What If... Happy Hogan Saved Christmas?

Best episode of What If yet. Paying homage to one of the greatest action movies of all time with an excellent choice of Happy (Favreau) as the John McClain type character. So many great references, the action is fun and bringing back Sam Rockwell to play Hammer in place of Die Hard's Hans was a master stroke.

Admittedly, I was not a huge fan of the first season of the show. Outside of two episodes I unfortunately found the show to be kind of boring. This second season has been so much better so far. This episode makes me excited for the rest of the season. The first two episodes before this were pretty solid as well. Great job Marvel, we needed a hit.

Do they actually expect adults to watch these episodes and be invested? I've seen the first three and they are all nothing to write home about. The first season was way better and matured than what I've seen thus far from season 2.

I hope the rest of the season actually gets it right and stop heading down this comical direction. We want some real action, real stories, real consequences.

Do they actually expect adults to watch these episodes and be invested? I've seen the first three and they are all nothing to write home about. The first season was way better and matured than what I've seen thus far from season 2.

I hope the rest of the season actually gets it right and stop heading down this comical direction. We want some real action, real stories, real consequences.

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.

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.

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.