Michio Kaku is being criticized on a number of physics blogs for saying (on TV) that the "God particle" is the missing piece in the "Big Bang theory". While it would be apt for the particle dubbed God to be the first cause, there's no particular reason to think that the scalar responsible for inflation (the inflaton) is the same as the scalar responsible for mass (the Higgs boson).
Meanwhile, Joseph Lykken has described a model (see slide 26 forwards) in which the dark matter is yet another scalar - this possibility is sometimes called a "darkon" - which also ultimately serves to generate the Higgs mass in a finetuned way. So that would make three scalars doing fundamental things: the Higgs, the inflaton, and the darkon. Someone should tell the Pontifical Academy of Sciences about this.
If you want three scalars, I'd go with the inflaton (in the beginning), the Higgs (son of inflaton?), and dark energy (always and everywhere).
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