Happy Hogan gets to be John McClane, neat.
Last time on What If…? we
saw what would have happened if Peter Quill had been brought to his father,
Ego, as planned. Turns out, he’d have lasted six months living under his dad
before trying to bail back to Missouri. Unfortunately, his immense power
combined with being a literal child caused him to wreak a lot of destruction on
the way there, necessitating the formation of a 1980s Avengers. Ant-Man/Hank
Pym, Goliath/Bill Foster, Black Panther/T’Chaka, Mar-Vel/Wendy Lawson, and the
Winter Soldier and brought in to handle the threat. They’re able to capture the
boy, with an assist from Thor. Hank’s daughter Hope, though, speaks with Peter
and frees him when she learns he just wants to go home and the planets he
destroyed were really his dad’s work. Ego arrives to Ego-form Earth. Hank
convinces Peter to fight with them, and Howard Stark is able to break through
Winter Soldier’s programming to the Bucky underneath. Peter uses the Seedling
his father was going to use to Ego-form Earth to enhance himself enough to destroy
Ego’s Avatar. After a thanksgiving style dinner, Thor announces he’s going into
space to fight and finish off Ego once and for all and the other Avengers elect
to go with him. Enough recap. Let’s get to it.
Ep 12: What If Happy Hogan Saved Christmas
Parodying ‘twas the Night Before Christmas’
opening lines, The Watcher shows us Cap and Iron Man fighting a horrible monster.
He then decides we need some additional context and backtracks a little. Two
hours previous, Happy Hogan and Darcy are trying to set up an Avenger’s holiday
gala with some assists from Iron Drones. It’s chaotic, but things seem to be
going well. The situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that JARVIS has
been shut down to defrag his program… or something. Maria Hill arrives and lets
us know that this gala is a big deal and that Happy is being tasked with making
sure it goes down perfectly. Darcy heads out to get some last-minute supplies,
and just misses Justin Hammer and some goons coming in pretending to deliver
flowers. ,,, No… they couldn’t be…
The Watcher quickly gives us the
overview about Justin Hammer and the plot of Iron Man 2. Industrialist
that almost got the Stark Expo destroyed, went to prison, recently was paroled
and is now looking for payback.
Hammer and his goons bust in and he
uploads something into the Stark System. He claims the plot of A Christmas
Story as his own, saying that he didn’t get that BB Gun because this is America
and you have to take the things you want. The upload is completed and now
Hammer has full control of Stark Tower. He summons the Iron Drones to him and
Happy bemoans that the Tower is failing within five minutes of shutting down
JARVIS. The Drones are reprogrammed to attack on sight staff. Damn.
Happy finds Hammer and his men in
one of the labs. Turns out, his plan is to steal a sample of Hulk’s blood and
use it to turn him into a “superhero.” He claims he’s already smarter than 10
Tony Starks and with the blood he’ll be stronger than 12 Captain Americas. No I
don’t know where he’s getting these numbers. Happy radios into Maria and lets
her in on Hammer’s plan. He says that Tony has been messing with the Blood to
see if he can make Banner go Hulk without losing control to… mixed results. Hammer
leaves his men to break into the lab, nearly catching Happy but just missing
him as he climbed onto the elevator roof. Maria tells him to secure the blood
while she handles Hammer. He leaps off the elevator into one of the giant air
ducts to do just that.
Okay, yeah, looks like we’re doing a
Marvel Die Hard.
Hammer heads to Tony’s personal wet
bar and make himself a cocktail. Or tried to, Maria shoots the bottle and tells
him to surrender peacefully. Hammer declares himself to be Tony’s greatest
nemesis, to which Maria throws back “What are you, a wealth tax?” Oo, 3rd
degree burns on that one.
The goons continue to try to break
into the lab with a sledgehammer as Happy gets in through the vent. He looks
for the blood but can’t find it from his position. He almost falls out of the vent,
and then almost drop his radio but catches himself both times. We hear Hammer
gloating about his combat skills over the radio. He ends his little tirade by
declaring the most important lesson he learned in prison. Cheating is for
winners. An explosion knocks Maria off her feet and seems to send the vents crashing
to the ground. The goons see Happy, and he hurries to find the Hulk blood. He
finds the syringe and grabs it but drops it when the goons start shooting at
him, sticking himself in the leg and causing him to start transforming. He
escapes, crediting years of working for an over caffeinated mad scientist for
why he knows what chemicals to throw to make a smokescreen. Maria radios Happy,
telling him her leg is broken and that it’s up to him to save the Tower. Hammer
rejoins her and she smashes her radio to keep him from getting to Happy.
