Series / How I Met Your Father

"Today is the first chapter of my next great love story."

— Sophie

A spinoff of How I Met Your Mother.

In 2050, Sophie (Kim Cattrall) tells her son the story of how she met their father. In 2022, Sophie (Hilary Duff) is a young woman who has not had the best luck with dating in New York City. But with the help of her friends Jesse (Chris Lowell), Valentina (Francia Raisa), Sid (Suraj Sharma), Ellen (Tien Tran), and Charlie (Tom Ainsley), she might just be able to turn that around. Like the series, the show follows the ups and downs of the main friend group's personal lives, with one major difference from its parent series: Sophie meets her son's father on the night depicted in the first episode.

Created by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (This Is Us, Love, Simon), this show is the third attempt at launching a gender-flipped version of How I Met Your Mother. The concept had been in the works since 2013. It debuted on January 18, 2022 on Hulu, In February 2022, the show was renewed for a second season comprising twenty episodes. It later became available on Disney+ on 11th May, 2022. The second season premiered on January 24, 2023.

On September 1, 2023, the show was cancelled after two seasons.

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Tropes:

• Absurdly Long Stairway: When Ellen starts her new job, she's locked in the stairwell and has to climb 51 floors to get to her office... in a wool suit.
• Accent Interest: Women flock to Charlie because of his RP accent. He hates it because they only see him as a British plaything. Jesse suggests they switch places so Charlie puts on an American accent while Jesse imitates a young Michael Caine. Through this they get dates with a pair of women, but now have to find a way out of their fake accents. They wind up pretending to be actors, who are then requested to do a scene...
• Age-Gap Romance: In "I'm His Swish" 30-year-olds Sophie and Valentina partake in such relationships: Sophie dates Robert, a guy who could be her father, and Valentina dates Swish, a college boy. Valentina constantly infantilizes Swish and finds his ignorance of things amusing; Sophie is horrified at the possibility that Robert sees her the same way. He doesn't, but they mutually end their relationship after realizing that he literally could be her dad, i.e. he didn't sleep with her mom, but they were handsy at the concert Sophie was conceived at.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Sophie introduces episode 9 and 10 talking about the impending divorce of the Captain and Becky from the previous series; in the 10th episode, her son even complains that she ended the previous part on a cliffhanger and is now cutting to this "random rich couple". However, she reassures him that it will become relevant — and by the end of episode 10, the divorce is responsible for bringing Ian, her perfect match in everything but timing from the first episode, back to New York.
• Angry Chef: Played for Laughs with the chef in "The Jersey Connection", who rages at his employees at their subpar souffle... despite being a young kid. (He won a cooking show for child chefs.)
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Sophie muses that she's reluctant to find her dad because:
  Sophie: What if he's a criminal, or a drunk, or a prop comic?
  Barney: Ew.
• Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: "The Jersey Connection": After Jesse sees his coworkers hanging out without him, he asks Drew why he wasn't invited.
  Drew: It's not that they don't like you. It's that they absolutely hate you.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • In the Season 1 finale, Hannah and Sid are married and Ellen gets a new girlfriend and a job. But Charlie and Valentina break up because of disagreements on having children. Meanwhile, Sophie is heartbroken when she saw Jesse kissing his ex-girlfriend Meredith. Fortunately, Ian returns to her.
  • In the Season 2 finale, Sophie and Jesse get back together after so many hardships. But Sid laments the state of his marriage with Hannah after she confessed that she kissed her co-worker. Meanwhile, Valentina hooks up with Drew which, according to Older Sophie, would not last long because she and Charlie are going to be together again with their child.
• Bonding over Missing Parents: Sophie crashes into Barney's car and the two bond over having disappeared dads. Barney gives Sophie advice on how finding his dad and becoming one in turn affected his life.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: When discussing new Coolest Club Ever FOMO, Valentina says they have a "topless room, a tapas room, and a topless tapas room."
• Brick Joke:
  • The infamous Pineapple Incident from How I Met Your Mother is finally given a proper resolution in a non deleted scene when the Captain mentions offhand that someone stole his pineapple.
  • The story about Robin getting gored by a bull gives an explanation to Future-Ted's statement in "Symphony of Illumination" that aunt Robin "was even a bull fighter for a brief period".
• Burn Baby Burn: Played for Laughs when Charlie burns his passport to prove a point. When it gets too hot, he tosses it into the garbage, and the trash can bursts into flames. He then admits he had soaked it in lighter fluid beforehand.
