How I Met Your Father: Harris’s Barney Back for S02 Midseason Finale

Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger‘s teased that the return of Neil Patrick Harris‘s Barney Stinson during the second season opener of Hulu’s Hilary Duff-starring How I Met Your Father would have an impact later on in the season (more on that in a minute). Well, the show’s creators are staying true to their word, with Harris set to return for the upcoming midseason finale. Harris’s Barney will appear in the two-episode midseason finale on March 28th. Following that, the streaming series will be taking a break for a few weeks before returning for the final episodes of the second season.

Aptaker & Berger had some thoughts to share with TVLine regarding the return of Harris’ Barney during the season-opener and its impact on the remainder of the season. Specifically, they open up about discussing with Harris how to best bring Barney into the sequel series’ universe while teasing that Barney will have a much bigger impact on the season moving forward than just “guest-starring.”

Berger on Making Barney Work in HIMYF: “We wanted to bring him [Barney] back, and we wanted him to be true to his character and to the fans that loved Barney so much. But we also wanted him to exist on our show, in our time, in a way that made sense, so all of that Zoom was spent talking about how we could blend all those things and service him and the show in the best way possible. We are very excited for people to see the way that turned out.”

Aptaker on Purposes for Bringing Back HIMYM Characters: “Whenever we talk about bringing back a member of the original crew, you want it to serve two purposes: You want to give some tidbits about what is going on in their lives, where they’ve landed, and where they’re at, but it’s also about how they impact the ‘How I Met Your Father’ story, and how they send one of our characters in a new, unexpected direction. Similar to Robin last year, we’ll learn some more about where Barney’s at, but it’ll also have a major impact on the trajectory, and main narrative, of our season.”