Gather your yellow umbrella and blue French horn because, after six years off the air How I Met Your Mother is back with a sequel series How I Met Your Father, starring the one and only Hilary Duff. It's no Lizzie McGuire sequel, but at least it's something.
Duff will star in the Hulu original as Sophie, a woman telling her son the story of how she met his father. Following the construction of HIMYM, the entire show will, essentially, be told in flashbacks taking place in 2021 NYC, when "Sophie and her close-knit group of friends are in the midst of 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."
No word yet on how How I met Your Father will connect to HIMYM — other than HIMYM creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' involvement as executive producers — but Duff might have given us a clue in her announcement video when she told fans to "suit up" on Instagram. "Suit up," of course, is Neil Patrick Harris' character Barney's catchphrase in HIMYM. Could Sophie be a distant relative perhaps? Or a past fling? (We know he's had many.)
It's also possible that the show will be more of a spiritual sequel to How I Met Your Mother, borrowing the structure, not the characters. This was originally the plan for the failed 2016 spinoff How I Met Your Dad, which would have starred Greta Gerwig as 20-something Sally. Some fans might be disappointed at the idea of not seeing any potential crossovers with HIMYM; but to those fans, I ask, how interested are we in seeing Ted and Robin do their whole thing again? I'm gonna bet not so much.
Meanwhile, for those Duff fans skeptical of how this news will affect the planned Younger spinoff about her character, Kelsey, we don't quite know yet. According to Variety, the spinoff is still very much in development, but a source claimed that it's "unlikely Duff could do both projects." The source went on to claim that How I Met Your Father was a bigger priority for the actor, but how this shakes out could depend on contract details the public just isn't privy too.
The announcement is also another sign that fans should give up hope of ever seeing the Lizzie McGuire sequel series we were promised by Disney+ all those months ago. Disney reportedly passed on the show, which would have found a 30-year-old Lizzie struggling to figure out her life in New York, because it was too adult. And now that Duff has signed onto HIMYF, it looks like any chance of Lizzie McGuire getting a second life is gone.
How I Met Your Father might not be the "Hilary Duff plays a 30-something single woman in New York City" show we hoped for, but it looks like it's the one we're going to get.
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Image: Nicole Rivelli/2021 ViacomCBS