  Charlie: I was going for high drama!
• The Cameo: Robin (along with Carl) appears in the season one finale and gives Sophie advice on her love life. Season 2 has Barney Stinson and Sandy Rivers appear.
• Celebrity Crush: As revealed in the first episode, Ian's childhood celeb crush was Tia Mowry and Sophie's was Buzz Lightyear. Ellen says she came to New York to ask Kate McKinnon out.
• Celebrity Paradox: In "Daddy", Sophie mentions Bryan Cranston who also played Ted's boss Hammond Druthers.
• Celebrity Resemblance: Played for Laughs. Jesse says his coworker Bob looks like Ann Dowd. Bob takes it as an insult despite not recognizing the name. When he's informed that she's the actress from The Leftovers and The Handmaid's Tale, he admits that he does like Dowd...and that he does kind of look like her.
• Chocolate Baby: Inverted. When the gang checks out three men who match the information they have on the biological father of Sophie (a white blonde), since her promiscuous mother doesn't have anything concrete, one candidate is immediately ruled out for being Asian.
• Compressed Vice: The gang's phone addiction in "Out of Sync" comes a bit out of nowhere.
• Continuity Nod: The show made a lot of references from How I Met Your Mother:
  • Jesse and Sid are living in Ted, Marshall, and Lily's old apartment. The two swords that Ted and Marshall owned are hung up on the wall.
  • Jesse acts as a wingman for Ellen and the way he introduces her to her date is "Have you met Ellen?" which is exactly how Barney does it for Ted as his wingman.
  • In episode 7, one of Rivka Rebel's friends is a look-alike of the Mother, and shown wearing a hat of the exact same color as the Mother's umbrella.
  • In episode 8, Valentina steals her boss' purse in retaliation for being mean to her which is what Lily did when she steals a person's most valuable object because they're being mean. Marshall calls it, "Aldrin Justice".
  • George "The Captain" Van Smoot (Zoey's ex-husband and Lily's boss) and his wife, Becky a.k.a. "Boats Boats Boats", showed up at the beginning of episode 9, though their story has only a tangential connection to Sophie's story at that point and they don't interact with the main cast.
  • Ellen mentions she got a job interview with Goliath Marketing, which shares the same name as the company that Barney used to work with.
  • When Becky decides to take all of his boats during the divorce process, the Captain mentions he never felt this bad since his pineapple was stolen in 2005 which viewers know Ted was the culprit.
  • The Season 1 finale has Sophie going to MacLarens' where she meets Carl who still runs the place and Robin who listens to her love story with Jesse and gives her some advice: "Timing is everything" which is what Older Ted says to his kids when he tells them his story about meeting his future wife, Tracy.
  • In his appearance in season 2, Sandy Rivers, Robin's old co-worker, reminds those watching his interview with Jesse and Meredith that "certain allegations" against him aren't true and assures that if they were, they're legal in the states where they were committed. This is a reference to season 9's Gary Blauman from the original series, where Future Ted told his children that Sandy did get in trouble for sexual harrassment accusations that he had to flee to Russia, finding work in a Russian news network only to resume his womanizing habits there.
  • In "Daddy", Sophie accidentally crashes into Barney's car. Barney reveals that he's a former playboy-turned-family man due to the birth of his daughter, Ellie, back in the series finale. He also has a list of his old playbook tricks such as his play of pretending to be an old man from the future. When he listens to Sophie's story of possibly meeting her father, he mentions that he used to believe that Bob Barker is his dad, and after Marshall lost his father, this led Barney to find his real father which he successfully did.
  • In "Working Girls", Sophie's greeting call is "Go for Sophie" which is similar to Barnery's greeting call "Go for Barney".
• Clue, Evidence, and a Smoking Gun: In "Reset Button" Sophie and Jesse end up at the apartment of a man they later realize is a bigoted Men's Right's Activist. Sophie comments that they should really have put it together sooner, and we get three flashbacks: the first is of him commenting that Jesse (a handsome white man) is the perfect American male, the second is of him saying "Women, am I right?" and the third is of him straight-up telling Sophie he's an MRA leader. She defends not catching that last one by being concerned about how she looked and sounded while chewing.
• Dating Service Disaster: Sophie goes on a Tinder date with a man who tells her he just got off another Tinder date — specifically, one that ended in sex. Sid and Jesse are absolutely disgusted by this. Later in the episode, she says she had gone on 87 Tinder dates and all were duds.
