While the How I Met Your Father heroine Sophie is more like Barney than Ted, she is a far more rounded and fully realized singleton than the earlier How I Met Your Mother character. How I Met Your Father did a solid job of updating How I Met Your Mother’s appeal to a new generation. The Hilary Duff-led sitcom spinoff recovered from shaky pilot reviews and ended up winning over many critics and viewers alike in time for How I Met Your Father’s season 1 finale.
However, How I Met Your Father’s cameos from How I Met Your Mother’s cast prove that the earlier show still casts a long shadow over its successor. While How I Met Your Father does try to avoid directly recreating too many of the earlier show’s plots, character beats, and jokes, there are inevitably some similarities between the heroine of the spinoff and the lead characters of How I Met Your Mother. Luckily, How I Met Your Father’s Sophie improves on pivotal elements of both of the ‘00s sitcom’s heroes.
Unlike How I Met Your Mother‘s Ted, who always wanted to fall in love and was way too open to branding every romantic partner as “the one” immediately after meeting them, Sophie has a believable fear of commitment. However, this flaw does not constitute the entirety of her character, making Sophie a more accessible and human figure than How I Met Your Mother’s Barney. How I Met Your Father’s season 1 finale twist saw Sophie saddened by Jesses reuniting with his ex Meredith, but understanding and accepting that her fear of commitment led him to move on. Barney never received this sort of growth, remaining a more one-dimensional foil for Ted until the end of How I Met Your Mother.
Why Sophie Is More Sympathetic Than HIMYM’s Barney
Unlike Barney, Sophie’s relatable fear of commitment doesn’t make her a cartoonish, loathsome liar and shameless player. She can enjoy the freedom of singledom without becoming Barney’s uncaring caricature of a thoughtless lothario, an over-the-top detail that always existed in convenient contrast with Ted’s overly romantic worldview. While Ted was apt to lead on a love interest before losing interest in her, Barney lied, cheated, and robbed his way into dozens of hearts, making Ted’s toxic qualities less noticeable in comparison.
However, Sophie breaking up with Drew upon realizing that the pair weren’t meant for each other proved that she wasn’t as invested in romance as Ted, while her willingness to accept that Jesse moved on proved she wasn’t as amoral as Barney. Where Barney would have kept pursuing a romantic partner despite seeing that they had reunited with their ex, Sophie made the admirable decision to instead move on and work on herself. This helped re-affirm that the How I Met Your Father heroine is no Barney clone, despite having some characteristics in common with the How I Met Your Mother antihero.
