Final Clue: This ‘Jeopardy!’ Host Just Turned Up in the ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ Trailer

This summer, Happy Gilmore is headed back to the links, with Adam Sandler reprising the title role from the 1996 comedy hit. While the Happy Gilmore 2 trailer shows off returning cast members Julie Bowen, Ben Stiller, and Christopher McDonald, Jeopardy! fans have latched on to a brief appearance by host Ken Jennings in the trailer. Jennings appears alongside sportscaster Stephen A. Smith and rapper Cam’ron in a scene showcasing the titular golfer’s return to prominence, but fans of the long-running game show are speculating about how much of a role Jennings will play in the film, which will premiere on Netflix on July 25.

The film centers around the return of Sandler’s Happy Gilmore, a violent hockey player turned surprisingly skillful golfer, to pay for his daughter’s ballet school. However, the path back to the course is a rocky one: he needs to enlist the help of both the son (Lavell Crawford) of his late mentor Chubbs, who implausibly also lost a hand to an alligator, and his old nemesis Shooter McGavin (McDonald), who he defeated and humiliated in the first film. His comeback has his name on everybody’s lips, including Jennings, who appears to be reading them as part of a clue on Jeopardy!

Game Show Host Appearing on Happy Gilmore

This is not the first time a game show host has appeared in a Happy Gilmore movie, and it didn’t end so well for Sandler’s character. In one of the more memorable scenes of the original film, The Price Is Right host Bob Barker is partnered with Gilmore at a pro-am tournament; the competitive Barker becomes increasingly displeased with Gilmore as a heckler (the late Joe Flaherty) throws the latter off his game. Eventually, the tension between the two leads to a brutal fistfight, with the then-septuagenarian Barker (who, in real life, had trained with neighbor Chuck Norris) emerging the victor. Will we see the mild-mannered Jennings trade blows with Sandler? Or, in a page taken from another Sandler classic, will Jennings excoriate Gilmore for an answer that is “one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard?”

Sony and CBS are locked in a legal battle over America’s favorite game shows.

Previous hosts of Jeopardy! have been no strangers to the big and small screen. Art Fleming, who hosted the original incarnation of the series, cameoed in Airplane II: The Sequel, and tormented Weird Al Yankovic in the music video for “I Lost on Jeopardy.” Alex Trebek, who hosted the series from its 1984 revival to his death in 2020, became a pop culture icon over the course of his decades with the series, and guest-starred on multiple TV series in which, including Cheers, The Nanny, The Golden Girls, Blossom, The Simpsons, Sesame Street, and Scooby-Doo and Guess Who.

Jeopardy! Has Popped Up on More Shows Than You Think

Trebek also turned up alongside Will Ferrell on an episode of Saturday Night Live as part of a Celebrity Jeopardy! sketch. Trebek and Jeopardy! play a key role in the 1992 film White Men Can’t Jump; after Gloria (Rosie Perez) has an upset win on the game show, her winnings end up as the stakes for her gambling-addicted basketball hustler boyfriend Billy (Woody Harrelson). Trebek also made a memorable guest appearance on The X-Files as a shadowy government operative who had undergone plastic surgery to resemble Alex Trebek; thus, when witnesses described him as looking like the game-show host, they would be immediately discredited.

Comparatively, Jennings, a relative newcomer to the game-show hosting business, has only started to make his mark outside the show itself. Before becoming Jeopardy!‘s host, he guested on a 2017 episode of The Simpsons, and also made a guest appearance on Call Me Kat, the ABC sitcom headlined by his onetime Jeopardy! co-host Mayim Bialik. However, it can take time for public perception of an institution like Jeopardy! to shift; even Ferrell’s long-suffering Trebek sported a mustache long after the real Trebek shaved his off. It’s probably only a matter of time before Jennings becomes indelibly associated with the game, as Trebek was, and it’s appearances like his upcoming role in Happy Gilmore 2, no matter how brief it may be, that will cement it. Happy Gilmore 2 will premiere on Netflix on July 25, 2025. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates.