HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER: Carter Bays and Craig Thomas Dish on Barney, Robin, Kevin and Ted

No relationship on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER has ever been simple, but lately, things have gotten extra complex. We know Robin doesn’t end up with Ted, but there’s no doubt there are still some lingering issues between the two. And what does that mean for her relationships with Barney and Kevin?

Co-creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas took some time out of their schedule to have lunch with a few reporters and dish on what’s to come on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER…

Who is Barney marrying?

While viewers certainly want to know who the infamous mother is of Ted’s future kids, one of the biggest questions that has surrounded the show recently has been the identity of Barney’s future bride. Luckily, we’ll be getting the answer to at least one of those questions by the the end of the season.

“We’ll answer who Barney is marrying,” Thomas confirmed. “We will answer that at the end of this season.”

But if you think you know the lucky lady’s identity based on where we are in the show right now, it might not be that simple.

“It’s still a flash-forward.” Thomas noted. “We’re not saying when it is, but we’re not catching up to it this season.”

Not to mention, whether Barney and this mysterious bride go through with the wedding is an entirely different matter.

“That all remains to be seen,” Bays teased.

Barney and Robin aren’t over!

Some fans may have thought Robin and Barney would be done for good after she chose Kevin over him — and then they had the pregnancy scare where they had differing opinions on having kids — but the EPs downplayed that notion.

“Barney also wants to have kids in a very hypothetical sense…we have to call Barney out on whether he really wants to have kids,” Thomas said. “We don’t look at that as a singular deal breaker…Deep down, Barney doesn’t really know what he wants.”

“And that’s not to take anything away from what Robin and Barney have, because they’re so in love” Bays added. “They’ve sort of been the clearing house for all of us and our romantic dysfunctions and I think they’re doomed as a relationship [right now] in some ways because they’re so messed up, but I think part of the show is them taking themselves apart and rebuilding themselves. Especially with Barney, but also with Robin this season, we’re seeing them learn how to move past everything that has screwed them up in the past to maybe make this work for real.”

Of course, there’s also the matter of Robin’s career ambitions, which in the past have taken her away from New York.

“We’re going to see her career start to take off in a new way,” Thomas noted. “She was always a career girl, and she’s going to start to go that way [again]. There’s going to be a new romantic interest thrown into Barney’s world in the form of Becki Newton. So we’re going to watch them go into different directions for a little while, but those two actors and those two characters have this huge, crazy chemistry that I can’t say we’re done exploring. They inform each others’ lives in enormous ways. We’ll see more of that…before the series is done, we’ll have to address that more. It broke Barney’s heart that she chose Kevin that night. It could have gone either way and she chose Kevin, and he’s still been hurting from that. We’re not going to forget about that.”

Ted and Robin get messy.

Barney isn’t the only ex Robin will be having issues with in the coming months…there’s also the matter of her former boyfriend-turned-roommate, Ted.

“Victoria was the fortune teller in that episode [earlier this season],” Thomas previewed. “There’s going to be some fireworks involved with Ted’s [unresolved] romantic feelings for Robin. And for sure, in February sweeps, we return to that in an interesting way that I don’t want to talk too much about. What Victoria came back to [predict] will come true in February sweeps…Some stuff happens that makes Ted and Robin question their living arrangements and how it’s been…and is that way weirder than we are letting on? Which I think it would be.”

“It’s such a complicated relationship,” Bays added. “We just kind of try and put ourselves in their shoes — like, what would this be like to date someone and love someone as intensely as they loved each other and then break up and actually remain friends? And be roommates, which is rare…we try and imagine how that would be like and how that would really work.”

The Kevin of it all…

But what does that mean for Kevin, Robin’s current boyfriend — whom Thomas also noted is “very important to the rest of the season”?

“I don’t think it’s too much of a reveal to say Kevin — the waters don’t run as deep as they do with, say, Barney or Ted,” Bays said. “And we kind of explore that. Ultimately, he’s been fun to have around, we love Kal [Penn (Kevin)], he’s been fun to work with, and his chemistry with the group has been a fun dynamic to play, but we’ll see. The month of February will answer a lot of questions and resolve a lot of things that have been simmering under the surface.”

Robin’s big crush:

There is one more man lingering in Robin’s life who has so far been MIA this season: her crush (played by Michael Trucco), whom Future Ted revealed would be making a comeback.

“That became tricky, and I think we can say the character of Kevin was created in his absence,” Bays said.

“We thought [Robin’s love interest this season] would be Michael Trucco, but he got booked on something else that shoots in Vancouver,” Thomas explained.

But just because Trucco is busy filming FAIRLY LEGAL in Vancouver, that doesn’t mean HIMYM is done with him yet.

“We will find a way to use him,” Bays promised. “We’re not going to leave any loose threads. We’re not THE SOPRANOS. We don’t want to make people uncomfortable or drive them crazy.”

“We’ll get to that, but it’ll have to be in a different way than we wanted just due to — sometimes logistics just come in,” Thomas added.

Tonight’s episode:

You didn’t think we’d go through this without a couple teases for tonight’s episode, did you? First up, stripper Lily (AKA Lily’s doppelganger) comes back tonight “and it’s weird,” the producers teased.

And if you love the HIMYM musical moments, you’re in luck!

“There’s a couple fun retreads of the main title sequence in Monday night’s episode,” Thomas teased. “You see the main titles a couple times.”

Why? He was mum on that. Hmm…

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