• Delivery Guy: Female example in "Midwife Crisis", where untrained civilians Sophie and Valentina are roped into helping their neighbor Ramona during a water birth.
• Differing Priorities Breakup: In the Season 1 finale, Charlie and Valentina break up because the former doesn't want to have kids while the latter wants to.
• Driving Question: Unlike the original show, Sophie confirms that she did meet the father in the first episode. The question is "which male character is it?".
• Duck Season, Rabbit Season: When Sid accuses Jesse of liking Sophie in the first episode, he claims he didn't. They go back and forth on "Did not! Did too!" until Sid says "Did not!" and Jesse replies with "Did too!"
• Foregone Conclusion: Unlike How I Met Your Mother, we know Sophie's future husband is going to be one of the characters she met in episode 1. We just don't know which one that is.
• The Faceless: The son's face is not shown in the flash-forwards; only his voice is heard, in an inversion of how the framing story on HIMYM was shot. This has behind-the-scenes benefits for two reasons: 1. the previous show eventually began recycling Stock Footage of Ted's children because the actors aged out of what was supposed to be a one-night-long story, and 2. it helps hide which of the men fathered him, since the candidates are of different skin tones, whereas Ted's kids' appearances foreshadowed his future wife's appearance as that of a light-skinned brunette.
• Flashback Cut: In "The Jersey Connection" Charlie claims that he and Val have hung out one-on-one loads of times without hooking up post-breakup. Drumbeat, cut to black...and then cut back to present because they've never actually done that.
• Floorfilling Song and Dance: In the Season 2 premiere, after Sid laments how bad his wedding night is, Sophie cheers him up by telling everyone in the bar to dance the Electric Slide.
• "Friends" Rent Control: New Yorkers Jesse and Sid live in Ted, Marshall, and Lily's old apartment, which we know has relatively small bedrooms but otherwise a spacious living room. The original show was already an example, but Ted was at least consistently employed; the show being set in the even tighter housing market of the 2020s makes it even more unrealistic considering Jesse is a part-time music teacher/Uber driver and Sid owns a bar that is "hemorrhaging money". Lampshaded and justified in the first episode; Sophie is amazed at what a nice place they have, and they tell her they got it for a good price from married Wesleyan alumni (presumably Marshall and Lily).
• Fun with Subtitles: In "Ride or Die", Jesse and Sid meet up at the concert. But their conversation is in "Bro speak" meaning they don't say much in their dialogue and rely on nonverbal expressions instead so Old Sophie has to translate it in subtitles.
  Sid: Bro...[I am so sorry. I crossed a boundary and your anger towards me is valid. In the future, I will strive to support you and Meredith.]
  Jesse: Man...[Sid, my friend and brother, there is no need to apologize. You were simply trying to support me. Further, your suspicions about Meredith are correct. Moments ago, I ended our romantic relationship.]
  Sid: Dude...[While I admit I find this outcome preferable, I know that this breakup will cause you pain in the short term, and that you have my sympathies.]
  Jesse: (nods)[I understand. Let us embark on a new period of friendship that is deepened by this conflict.]
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main cast features three women and three men.
• Gene Hunting: Sophie gets the idea to find her biological father in the second season. Also discussed, as the gang brings up several movies about parent-finding in reference to the situation (Mamma Mia!, Philomena, The Kids Are All Right and My Two Dads).
• Girlfriend in Canada: Val's parents think she made her relationship with Charlie up, because Val was never "the relationship type" before she mentioned him. Also the story of how they met does sound implausible.
• Hair-Contrast Duo: Sophie and Val s the former is a blonde hopeless romantic while the latter is a dark-haired Spicy Latina.
• How Dad Met Mom: Sophie proclaims in the first episode that she's telling the story of how she met her kids' father. Unlike its parent series, which tells the events leading up to the meeting, this series begins with the night of their first meeting and tells the story of how they fell in love. The twist is that she met at least five men on the same night.
• Improbable Age: In "The Jersey Connection", Chef Landon is the 12 years old winner of a cooking show who also runs his own restaurant. Charlie lampshades that it's not legal but Landon assures that he was emancipated when he was 9.
• I Need to Go Iron My Dog: In "The Jersey Connection", both Sid and the real estate agent blatantly fake receiving phone calls and flee the room upon sensing that Rachel and Ellen are about to have a troubling conversation.
