Fans of the How I Met Your Mother spin-off, How I Met Your Father, were in for a legendary treat last night. Toward the end of the episode, HIMYM star Neil Patrick Harris returned for a brief cameo. Thankfully for those interested in seeing more of his womanizing ways, it doesn’t seem like a one-off.
Per TVLine (via Deadline), Harris will suit up for more investigations into how fathers are met. In his brief cameo, Sophie (Hilary Duff) rear-ends Barney’s Audi, Harris says his signature catchphrase (“Dude!”), and Kim Cattrall, the show’s titular “I,” takes the screen to assure her impatient kids that we’d hear more about Mr. Stinson “soon enough.” The show barrels ahead, returning to Duff stepping to the “Electric Slide.”
Last year, HIMYM star Colbie Smoulders made a guest appearance on the show, reviving her character Robin. Speaking to TV Line, the creators of How I Met Your Father explained how and why they brought the character back.
“Whenever we talk about bringing back a member of the original crew, you want it to serve two purposes: You want to give some tidbits about what is going on in their lives, where they’ve landed and where they’re at,” Issac Aptaker said. “But it’s also about how they impact the How I Met Your Father story, and how they send one of our characters in a new, unexpected direction. Similar to Robin last year, we’ll learn some more about where Barney’s at, but it’ll also have a major impact on the trajectory, and main narrative, of our season.”
Aptaker also joined Cattrall in teasing more Stinson, saying we’d “have to wait and see” what comes of the character. “That car crash becomes a major turning point in Sophie’s life and in her season-long arc. Once we catch up to that, I think people will be pleasantly surprised by how her story turns via Barney.” However, both Aptaker and co-creator Elizabeth Berger are well aware of the timeline disruption this does to their show. In all likelihood, Barney will not be Sophie’s dad because Aptaker and Berger are “not telling a teen dad story,’ which would “become a pretty uncomfortable story.”
Want to find out How I Met Your Father? Answers stream on Hulu on Mondays.