Did How I Met Your Father Secretly Set Up Its New Barney?

Now that the How I Met Your Mother spinoff star has broken up his relationship with Valentina, How I Met Your Father’s Charlie could turn out to be the show’s surprising Barney replacement. As proven by the season 1 finale’s Robin cameo, How I Met Your Father still wants to bring back some elements of How I Met Your Mother’s successful formula. While the spinoff has been able to develop an identity of its own since its debut in early 2022, How I Met Your Father still owes a stylistic debt to How I Met Your Mother and has already featured cameos from some of the earlier hit’s characters.

However, one pivotal element of How I Met Your Mother’s success that How I Met Your Father has not yet been able to emulate is the character of Barney Stinson. A fan favorite, the lovable lothario played by Neil Patrick Harris was a character of his time and, as such, it is tricky to see How I Met Your Father could find a way to make a Barney-esque figure work in 2022. However, if Valentina stays single in HIMYF season 2, the show may do just that with an existing cast member.

How I Met Your Father‘s “Stacey” (season 1, episode 6) revealed that the sheltered British blue-blood Charlie, of all people, had a habit of dropping everything and following his latest beau across the world. Valentina was dismayed to learn this, having thought their relationship was something special, and this could be a clue that Charlie would be more of a player than his stuff upper lip lets on. While he was not particularly daring when he and Valentina were in a relationship, Charlie might take their breakup badly and end up becoming How I Met Your Father’s Barney replacement in the process.

Why Charlie Could Be How I Met Your Father Season 2’s Barney

Long before Robin returned in the How I Met Your Father season 1 finale, viewers of the spinoff were trying to work out who the show’s Barney, Ted, Marshall, and Lily equivalents were. Outside of their shared talent for wooing women with dramatic gestures, Charlie and Barney seemed as if they had little in common. However, this might not necessarily be true now that the How I Met Your Father character is single. Charlie is a meek, clueless idealist who doesn’t know when he’s being hoodwinked and sincerely wants a deep romantic relationship — which is exactly who Barney was in his pre-Barney years.

Before an acrimonious breakup (like the one that Charlie just went through) turned him into the serial womanizer that viewers knew and loved, Barney was a good-natured hippy with little interest in accruing as much money as possible or bedding innumerable women. If Charlie doesn’t return to England in How I Met Your Father season 2, he could undergo a character evolution, not unlike that of Barney. That said, this could upset the chemistry between the How I Met Your Father cast, and the circumstances of Charlie’s recent heartbreak are a lot more emotionally complex than the absurdly over-the-top breakup that prompted Barney’s character shift. However, How I Met Your Father season 2 could still make Charlie the new Barney if the spinoff is determined to introduce a variation on the How I Met Your Mother character.