• Literally Loving Thy Neighbor: Deconstructed; Rachel dating her next-door neighbor Ellen actually strains their relationship to the point of a breakup because Ellen is a big personality and Rachel feels like they're too close.
• The "I Love You" Stigma: Sophie doesn’t take it well when Jesse says this to her on the night they get together. Jesse stands by this since they’d been friends for awhile, but Sophie is still unsure enough to break things off, at least until she changes her mind.
• Long-Distance Relationship: Hannah and Sid are in this type of relationship due to the former working as a surgeon in Los Angeles. This serves as a problem for them throughout the season where Hannah revealed that she was offered a fellowship after her residency ends. In Season 2, after being married, Hannah still works in Los Angeles and despite communicating with each other, Sid feels that he's becoming distanced from her and even suspects that she might be having an affair.
• Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Sid comments in the trailer that he's had to buy a lot of Kleenex since Jesse got dumped. It turns out masturbation (and crying) is the reason.
  Ellen: Because you're crying? Or because you're going to town on yourself?
  Jesse: Crying!
  Sid: Bro.
  Jesse: (resigned) Both.
• Milestone Birthday Angst: In "Dirrty Thirty", Sophie becomes anxious about turning thirty because she's recently started dating Drew, who is also 30 but extremely put-together, and she feels like she isn't. At the last minute, Sophie retools her planned wild party into a more mature cocktail party in a bid to impress him, and panics whenever she thinks he's uncomfortable.
  Sophie: We're the same age but not the same stage!
• Mistaken for Cheating: In "The Jersey Connection" Ellen suspects Rachel to be cheating on her, and she, Sid, and Sophie wind up following her to New Jersey to see her entering a woman's apartment. Rachel was only seeking an apartment because she needed space, and breaks up with Ellen when the latter is discovered.
• More Diverse Sequel: Compared to its parent work How I Met Your Mother where the main characters were all white, the white heroine Sophie's friend group is comprised of a Latina woman, an Indian-American man, and a Vietnamese-American lesbian in addition to white men Jesse and Charlie.
• Naked People Are Funny:
  • In the first episode, Charlie is introduced walking into the living room wearing only a Modesty Towel around his waist that keeps falling off, making the girls scream as he struggles to cover himself. The scene is set to lighthearted music, adding to the humor value.
  • The fourth episode has Sophie and Drew catch Charlie and Valentina having shower sex just as the shower curtain falls.
• Next Sunday A.D.: The older Sophie recounts that the events of the show begin in 2022. The series was conceived and produced from 2020-2021.
• Noodle Incident: Apparently Ellen once fell in love with a bird.
• Older and Wiser: Robin and Barney, the only How I Met Your Mother characters whom Sophie met so far. Both are shown to be much more mature than their younger selves from the original show and each of them gives Sophie some helpful advice concerning love and family given their past experiences.
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: Since the video of Jesse's failed proposal went viral online, he's always remembered as "Proposal Fail Guy".
• Parental Sexuality Squick:
  • The end of "Stacey" sees a Sexy Discretion Shot as Drew and Sophie make out on a bed. In the future, Sophie's son disgustedly interrupts the narration.
  • Sophie is horrified that her new older boyfriend once had a sexual encounter with her mother 30 years prior, even if they didn't go all the way.
• Person as Verb: When Valentina recounts Charlie's aristocratic British family cut him off for falling in love with a "Mexican-American assistant stylist", Sophie says "they Meghan Markle'd you", referring to The British Royal Family's contentious relationship with the Sussexes.
• Pixellation: The penis cake that Charlie brought for Ellen's bachelorette party is pixellated. Ellen describes the cake to be "very realistic".
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Not only is Valentina's superior Fred a Bad Boss, he's plain weird. Case in point, he skirts around clearcut harassment by verbally abusing creepy dolls of his employees...in front of said employees.
• Race Fetish: Sid (who is Indian-American) jokes about his fiancee Hannah having a thing for South Asian guys when he mentions that her Celebrity Crush is Kumail Nanjiani.
• Red Herring: Robert, the chef that Sophie met during Valentina's party in episode 9 of season 2, is hinted to be Sophie's father due to the clues her mother mentioned to her such as the 1991 Lollapalooza where Robert remembered a song and Lori remembers meeting Sophie's father there. Then, Robert also has a photo of him and Lori, making Sophie assume that she might be dating her dad. He isn't her father, but he did have a sexual relationship with her mother, which is still too much for them to get past.
