How I Met Your Father fans were treated to a fun cameo this week when original How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris returned as Barney. His cameo in the Season 2 premiere was brief, but in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly, spinoff showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger confirmed that the character will come back for more.
Harris’ Barney appeared at the end of the Season 2 premiere, when Sophie (Hillary Duff) rear-ends him while talking on the phone. In a delightful callback to the well-dressed character, his big reveal occurs when he emerges from his Audi (adorned with a license plate that says “LGNDRY”) and simply says, “Duuude.”
The scene ends after this brief interaction, leaving viewers to wonder what role Barney has in Sophie’s life. According to Berger, “More is coming. By the time his appearance on our show is over, people will feel really satisfied by what they’ve seen.” As she explained, much like Robin’s (Cobie Smulders) cameo in Season 1 of the spinoff, Barney’s appearance serves a greater purpose to the plot of the show than simple nostalgic fan service.
“It sends [Sophie] in a totally new direction, which becomes the engine for a big chunk of our season,” she told EW. “He’s really seminal in setting Sophie on the path she needs to be on to continue her journey to come of age and find love. I’m really excited for how his character changes Sophie’s life and the totally new direction that he sends her on.”
In addition to more scenes with Barney, How I Met Your Father fans can also look forward to cameos from the rest of the sitcom’s cast — at least, as far as Berger and Aptaker are concerned. “We truly have discussed plot lines for all of the original characters,” Berger said. “Now it’s just a question of parsing them out and hoping that people are available and want to do it when it’s the right time to ask. But yes, we think it’s so much fun and it makes our world bigger and it satisfies fans on a really deep level, so we love to do it and we have the ideas.”
Read Entertainment Weekly’s full interview with Berger and Aptaker here, and watch Harris’ first appearance in How I Met Your Father below. New episodes of the series debut Tuesdays on Hulu.