‘How I Met Your Mother’ Alum Shockingly Returns for ‘How I Met Your Father’ Season 1 Finale

The How I Met Your Father Season 1 finale featured a cameo from one of the main cast members of How I Met Your Mother, and fans can’t get over it. Even those who saw this tie-in coming seem to be beside themselves with excitement. Fair warning: There are spoilers for How I Met Your Father ahead!

How I Met Your Father‘s debut season came to a close on Tuesday when the Season 1 finale dropped on Hulu. It featured a cameo by actress Cobie Smulders reprising her original HIMYM role of Robin Scherbatsky. In the episode, Hilary Duff’s character Sophie Tompkins meets Robin at MacLaren’s Pub where they share a drink and a poignant conversation.

As fans of How I Met Your Mother know well, the show is set primarily in a Manhattan building with MacLaren’s Pub in the walkout basement and apartments overhead – including the rent-controlled place where Ted (Josh Radnor) and Marshall (Jason Segel) lived for most of the series. In How I Met Your Father, thatsame apartment is now occupied by Jesse (Chris Lowell) and Sid (Suraj Sharma). The whole season seemed to be building towards a romance between Sophie and Jesse, but when that trajectory faltered, Sophie went downstairs for a drink.

It’s no surprise that Sophie found a reflective Robin in MacLaren’s, and it’s no surprise that Robin had some sage advice on romance to give her. She bought Sophie a scotch and listened to her woes – Sophie was afraid that things were moving too fast with Jesse and that he would regret giving up a big career opportunity just to be with her.

“Do not waste your time being scared,” Robin advised. “Fear can make you run away from things that could be good – great, even! Things that are supposed to be a part of your story… I have been married, I have been single, I have been everything in between, and the only decisions I regret making are the ones I made out of fear.”

Of course, die-hard fans know that the overlap in these two character arcs is striking. Many commenters online got to work piecing this encounter together with the extended HIMYM timeline from the series finale. In 2022, Robin would have been divorced from Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) for six years, but not yet back together with Ted.

How I Met Your Father Season 1 is over, but the show has already been renewed for a Season 2. There’s no word on when that might air. In the meantime, all nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother are streaming now on Hulu and Amazon Prime Video.