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: Jesse is cynical about love and romance because his girlfriend and bandmate, Meredith, rejected his public proposal. To make it worse, he then fell off the stage and into a drink that ruined his pants. And to rub salt in the wound, the video of it went so viral Sophie, who is at this point a stranger to him, recognizes him.
  Jesse: Now, she's in Europe, recording her first solo album, and I'm known all around the city as Mr. Proposal Fail.
• Remember the New Guy?: In the third episode, Sophie and Drew realize they've met before at Sid and Hannah's engagement party. Cue a flashback that wasn't in the pilot, where Sophie asks Drew for his phone charger. This conveniently adds a fifth candidate for the father.
• Romantic Candlelit Dinner: In "The Jersey Connection" Charlie and Val take up a restaurant reservation made when they were still dating because of its exclusivity. They're determined to make it platonic, only to learn that the ambiance is incredibly romantic.
  Val: Can we handle it?
  Charlie: I can. In this soft, flickering candlelight, you look... pretty ugly.
• Ruder and Cruder: Now on streaming instead of broadcast television, the show has much stronger swearing than How I Met Your Mother, which usually had Future Ted sanitizing coarse language for his kids' sake.
• Searching for the Lost Relative: After listening to Barney's story on how he met his biological father, Sophie decides to find her real father as well.
• Self-Serving Memory: The "Pathetic Deirdre" subplot in the episode of the same name sees Valentina and Sophie make fun of a college friend of theirs named Deirdre. Flashbacks to their brunches have them as the confident, fashionable mean girls to Deirdre's drab nerd. They then learn Deirdre has written a book about them, showing that the whole time she thought Sophie and Valentina were her pathetic friends, and we then get flashbacks of the brunches from Deirdre's perspective, which portray her as exciting and successful and Sophie and Valentina as messy losers.
• Shout-Out:
  • Sophie has "Drops of Jupiter" by Train as her comfort song.
  • Sid chooses the movie Eternals to watch with his fiancee, because she likes buff Kumail Nanjiani.
  • During the search for Sophie's dad, the gang compares it to several movies such as Mamma Mia!, Philomena, The Kids Are All Right and My Two Dads.
• Shipper with an Agenda: Drew's mother wants Sophie to stay with her son so that she can support him after his parent's divorce.
• Sickeningly Sweethearts: In Season 2 when Jesse and Meredith got back together, they become very affectionate towards each other which made Sid cringe. Though it makes sense given that Sid knows Meredith's actions are an act because she never really loves Jesse.
• Soapbox Sadie: Mia, Jesse's date in "Stacey", crosses this trope with Straw Vegetarian. The night starts with her taking issue with Valentina wearing animal print, and she later sends an anonymous bomb threat to a company that she says is appropriating poppy seeds.
• Soccer-Hating Americans: "Jay Street" sees the British Charlie try to get the gang to watch a soccer game, but nobody is interested. Prior to the game Valentina and Sophie deride it as boring, while during the game itself they are all more excited about how Sophie and Jesse kissed, but Jesse's ex-girlfriend is back in town.
• Solomon Divorce: Jesse and Ellen's parents split up when they were young. Ellen chose to go with their father while Jesse stayed with their mother which explains their different surnames.
• Spaghetti Kiss: Invoked in "The Jersey Connection", where the "big-kid" chef presents his customers with a long buccatini noodle intended to be slurped at the same time, leading to a kiss. It's explicitly inspired by the scene from The Lady And The Tramp. Charlie and Val are "trying not to be intimate" but have an Almost Kiss when they eat it.
• Special Guest: Includes Michael Barbaro, Meghan Trainor, Judge Judy, Clark Gregg, Lance Bass and Joey Fatone.
• Stealth Sequel: The end of the first episode reveals that Sid and Jesse live in Ted, Marshall, and Lily's old apartment.
• Starving Artist: While both still have roofs over their heads, neither Sophie (an aspiring photographer) and Jesse (an aspiring musician) have a lot of money. When Sophie chips her tooth in "The Perfect Shot", Jesse takes her to a cheap dentist. They meet a couple of unsuccessful artists in the waiting room (an old man who's been trying to be a novelist since the Reagan years and a hopeless auditionee for Wicked), causing Sophie to spiral into a crisis about her future. It's also something she and Jesse explicitly have in common (in contrast to Drew who has a stable but not particularly artistic job).
