This is the story of how a series years in the making is finally getting a chance. The popular comedy How I Met Your Mother ended in 2014 after nine seasons and there have been multiple tries for a sequel series, with How I Met Your Father. When it seemed like it was never going to happen, it finally will and Hilary Duff will be starring.
According to EW, Hulu has ordered ten episodes of How I Met Your Father and has cast Younger’s Hilary Duff in the lead role. Similar to its predecessor, How I Met Your Father will be set in the near future and follow Sophie (Duff), telling her son the story of how she met his father back in 2021 “when Sophie and her close-knit group of friends were figuring out who they are, what they want out of life, and how to fall in love in the age of dating apps and limitless options.”
A How I Met Your Mother sequel series or spinoff has been in the works since the original came to an end. Then the show was called How I Met Your Dad and would have starred Greta Gerwig in the lead role. CBS didn’t like the pilot and the process of the series got delayed further when Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger joined Dan Fogelman as co-showrunners on NBC's This Is Us in 2017. Seven years after the original series ended, Hulu has finally given the show the time to shine.
Hilary Duff is currently starring in Paramount Plus' Younger, which just started its seventh and final season. In 2019, she was excited about filming a Lizzie McGuire revival for Disney+, but the studio ultimately canned the series due to creative differences and not having a showrunner when the original one left. It looks like Duff is keeping busy after Younger officially ends.
So far there’s no telling on how or if the series will be connected to the original. And while How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris spoke a few years ago about the potential of a revival and how he wasn’t currently interested, there could still be hope of some of the cast at least making appearances in the new Hulu series.
Although this is just the latest of many attempts at a How I Met Your Mother spinoff, it looks pretty good since Hulu is moving forward. Despite the series finale of the original series still being controversial after all these years, hopefully enough people will tune in to see Hilary Duff take on the role of Sophie as she recalls how she met her son’s father in How I Met Your Father. In the meantime, all nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother are streaming on Hulu.
