With the final episode of its six-part first season dropping on streaming today, Hulu has officially ordered a second run of How I Met Your Father, the standalone spinoff to beloved sitcom How I Met Your Mother that stars Hilary Duff. The Disney-owned platform seems to be extremely pleased with how the sequel to the CBS show has gone down so far, as it’s been awarded a super-sized season two consisting of 20 episodes.
Sporting a similar yet gender-flipped remit to its predecessor, HIMYF follows Sophie (Kim Cattrall) as she tells her off-screen son the long-winded story of how she met his father. With the wraparounds occurring in 2050, the main action takes place in 2021, with Duff’s younger Sophie trying to make sense of her thirties alongside her close-knit group of friends, including Jesse (Chris Lowell), Valentina (Francia Raisa), Charlie (Tom Ainsley), Ellen (Tien Tran), and Sid (Suraj Sharma).
Though none of the original show’s stars have yet to appear, Father shares continuity with the earlier series as two of the characters live in the same apartment that was previously home to Marshall (Jason Segel) and Lily (Alyson Hannigan). Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger serve as showrunners, with HIMYM creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas on board as exec producers, alongside Mother director/producer Pam Fryman. Duff likewise produces as well as stars.
Critics and fans alike have offered mixed reactions to the spinoff, but there’s already a lot of interest and many theories going around about who the titular father could be, thereby proving that folks are still interested in the parental mystery element, despite the colossal letdown that was HIMYM‘s series finale.
Whether the new show is going to end up lasting for as long as its forebear — Mother ran for nine seasons from 2005-2014 — is the big question, but at least we know How I Met Your Father will be back for 20 more episodes next year.