The sitcom How I Met Your Father will most likely not have as long a run as its predecessor. How I Met Your Father premiered on streaming in early 2022 as the spinoff series of the acclaimed comedy How I Met Your Mother and the show’s second season will premiere on January 24, 2023. The new series stars Hilary Duff as Sophie and follows the journey of her love life as told by her older self, played by Kim Catrall, to her son in the future.
This premise is the same as How I Met Your Mother, though with a few twists. The mystery of whom the titular mother was in the original show had a wide net of possibilities - as there was no limit to who it could be, it only had to be someone who had been with the main character Ted. However, How I Met Your Father does things differently with its own mystery father plot, complicating how long the show can run for. While How I Met Your Mother ran for nine seasons from 2005-2013, the set-up of How I Met Your Father limits the number of seasons the show can pull off without seeming forced.
HIMYF Season 1's "Father" Candidates Limit The Show's Run
In the series premiere ending, the older Sophie tells her son she met his father the night of Sid and Hannah’s engagement party. By making this distinction, the options for whom the father could be are limited to the men introduced in the pilot, as there is a limit to how many of Sophie’s future boyfriends or hookups could have coincidentally been at that party. Drew in How I Met Your Father season 1 is revealed later as a potential father, but more would make the show too contrived. With the potential father being limited to Jesse, Sid, Ian, Drew, and Charlie, the sequel show has fewer possibilities to explore.
How Many Seasons Could HIMYF Reasonably Run?
If How I Met Your Father was to explore each of the potential fathers properly, the best option would be for the show to run about four seasons. With the extended number of episodes per season, it would allow for enough time to be dedicated to each relationship without it being dragged on for too long. Also, some father options would need to be further down the line as the relationships set up in season 1 would need to fall apart and have enough time for the characters to feel they can move on.
For instance, to execute the popular HIMYF theory that Sid is the father, he would need to divorce his wife Hannah and be okay with betraying his best friend Jesse who admitted he was in love with Sophie, while if Charlie were the father, he would need to have moved on completely from his relationship with Sophie’s best friend Valentina, so the girls’ friendship isn’t ruined. With these limited options, How I Met Your Father ending at about four seasons would be enough time to both explore the potential ‘fathers’ and allow for the appropriate character development to occur.