monster. The Watcher backtracks, and we can see the events that took place only 2 hours prior.

Happy Hogan is monitoring the placement of the Giant Santa hat on the Avengers Logo on the tower when he is interrupted by Darcy Lewis, who is monitoring the Christmas party. The Avengers Gala is currently on the way and Darcy and Hogan are making sure that everything goes according to plans and smoothly.

Hogan is then interrupted by Agent Hill, and he wants to talk to her about the fact that Jarvis is down and that they need to review and upgrade their threat Matrix. Hill talks to him condescendingly, mentioning that he should leave the professionals, and he retorts that he is a professional. Hill then urges him to focus on the Christmas party, after the year they had people need a reason to celebrate in any case. Hogan can see that he is being downgraded from a security professional to a caterer.

In the next scene, we can see a distracted Darcy Lewis leaving the Avengers Tower and opening the door for flower delivery. But it turns out that she accidentally opened the door for Justin Hammer, who fans of the MCU might now as Iron Man’s villain in the second Iron Man movie.

Justin Hammer attempts to steal Christmas

Justin Hammer hijacks the Christmas Gala with the three of his goons, the crowd is in panic, and Justin demands one of the guests to hand over his Star Industries table to him. He starts uploading something onto the device, all the while retelling his “childhood memory,” ending with a pearl of wisdom: “If you want something, you need to take it.” Happy Hogan is not in the room, but he can notice something taking place due to the alarms being fired all over the building and Iron Man Sentires jumping through the windows, leaving their assigned positions. It was the work of Justin as he managed to reprogram the robots.

Justin wants to turn himself into Hulk

Hogan is just about to explore what is going on when his elevator stops on the same floor on which Justin is with his goons. Hogan immediately recognizes him and overhears Justin talking about stealing gamma-radiated antigen serum (Hulk’s blood), which he plans on using to turn himself into a superhero.

He leaves his goons to break into the safe while he aims to go to Tony’s bathroom to….well mess with him. Hogan and Hill are on the line at all times and Hogan is supposed to get into the Hulk’s Blood safe via the airwents while Hill aims to stop the Hammer.

Maria ultimately finds Justin in Tony’s bar, and the two have a verbal argument with a few jokes being cracked. Happy makes his way to the safe, but he has trouble locating the Hulk’s blood. He is ultimately revealed to Hammer’s goon when the lights turn on. He manages to locate the vial of blood but, in the process, accidentally stabs himself with the sample.

Happy Hogan turns himself into a purple Hulk

As soon as Hogan accidentally stabbed himself with a sample of Hulk’s blood, his leg immediately started turning purple and developing Hulk-like muscles. Hill’s leg is broken, and she is left at the mercy of Justin Hammer; she tells Hogan over the radio that he needs to save both the tower and the Christmas party, and she destroys the receiver. Happy hides out in one of the random offices, panicking as the rest of his body starts changing into a purple version of Hulk.

He tries to call Avengers for help and first calls Black Widow, who is currently being held at gunpoint by a former HYDRA agent with 17 kills while dressed for dancing ballet in a show.

Happy then contacts Tony, but he is currently busy by being mall Santa and dismisses the calls quickly. The last person that Happy calls is Banner, who is in the middle of an argument with Clint over the last toy in the store. He hangs up, and at that moment, even a bigger portion of his body turns into a Hulk.

Darcy solves the problem

Happy then calls Darcy, who is just leaving the store, and he tells her the tower is being overrun by terrorists. Darcy, instead of being helpful, starts dropping action movie references but mentions Jarvis in the process, giving Happy an idea on how to get him back online.

Hogan attempts to reach the basement but is discovered by Hammer’s men. They start shooting at him, and Hogan is forced to throw himself through the window in order to reach the basement. Every time his body is injured. However, he becomes more Hulk, and by the time he breaks through the next floor, Happy is almost completely Hulk and has trouble keeping his temper in check and focusing on the objective.

Darcy is, in the meantime, “hacking” into the basement and reaches the server room but is picked up by Hammer’s men. Hammer then contacts Happy over the radio and tells him not to be a hero; he should face him in the penthouse at the top of the tower; otherwise, Darcy gets a bullet from Santa.

Hammer steals Hulkbuster suit and fights Hulk Hogan

Happy makes his way to the penthouse, and seeing the destruction he is capable of doing, Hammer’s goons abandon him pretty quickly. Justin, however, has a backup plan as he plans to lure Happy somewhere else and steal an Iron Man suit to fight him; Happy is fighting his way through the floors and decimating Iron Man Sentries pretty quickly. He reaches Justin’s location only for Justin to suit up in the Hulkbuster armor.

While Happy and Hulkbuster Hammer are fighting, Darcy and Hill are trying to upload an older version of JARVIS into the system, but instead, they upload WERNER, who is a lot more useless and nihilistic. Eventually, they figure out that Happy will have to deal with Justin on his own.

After a brief fight, the Avengers show up and sort out the mess before figuring out that the purple Hulk is actually Happy Hogan and that Justin is actually in the Hulkbuster suit. After being discovered, Happy roars Justin out of the window but saves his life at the last second and delivers him to the Avengers.

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