How I Met Your Father: Sophie Is The Spinoff’s (Better) Barney

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While the How I Met Your Father heroine Sophie is more like Barney than Ted, she is a far more rounded and fully realized singleton than the earlier How I Met Your Mother character. How I Met Your Father did a solid job of updating How I Met Your Mother’s appeal to a new generation. The Hilary Duff-led sitcom spinoff recovered from shaky pilot reviews and ended up winning over many critics and viewers alike in time for How I Met Your Father’s season 1 finale.

However, How I Met Your Father’s cameos from How I Met Your Mother’s cast prove that the earlier show still casts a long shadow over its successor. While How I Met Your Father does try to avoid directly recreating too many of the earlier show’s plots, character beats, and jokes, there are inevitably some similarities between the heroine of the spinoff and the lead characters of How I Met Your Mother. Luckily, How I Met Your Father’s Sophie improves on pivotal elements of both of the ‘00s sitcom’s heroes.

Related: How I Met Your Father Season 2 Risks Losing What Made The Show Work

Unlike How I Met Your Mother's Ted, who always wanted to fall in love and was way too open to branding every romantic partner as “the one” immediately after meeting them, Sophie has a believable fear of commitment. However, this flaw does not constitute the entirety of her character, making Sophie a more accessible and human figure than How I Met Your Mother’s Barney. How I Met Your Father’s season 1 finale twist saw Sophie saddened by Jesses reuniting with his ex Meredith, but understanding and accepting that her fear of commitment led him to move on. Barney never received this sort of growth, remaining a more one-dimensional foil for Ted until the end of How I Met Your Mother.

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