Hulu announced last spring that a “How I Met Your Mother” reboot is in the works. As a huge fan of the series, which first aired in 2005 and ended in 2014, I have a lot of mixed feelings. When I say I love HIMYM, I mean it. My brother and I stumbled across the show on cable back in 2009, and from then on, the love grew. We purchased the box sets for each season, watched religiously and cried when the final episode aired. It is my all-time favorite.
That said, the idea of a reboot brings up a lot of questions for me. Why force a revival of something that went out with a triumphant bang? The series ran for nine successful seasons and is still loved by many. Will the reboot help or hurt its reputation? “How I Met Your Father” will star Hilary Duff and tell the story of how she met her child’s father back in 2021. Don’t get me wrong, I love Hilary Duff — “The Lizzie McGuire Movie” shaped my entire childhood. I have no doubts that she will be great. If anything, I’m hopeful that she will ensure the level of cringe that reboots tend to adopt is lower than usual. However, none of the original cast is set to appear in the new series, and that saddens me. HIMYM (or HIMYF, in this case) will never be the same without Marshall, Lily, Ted, Barney and Robin sitting at their booth in Maclaren’s. I question if the reboot will even feel related to the original at all.
My doubts about HIMYF lessened a bit when I learned that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas are the executive producers. Bays and Thomas are the creators of the original series, and I trust that they would not approve a reboot that didn’t do it justice. However, some TV shows were just meant to live and thrive in the early 2000s and stay there. I love HIMYM because it makes me nostalgic and transports me to my family’s old basement, where we’d sit on the floor and watch for hours. Call me selfish, but I don’t want the reboot to replace that nostalgia with new memories of me sitting in my college apartment during a pandemic while I watch on my laptop. It just isn’t the same.
It may seem trivial, but the reboot of my favorite show could make or break me for a while. If it blows, I’ll have to rewatch the original series (again) to erase the memory of the reboot from my brain. If it’s a success, well, that would be legen — wait for it — dary. Either way, HIMYM fans everywhere are waiting patiently to see for themselves.