Photo: EW
The first spin-off season of How I Met Your Mother has come to an end with a bang. In the final episode, Cobie Smulders returns as Robin Scherbatsky, advising Hillary Duff’s Sophie Tompkins on her boy problems in the famous MacLaren’s Bar.
While Sophie and her friends often visit a different bar, her friend Jesse (Chris Lowell) resides on the upper floor of MacLaren’s in the very same apartment space that Ted (Josh Radnor) and Marshall (Jason Segel) once lived in, giving rise to a perfect time to reintroduce a HIMYM regular.
When producers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger saw Smulders on set, they said it was magical to see her again. They described how the show has distinguishing characteristics from the original series, which ran from 2005 to 2014.
“We really wanted to let people get to know [Sophie and her friends] as a crew before we started bringing in characters from the original,” says Aptaker. “It’s been a really, really interesting balancing act to take something that’s such a huge title and so loved and try to create something that honors it and has many similarities to it but also stands on its own two feet.”
Smulders is not the only original cast to set foot again in the set; the Captain (Kyle MacLachlan) and his spouse Becky (Laura Bell Bundy) appeared in an episode involving a pineapple crook.
Berger says that seeing Smulders come back to the character with director Pam Fryman and a few of the original show’s crew was “truly an emotional experience for her and everyone who worked with her.”
In the HIMYM talked-about finale, Robin breaks up with Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and starts her reporting career. The show’s sneak peek into 2020 reveals Robin’s face displayed on buses as she earns fame, and in 2030, she takes Ted’s blue French horn romantic move.
On the other hand, in the HIMYF finale, Sophie faces a bit of a dilemma with her new relationship with Jesse following his uttering of “I love you” on their first night together and declines his aspired gig of being on tour with his ex (Leighton Meester).
The show’s second season is confirmed to be renewed, so we can expect even more guest cameos. Aptaker says that Bays, Thomas, and Fryman have ease with the original cast, with their relationship still compact. Fryman even officiated Harris’ wedding.
“I think they’re all kind of watching this one curiously, wondering if they’re going to get a phone call,” Aptaker suggests. “The door is definitely open to having more of the gang return.”