• Surprise Incest: "Daddy" has Sophie paranoid that her new older boyfriend Robert is actually her father. He isn't, but he is too close of a possibility (he flirted with Lori the day she conceived Sophie) that they break up.
• Sympathetic Adulterer: Discussed. Jesse and Drew's coworkers lambast Sophie for cheating on Drew with Jesse and then not even staying with Jesse, so it wasn't even 'good' cheating.
• Tell Me About My Father: Sophie asks her mom about how her biological dad but Lori doesn't remember much of the details other than meeting him at 1991 Lollapalooza where he works there before and that he has a tattoo on his arm.
• Time-Shifted Actor: Hilary Duff plays Sophie for most of the show, but there are frequent flash-forwards to the older Sophie, played by Kim Cattrall.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: Sophie and Jesse over the course of season 2. Sophie wants to tell Jesse she loves him back but he has already got back together with his ex Meredith. Then Jesse ralizes he still loves Sophie but she's dating Roert. And then Sophie realizes she still love Jesse but he's dating Parker.
• Uptown Girl: Discussed; Valentina (a regular New York stylist) and Charlie (a British aristocrat) had a whirlwind romance at London Fashion Week, which prompted Charlie's family to disown him and cut him off. Sophie likens the situation to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.
• Useless Without Cellphones: "Out of Sync" has the gang going on a phone-free day. But it turns out that they're too dependent on their phones because rely on them to look up very important information (e.g.: Sophie and Val do not know where the bologna factory party is and what Lance Bass and Joey Fatone of *NSYNC looked like in 2023) and to do money transactions (e.g. Jesse left his credit card at home).
• Valentine's Day Episode: Season 2's "A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Valentine's Day" has the gang telling their worst Valentine's Day date. Though this is also the day when Sophie and Valentina became best friends back in college because they were dating the same guy and the day when Hannah pulled an Operation: Jealousy on Sid back in med school.
• Victoria's Secret Compartment: In the season 2 finale, future Sophie pulls a picture of Charlie and Val with her kid from her bra "for dramatic effects".
• Wham Episode:
  • The fifth episode has one in the form of Jesse when it's revealed he had some feelings for Sophie after being upset that his date slept with Ellen and he's tired of being single and just wants to hang out with Sid and Hannah.
  • The eighth episode has Meredith, Jesse's ex-girlfriend, coming back to town to talk to Jesse. Then, Sophie and Drew had a fight because the latter believed that the former should get a stable job instead of following her dream career. Towards the end of the episode, Sophie meets Jesse outside the bar, and after she tells him what had happened, Jesse kisses her.
  • Jesse's renewed relationship with Meredith came to a head in episode 5 of season 2, where after breaking off his friendship with Sid in the previous episode about his warnings that it won't work out again (not helping is that Meredith used the "Proposal Fail" video for a montage of her and Jesse for a concert they will be performing at), Jesse realizes that he's only being used by Meredith to prop up her career. With help from Ellen, Jesse questions Meredith about their relationship. After Meredith gave an answer that didn't calm Jesse in the slightest, he abandons her just before the concert began. As a result, he manages to patch things up with Sid.
  • In Episode 17 of Season 2, Sophie and Valentina find Ian at the bologna factory party who is now dating someone else and is teaching at Columbia University. And the reason Sophie wants to do a phone-free day is that she wants a break after seeing all the guys she dated have moved on.
  • At the end of the Season 2 finale, Future Sophie reveals that Valentina and Drew's hookup was a disaster. Then, she pulls out a photo of Valentina and Charlie with their child, Alex, which removes Charlie as one of the potential fathers for Sophie's son.
• Wham Shot:
  • In the Season 1 finale, Sophie heads down to MacLarens's to get a drink, and when she tries to explain her order to Carl the bartender, Robin Scherbatsky shows up listening to their conversation.
  • At the end of Season 1 finale, Sophie and her friends (minus Jesse) are at the art gallery, and then Valentina spots a familiar face: Ian, Sophie's date from the first episode, who came back from Australia after Becky took all of the Captain's boats.
  • In the end of the Season 2 premiere, Sophie accidentally rams into the back of someone's car. Then, the owner of the car steps out and it's Barney Stinson, who looks very upset as he says, "Dude..."
  • At the end of the Season 2 finale, Older Sophie pulls out something out of her bra and it's a photo of Charlie and Valentina with their son, Alex, which confirms that Charlie is not the father of Sophie's son.

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