How I Met Your Father’s First HIMYM Cameo Explained

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for HIMYF episode 9!

How I Met Your Father episode 9 has finally brought back a few notable characters from How I Met Your Mother with cameos – but not who was expected. While it was understood that How I Met Your Father would take place in the same universe as HIMYM, viewers were initially most eager for which original characters would cameo. HIMYM’s finale gave hints to where many of the characters are in How I Met Your Father’s timeline, which perfectly allowed the opportunity for significant character crossovers.

While Lily and Marshall were referenced in How I Met Your Father’s premiere after they gave Jesse and Sid the old apartment and left them the iconic swords, it wasn’t until episode 9 that HIMYM characters physically appeared. How I Met Your Father episode 9’s opens with Sophie telling the story of an older couple with “boat kinks” in which the wife catches the husband cheating on her with another woman. While Sophie’s son points out that their story seems irrelevant, HIMYM viewers who stuck around for the later seasons immediately recognize the importance of these two characters.

How I Met Your Father’s first HIMYM character cameos are George “The Captain” Van Smoot (Kyle MacLachlan) and Becky (Laura Bell Bundy). The Captain was first introduced in HIMYM season 6 as the nautically-obsessed husband of Zoey Pierson, Ted’s least-liked girlfriend in the series. He returned several times over the course of the series as an increasingly important character, particularly in HIMYM season 8 when he hires Lily as an art consultant and falls in love with Becky, Robin’s old boat-obsessed co-anchor at Come On, Get Up New York! When The Captain and Becky return in HIMYM season 9, it’s revealed that they’re happily engaged, and the latter character has notably matured. The future of The Captain and Becky’s relationship was then unclear, but How I Met Your Father’s cameos confirm what became of the boat-loving couple.

In the 8 years since HIMYM’s finale timeline, How I Met Your Father reveals that Becky and The Captain have since married, but it hasn’t been entirely happy. Becky walks in on The Captain having an affair with an unknown woman in How I Met Your Father episode 9, blowing a whistle at him to announce her presence. Sophie explains that the affair doesn’t seem important now, but it will connect back to her story a little later. After only a minute of seeing The Captain and Becky’s cameos, Sophie’s son has already summarized them fairly accurately as an old couple with “boat kinks.” After all, The Captain and Becky’s mutual obsession with boats is what brought them together in How I Met Your Mother.

How I Met Your Father episode 9 ends without explaining how The Captain and Becky’s HIMYM cameos connect to Sophie’s story with Jesse, but it will surely be answered in the following episode’s season 1 finale. Since The Captain went on to become one of the best-liked recurring characters in HIMYM, which was only made better once he began a perfectly fitting romance with Ted’s brief ex-girlfriend Becky, these two characters are some of the best choices to test the waters of truly combining the original and the spinoff. With the two characters already set to appear in at least two episodes of How I Met Your Father, perhaps The Captain and Becky will once again become recurring figures in the spinoff’s bizarre storylines. Even if this is the case, many viewers will still hold out hope for How I Met Your Father cameos by the main five How I Met Your Mother characters.

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Jordan Williams
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Jordan Williams is a Movie/TV Feature Senior Staff Writer for Screen Rant. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 2020 with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Media Studies.

Jordan is based in Seattle, Washington and enjoys exploring the natural beauty the PNW has to offer. She runs on coffee and classic movies, taking pride in having watched every film on AFI’s 100 Greatest Films list and every Best Picture Oscar winner.

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