How I Met Your Father Season 2 - Everything You Need To Know

The CBS series "How I Met Your Mother" drew a lot of fans over the course of its nine-season run, with many viewers invested in the romantic trials and tribulations of Ted Mosby — played by Josh Radnor in present-day and Bob Saget in the future — as he searched for love. The Saget version of Mosby, however, proved that the character did find love, as he was narrating the story to his children.

The show's success spawned a spinoff series on Hulu, titled "How I Met Your Father." Created by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, who previously worked together on "This Is Us" and also co-created "Love, Victor," the spinoff is focused on Sophie, played by Hilary Duff in the present and Kim Cattrall in the future. Cattrall takes on narrating duties this time around, citing to her son that she met his father on a night of adventures in the pilot episode, leaving a lot of contenders.

Here's everything there is to know about the second season of "How I Met Your Father."

Fans waiting for Season 2 of "How I Met Your Father" had to wait a while, but the long period between the end of Season 1 and the debut of new episodes was worth it. While Season 1 ran in early 2022 and unraveled over the course of 10 weekly-released episodes, Season 2 premiered in January 2023. The first half of the new slate, consisting of 11 episodes, followed a weekly rollout pattern with the back nine of Season 2 emerging in May 2023. The second season of "How I Met Your Father" wrapped up on July 11, 2023, concluding a run of 20 episodes, twice as long as Season 1's offering.

Viewers can probably make an educated guess about where the action headed in "How I Met Your Father" Season 2, because Season 1 ended with a number of unresolved plot lines and character arcs. For example, Sophie and Jesse found themselves moving closer to romance, and in Season 2, that culminates in a cinematic kiss and a declaration of feelings in the middle of a rainstorm. That will-they-or-won't-they isn't necessarily settled into a happily-ever-after, because Sophie is involved in another dramatic love triangle. Hannah decides to end her brief marriage to Sid, on account of the undeniable sparks between her estranged husband and Sophie. And in one more twist that's carefully set up throughout Season 2 of "How I Met Your Mother" is Val moving from Charlie and finding herself more attracted to Drew. A flash-forward shows they'll eventually have a son together. 

Meanwhile, the series explored other ongoing themes in young Sophie's life, such as her tentative search for her father and the development of her photography career.

Like predecessor series "How I Met Your Mother," "How I Met Your Father" is a romantic comedy in the guise of a friends-hanging-out show, with Sophie surrounded by a tight-knit support groups of pals, confidantes, and potential love interests. An ensemble of familiar faces from TV comedy's past populated the cast of "How I Met Your Father" Season 1, including "Lizzie Maguire" star Hilary Duff as Sophie, "GLOW" actor Chris Lowell as Jesse, Josh Peck of "Drake and Josh" as Drew, and "Sex and the City" legend Kim Cattrall as older Sophie, narrating from the future.

As "How I Met Your Father" is a tightly serialized show, complicated by time jumps, it would be tough to write out a major character or account for the departure of an actor. As it stands, the whole Season 1 regular cast of "How I Met Your Father" returned for Season 2, including Francia Raisa, Tom Ainsley, Tien Tran, Suraj Sharma, Daniel Augustin, and Ashley Reyes. In January 2023, we learned about some new cast additions, including pop star Meghan Trainor, Mark Consuelos ("Riverdale"), Michael Cimino ("Love, Victor), Constance Marie ("George Lopez"), Meaghan Rath ("Being Human"), and John Corbett, best known for his work on cult classics "Sex and the City" and "Northern Exposure," who will play an "old guy" boyfriend opposite Hilary Duff's Sophie. 

Alexis Denisof appeared as his "How I Met Your Mother" character, Sandy Rivers, once a major New York news anchor now demoted to weather weatherman. Neil Patrick Harris, who played caddish lothario Barney Stinson on the original "How I Met Your Mother" (and landed four Emmy nominations for his troubles) once more played the character on the reboot. Barney gets into a minor car accident with Sophie on the mid-season finale, and advices her against seeking out her father.

Carter Bays and Craig Thomas created the original "How I Met Your Mother," but they aren't actively involved in the day-to-day processes of "How I Met Your Father," credited as executive producers and for having written the material that "inspired" the new series. According to Entertainment Weekly, 20th Television asked writer-producer team Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger — best known for the film "Love, Simon" and the MTV comedy "Zach Stone is Gonna Be Famous" — a few years back if they wanted to write a pilot script for a new take on "How I Met Your Mother." "There was a great internal response, and then we were tapped to co-run 'This Is Us,'" Berger said. "It was sort of collectively agreed that we would hit pause." When "This is Us" was winding down, and Hilary Duff was wrapping up her stint on the long-running comedy "Younger," the time was right to jump on "How I Met Your Father," and the creators were hired as showrunners. They saw to their creative vision for the entirety of Season 1, and they did the same on "How I Met Your Father" Season 2.

On January 10, 2023, Hulu released the first trailer for the upcoming second season of "How I Met Your Father." Fans so eagerly anticipated this first real glimpse of new episodes of the hit serialized comedy-mystery that the clip collection amassed more than two million YouTube views in under a day. Set to the Cure's classic love song "Just Like Heaven," the trailer seems to promise that Season 2 of "How I Met Your Father" will offer plenty of the stuff that made Season One such a smash. There's plenty of Sophie (Hilary Duff) pining and wishing to meet her one true love, while observing her close friends trying to make their own relationships work, or take them to the next level. Meanwhile, the whole gang seems to be growing tired of youthful pursuits as they head into their thirties, particularly drinking games revolving around board games. Additionally, the trailer hinted at other major Season 2 moments, like dancing in the streets, a home birth, chaotic New York City driving lessons, and TV veteran John Corbett as an "old guy" with mutton chops who dates Sophie.

"How I Met Your Father" isn't the first parentally-switched offshoot of the 2005-2014 CBS mega-hit "How I Met Your Mother." The same year that the flagship show ended, CBS considered a pilot of "How I Met Your Dad," starring future Oscar-nominated filmmaker Greta Gerwig as Sally, a woman looking for love in New York and hanging out with her wacky group of friends. Gerwig later said on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" that CBS passed on the show because focus groups didn't care for her.

Undeterred, and nearly a decade later, the reimagining of "How I Met Your Mother" was back on but away from its CBS point of origin. In 2021, according to Deadline, the Disney-owned, ABC-affiliated streaming service Hulu announced plans for a contemporary set new take on "How I Met Your Mother" — which, of course, ended up being "How I Met Your Father," starring Hilary Duff. If you want to watch Season 1 to prepare to binge Season 2, you can find it on Hulu. Or if you'd rather watch the original series where it all started, you can stream all nine season on Hulu or Amazon Prime.