1957 - RIP Hardy

Hardy is completely miserable. Worn down from his many years of servitude. He's a severe alcoholic, and his comedy has suffered horribly too. HIC doesn't seem to notice though. She always laughs maniacally at his movies, even though everyone else can tell he lumbers around on stage as a joyless, broken wreck. He hangs himself. Laurel, guilty and devastated about what he's complicit in putting his friend through, finds himself for the first time furious with HIC. He thinks he's going to march into her office, tell her off, and quit. He walks up to her, seething. But he looks in her eyes. She's heartbroken by the loss. They collapse into each other's arms, and both start sobbing. 

Jane (47) leads a simple life, raising her son (12). She opens a joke shop, and eventually marries a simple business man whose last name is Egbert. Laurel checks in from time to time, but from a distance. Never speaks to Jane again. Sometimes he comes by and shows his son some tricks alone in the yard, like the ones Houdini taught him in the orphanage. 

Meanwhile, Jake is on another expedition, plundering some Sburbian ruins with one of his families. He's taking his beautiful wife (of the moment. he's had many wives) and his 5 year old son through a jungle to approach the ruins. They hear some rustling in the bushes. A crazed Charlie Chaplin busts out of the bushes, and confronts Jake after finally tracking him down. He shouts at him, insists he must pay for his crimes, his service to Crocker, his complicity in mass murder. Chaplin pulls out a gun, aims. Jake reflexively hides behind his wife, just as Chaplin pulls the trigger. Wife dies. Son screams. Jake pulls out two pistols, they have Hollywood style gun battle. They run out of ammo, engage in fisticuffs. Jake badly outclassed, gets beaten senseless. Chaplin seems to be losing it, shouting things like "I LOVED YOU!" as he beats Jake to a pulp. Chaplin, raising fist over unconscious Jake, who is near death, is interrupted. It's Calamity, who says nothing. She merely shakes her head at him. He lets go of Jake, and weeps. Then, angrily, stomps over to Jake's son, takes him by the hand, and leaves Jake badly beaten and alone in this jungle. Calamity leaves too. Chaplin adopts his son, renames him Harry, in honor of his old master, Houdini. When he's a little older, the son, deeply ashamed of his biological father, takes his dead mother's last name, Anderson.