Although How I Met Your Mother cast that was well received.
While viewers didn’t want How I Met Your Father to rip off How I Met Your Mother’s formula, they were surprisingly open to seeing specific characters return from the earlier series. It did help that How I Met Your Father waited until season 1’s penultimate episode and initially featured a cameo from a more minor How I Met Your Mother ing star. However, this approach could backfire in How I Met Your Father season 2.
The cardinal sin of reboot cameos is bringing back too many minor characters from the original show, thus vaguely implying (but never outright promising) that the main characters will eventually return. This makes it hard to tell whether the spinoff is a new show of its own or a continuation of the earlier series, and can lead to viewers inevitably becoming frustrated when the later, more impactful cameos don’t materialize. The cameos from How I Met Your Mother’s cast were fun in season 1, but they cause a classic reboot issue since too many cameos from the old cast can make the new cast less interesting, whereas too few make the cameos pointless.
Can How I Met Your Father Season 2 Nail HIMYM Cameos?
While How I Met Your Father’s longer season 2 can get How I Met Your Mother cast cameos right, this will mean balancing between minor, fan-favorite characters and returns from the main cast. If How I Met Your Father season 2 brings back one major main character — Marshall or Lily, say — the series must also crucially resist the urge to bring back more minor ing stars like Ranjit, Victoria, or anyone else who has little to add to the sitcom beyond nostalgia value. The spinoff could keep viewers invested in its cast if How I Met Your Father spends most of season 2 focusing on them before throwing in another season finale cameo from a different original How I Met Your Mother cast member.
While the spinoff’s creators should still feel free to throw in a fun appearance from a minor character seen in the earlier series, there is a reason How I Met Your Father season 1 avoided this gambit until its penultimate episode. The How I Met Your Mother reboot runs the risk of diverting interest away from new characters and toward the question of who will appear next if viewers are paying less attention to Charlie and Valentina’s romance and more attention to whether or not a character’s doctor's appointment will be with Dr. Stella Zinman. This hurt earlier reboots such as HBOMax’s Gossip Girl revival and could prove a problem for How I Met Your Father season 2, particularly when the show’s judicious avoidance of How I Met Your Mother cast cameos made season 1 so successful.