TV Romance
‘How I Met Your Mother’: Was Victoria Going to Be the Mother? Boss Talks Season 1 Rumor
Hold on to your yellow umbrellas and blue French horns because this shocking reveal will have you rethinking everything you thought you knew about How I Met Your Mother.
In their new podcast, How We Made Your Mother, Ted Mosby actor Josh Radnor and series co-creator Craig Thomas have set out to break down every episode of How I Met Your Mother from the monumental pilot to the controversial finale.
Naturally, looking back at Season 1 has brought up a lot of questions about Ted’s first major love interest, Victoria, who was played by Ashley Williams. Though Ted’s Season 1 relationship with the wedding cake baker was short-lived — they both decided a long-distance relationship wasn’t in the cards — it felt like a no-brainer that Victoria would return somewhere down the line.
While it’s unclear where the rumor started, most HIMYM fans hold on to the belief that Williams was set to take on a far larger role in the legacy of the series if it had not been renewed beyond Season 1. While fans today know Victoria as Ted’s first major love interest, not his last, many have theorized that Victoria is the person who would have been revealed to be the Mother had the show been canceled early on. The theory runs so deep that almost every HIMYM fan recounts it as a fun fact, not an unfounded truth.
During a Q&A on their podcast, Thomas was asked if there was any truth to the statement: “It’s been confirmed for a while that if the series ended [at the end of Season 1], Victoria would have wound up as the Mother.”
In response, Thomas asked, “Were we planning to be the Mother and [did we] have some well-developed contingency plan for if we got cancelled at the end of Season 1?” Answering his own question, the How I Met Your Mother writer and co-creator revealed, “No, the show was doing well enough that we didn’t think we were going to be canceled at the end of Season 1.”
When it comes to who the Mother would have been, it turns out the writers would have left viewers in the dark, similar to the untimely ending of How I Met Your Father. “We never had some big thought-out plan for what we would do,” Thomas reflected. “Honestly, if they canceled us at the end of Season 1, would we have scrambled to wrap it up and been like, Victoria’s the Mother? I think we would have been so pissed off and heartbroken that we would have been like, ‘F*ck you, it’s a cliffhanger.'”
Were you just as shocked as we were to find out that the Mother’s Season 1 fate was just a rumor? Comment below!
How I Met Your Mother, All Episodes, Streaming Now, Hulu
