A new twist on the fan-favorite sitcom How I Met Your Mother is coming to Hulu.
The platform dropped a trailer for How I Met Your Father on Dec. 16, enticing fans of the mid-2000s CBS comedy to return to a similar, but markedly different, story.
The brief one-minute, forty-second video was also shared to Twitter by the brand-new How I Met Your Father Twitter account. Fans quickly swarmed to the comment section of the tweet to share their impressions and reactions to the trailer.
The trailer appears to set up a show with a similar premise but a distinctly different execution than How I Met Your Mother. The series seems poised to tackle a similar format, tapping Kim Cattrall to play the older version of Sophie, explaining to her child how she came to meet his father. The younger Sophie is played by Hilary Duff, who will be joined on screen by Christopher Lowell, Francia Raisa, Tom Ainsley, Tien Tran, Suraj Sharma, and Josh Peck.
The show is set in 2022, according to a voiceover from Cattrall, and follows Duff’s Sophie on her journey to find love. It brings the How I Met Your Mother format into a new era, with a far more diverse cast of characters introducing modern dating norms like Tinder. It also tells the story from the female perspective, a fun twist that will hopefully pay off in far fewer misogynistic jokes.
Fans immediately started flooding the trailer’s comment section with reactions, many of which communicated cautious optimism. Many people really want the show to be good, but are hesitant to have faith.
As one person noted, “HIMYM is the reason why I have trust issues, not gonna fall for this again.” Numerous commenters agreed, pointing out that How I Met Your Mother joins Game of Thrones on many fans’ lists of “worst season finales ever. So bad that it makes me never want to go back and rewatch old episodes again.”
The vast majority of fan reactions called back to the original series’ terrible final episode, which revealed the “mother” in the worst possible way. “I think we all know how this is gonna end – Hilary Duff meets future husband, but he dies, so she ends up with man she dated on and off at the start of the series. BAM! You’re welcome,” one person wrote.
How I Met Your Father could be a truly spectacular show, if it takes the right pointers from its predecessor. How I Met Your Mother was popular for a reason: It was funny and heartfelt, kept fans guessing with numerous long-standing jokes and returning tropes, and starred a cast of well-fleshed-out, interesting characters that felt like real people. It hasn’t aged as well as some other sitcoms, however, due to its common reliance on sexist tropes and Ted’s oft-pretentious personality.
Many people seem convinced that the series will be nothing but a “cringey” attempt at remaking the original, which would quickly see How I Met Your Father fail. If it attempts something new within its borrowed format, however, it could exceed fans’ expectations.
If How I Met Your Father learns from How I Met Your Mother‘s mistakes ⏤ namely that universally reviled conclusion ⏤ then it could be the new sitcom to watch. Fans will know for sure when the series officially premieres on Jan. 18, 2022.