Barney is back inHow I Met Your Father, though apparently fans ofHow I Met Your Motherwill have to “wait for it” to get a proper kick out of Neil Patrick Harris’ beloved womanizer with the spinoff’s season premiere only teasing the star’s involvement in Hulu’s sitcom.
After an initial 10-episode season onHulu,HIMYFfailed to wow too many people, yet it looks like the show is ready to pull out all the stops for season 2 after the only cameo from the original series came from Cobie Smulders in last year’s finale. Harris was last seen on Netflix’s comedy seriesUncoupled, where he played a single gay man in New York, however, the show was canceled by the streamer earlier this month.
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The creative duo behindHIMYF, Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, discussed Barney’s cameo withEntertainment Weekly, also touching on what plans they could have for the rest of the cast, with Berger saying “We truly have discussed plot lines for all of the original characters.” Indeed, the one part that fans should take in right now is that this is only the beginning of Barney’s journey in the show, and that “By the time his appearance on our show is over, people will feel really satisfied by what they’ve seen,” meaning there’s still plenty to come from Harris.
Barney is only seen in the last scene of “Cool and Chill”, with Sophie crashing her car onto his Audi and him coming out looking as stylish as always before letting out a “Dude!”, but the showrunners did dismiss any potential fan theories about Barney being Sophie’s dad. Regarding what it takes to bring Barney Stinson into 2023, they also recognized it required some thought, but fret not “fans will really feel like they’re seeing the character that they loved and knew but also like he is existing in a 2023 world.”
HIMYFtakes place in 2022, so in the original show’s timeline there are still a lot of events to cut through, namely that Tracy is still alive and Ted won’t go after Robin again until 2023, nevertheless, even by then fatherhood had changed Barney quite a bit, hence why he’s probably driving an SUV instead of a European sports car. Whatever plans the showrunners have for him, the continuous involvement of Harris inHIMYFis bound to get fans interested in the series, especially if they find creative ways to intertwine the two stories.
Regardless of that,How I Met Your Fatherwill need morethan nostalgia to improve on its review scores and viewership from season 1,and comparing it toThat ‘90s Show, it’s arguable whether anold-fashioned sitcom is better suited to Netflix’sday-one full release model.
