Prepare to sit the children down once again as How I Met Your Mother star Alyson Hannigan has come up with an amazing idea for a reboot. The original series, which ran for nine acclaimed seasons, saw an older Ted Mosby (played by Josh Radnor, but narrated by Bob Saget) sit his children down and tell them how he met their mom. The show was able to run for so long because it kept the identity of the mother a secret, bouncing between various potential candidates, including Ted’s best friend Robin (Cobie Smulders), before Cristin Millioti was revealed to be the Mother (literally her character’s name) in the final season.
Speaking to PEOPLE, Alyson Hannigan, who played one of Ted’s closest friends, Lily Aldrin, revealed an idea she’s been cooking up for a How I Met Your Mother reboot. While many modern reboots recast the core group of characters and start again with the narrative timeline, Hannigan’s idea plays off the ending to the original show. Much like how Ted sat his children down, Alyson wants the rest of the gang to sit them back down, revealing that Ted’s story was actually wrong. She explained:
“It’s like, ‘No, no, no, no kids. That’s not how it happened.’ And then it starts out with, ‘We were a lot older, first of all…’ and then we can just do the show again.”
A spin-off series, How I Met Your Father, streamed on Hulu. Despite earning two Emmys, and reportedly having decent viewing figures, the spin-off was canceled after two seasons. Hannigan’s former co-stars Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris both made appearances in the series, but the actress revealed that she has no intention of ever watching it.
A How I Met Your Mother Reboot Can Fix Its Terrible Ending
During its run on CBS, How I Met Your Mother was one of the most beloved sitcoms, enjoying incredibly strong viewing figures from a fan base desperate to work out who the titular mother was. However, as the show went into its ninth and final season, it couldn’t live up to the anticipation it had worked hard to establish. The finale of How I Met Your Mother is famously one of the worst TV finales of all-time. Years of mystery and anticipation were thrown out the window when the Mother died in the final episode. This led Ted to run back to Robin (who fans thought he should have ended up with all along) to restart their on-again, off-again relationship.
By offering alternate perspectives on the story, the potential reboot gives How I Met Your Mother a chance to redeem itself, and potentially provides an alternative ending for the series. While the death of their mother is a hard plot twist to undo, a rebooted series could potentially give new perspective as to why Robin and Ted’s relationship couldn’t work out until he had kids.
How I Met Your Mother
is currently streaming on Hulu and Netflix.