Is How I Met Your Father Repeating HIMYM’s Most Controversial Plot?
Warning: Contains spoilers for How I Met Your Father episode 8.
In How I Met Your Father there has been no explanation for why the dad is missing in the future, which could mean that the series will repeat How I Met Your Mother’s most controversial plot. As a spin-off of How I Met Your Mother that is set in the same universe, How I Met Your Father has borrowed several ideas and elements from its predecessor. While small storylines, set-pieces, and the larger storytelling format make sense, repeating a divisive How I Met Your Mother storyline could be a problem.
In How I Met Your Father, Sophie is telling the story of how she met he son’s father and at the end of episode 1 presents four possible candidates: Jesse (Chris Lowell), Charlie (Tom Ainsley), Sid (Suraj Sharma), and Ian (Daniel Augustin). Sophie indicated that she met the father that night, but has given no further information about him. In How I Met Your Mother, the mother was not seen on screen until the end of season 8 and was not named until season 9. In the How I Met Your Mother series finale, the show made a reveal that remains divisive among fans to this day.
The conceit for both How I Met Your Mother and How I Met Your Father relies on a parent choosing to tell their offspring the “true” story of how their parents met. While in both cases there is an implication that a censored version has been told, there ultimately has to be a reason why the story is being told now, and why it is only one parent telling the story. How I Met Your Mother finally answered that by revealing that Tracy (Cristin Milioti) was dead and Ted was asking for his children’s blessing to date Robin (Cobie Smulders). However, How I Met Your Father has so far provided no explanation for the father’s absence from telling the story. This could mean that they plan to repeat the same story beat from How I Met Your Mother, which would ultimately be a mistake as the original was extremely divisive and the unoriginality of repeating it would only make the situation worse.
If How I Met Your Father is not repeating the How I Met your Mother storyline, then the lack of an explanation is strange. Knowing how audiences reacted before, if the father is alive and they are still happily married then Sophie could easily make a reference to him being out of town for work, or simply out somewhere. The continued absence and avoidance of an explanation for the audience leans towards darker messaging such as the father being dead, or the couple being divorced (although this would cast a lot of the messaging about love in the story in a strange light).
How I Met Your Father has made this situation more difficult for themselves by showing Sophie in 2050 (Kim Cattrall) rather than her son. While How I Met Your Mother showed the kids and kept future-Ted (Bob Saget) hidden, the new series has kept Sophie’s son hidden. This is presumably to avoid the risk of people deciding who the father is based on the appearance of the son, but it means that it is hard for How I Met Your Father to justify the lack of the father. If it was the son shown on screen and a bodyless narrator, then Sophie could make reference to him passing through the room without being seen.
How I Met Your Father releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.