Happy slips into a lab to hide for
a few minutes. One of the Drones comes in and he hides from it in a locker. He
sees a “teamwork” poster and figures he could use some of that right now. He
calls up Natasha, whom is currently being held at gunpoint by a HYDRA Agent at
a performance of the Nutcracker. So yeah, she’s a bit busy. His arm
hulks out a bit, which is worrying. He calls up Tony, but he and Cap are
playing Santa and Elf at the local mall. He hangs up before he can hear the situation
because the soccer moms have cornered Steve. He calls up Bruce, who is with
Clint. They’re surrounded by screaming kids because Clint has the last Iron Man
figure and are not happy with him. Bruce is begging him to just give it to the
kids, so he doesn’t hear Happy’s plea either. Happy’s limbs fully hulks out,
smashing the drone that was looking for him into pieces.
Darcy radios in to Happy about getting
the cherries she was sent out for and gets the lowdown on the situation. She
says get JARVIS to call in the Army or the Avengers, giving Happy the lightbulb
moment to go to JARVIS’ mainframe and reboot him to get control back of Tony’s gear.
This’ll be much harder with his hulk limbs, just saying.
The goons find Happy and start
firing on him. He blocks them with a work bench and then leaps out a window,
using a line of Spandex to swing him back into the building. He fully hulks out
and decides to try it out. Darcy checks in on him as she begins hacking the system,
she talks about how simple the system is… only for a wall to peel back and
reveal a huge room of servers. Happy asks he if she thought the doorknob, was
the real mainframe. The goons hear the plan and Hammer tells them to meet him
at the penthouse. Darcy starts perusing the possible alt JARVIS’ settling on WERNER
just as a drone bust in and grabs her. Hammer gets a radio working and tells
Happy that he ruined his plan to ‘rebrand’ himself with the Hulk blood. He plans
on getting it back by dissecting Happy, something that he’ll come up to do
willingly the penthouse or Darcy gets it. He warns Happy to not be a hero… but
this is a Superhero anthology.
Hammer, being a dick, is opening up
the Avenger’s gifts to each other as the elevator dings. Hammer orders his
goons to shoot. They hit what’s in elevator, which turns out to be a mannequin with
a Confetti arrow stuck to its back. After that goes off, Happy bursts into the
room and starts shattering drones. Hammer’s goons run off, saying he doesn’t
pay them enough for this, and Hammer runs off to get to the Avenger’s Armory.
Happy frees Maria and Darcy, tells them to finish rebooting JARVIS and chases
after Hammer. He has to clear out a huge squad of drones to get to him, but
that’s easy with his hulk strength. He bursts into the lab just in time for
Hammer to call in Hulkbuster Armor. The two duke it out while Darcy and Maria
do their best to bootup WERNER. Unfortunately, WERNER isn’t cooperating, so
they need to leave the fighting to Happy. He gets beaten badly by the Hulkbuster,
but then flips out and starts ripping into the Hulkbuster. The Avenger’s arrive
and start kicking Happy’s ass until Darcy get them to stop. Tony disables the Hulkbuster
with one click and Happy’s roar of frustration causes Hammer to fall backwards
out a window. He almost goes full Hans Gruber, but Happy saves him. They Avengers
and Happy go to enjoy the party… Tony conveniently not answering Happy when he
asks if he’s stuck like this. Oops.
Well, was not expecting Marvel presents
Die Hard, but that was fun. I’ve always enjoyed Jon Favreau’s Happy Hogan
and Kat Dennings Darcy, so the two together was fun. The jokes about all the
places Darcy has interned at were great, particularly one where Maria Hill asks
her if she ever had a real paying job before. How they disabled all the Avengers
so Happy could have his time to shine were great. Nat at the Nutcracker, Tony
and Steve playing Santa, and Clint and Bruce doing shopping were all great.
Though… this does raise the question of when this happens. Why? Clint only revealed
his family to the team during Avenger’s 2, and that ended with JARVIS merging with
the Mind Stone and becoming Vision. So like… did he reveal that earl in this
timeline? Or was Vision on vacation? Who knows. Bringing Sam Rockwell’s Justin
Hammer back to play they’re Hans was great. He had some really good holiday
word play, and his plan was reasonable. Break in, steal blood, and rebrand
himself. Short, sweet and to the point. Hulked out Happy was a neat concept, he
was hideous but effective as hell. I just wish the fight with the Hulkbuster
had lasted a bit longer. And that’ all I have to say about that. Next time, episode
13.
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/posts/95399618
Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
No comments:
Post a Comment