‘How I Met Your Father’ Flashing Back to ‘Lizzie McGuire’ Is My ‘Multiverse of Madness’

I know it’s only March, but there’s no doubt in my mind that How I Met Your Father just delivered one of 2023’s most ambitious crossover events.

As Hulu‘s How I Met Your Mother sequel series settles into its second season, Sophie (Hilary Duff), Jesse (Christopher Lowell), Valentina (Francia Raisa), Sid (Suraj Sharma), Charlie (Tom Ainsley), and Ellen (Tien Tran) spend Episode 7 celebrating “A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Valentina’s Day.” After Ellen and her girlfriend are forced to spent their first Valentine’s Day apart, the gang gathers in Pemberton’s to share past romantic misfortunes. But when Sophie flashes back to her younger years, fans will be shocked to see a familiar teen on screen: Elizabeth Brooke McGuire.

Sophie kicks the mortifying trip down memory lane off by sharing a story from her childhood, which Ellen swiftly shuts down, because pre-puberty stories don’t count. Duh! “Oh. OK. I’m gonna think of a different one,” Sophie says. “Oooh. When I was 13 —” she trails off. Just then, the show transports us back in time. Literally. Instead of a de-aged Duff or a younger actor cast as her character as a teen, we see footage from Lizzie McGuire.

In the blink of an eye, Hulu seamlessly transitioned from the image of adult Duff chatting in a bar to her young Disney Channel character chatting in her room 2002. Did I cry? Who’s to say! The flashback lasts less than six seconds, but my god, was it magical. Was it absolutely absurd? Yes. Does it make any sense? No! But I love it more because of the chaos, not in spite of it. Oh to be a fly on the wall of the How I Met Your Father writers’ room when this idea was thrown out there, or to be on set as this cast (which sometimes includes fellow 2000s teen star Josh Peck) reminisces about the days of Lizzie McGuire. That, my friends, is what dreams are made of.

“UH, no. You hang up first,” Duff, as Lizzie, says into the clunky phone as her bestie Miranda (Lalaine Vergara-Paras) rolls her eyes in the background. “I’m not hanging up first. It’s your turn to hang up first. YOU go first.” For those who didn’t live and breathe Lizzie McGuire in the early 2000s, the clip was taken from Season 2, Episode 1, “First Kiss,” where Lizzie starts dating a cute (but ultimately trash) paper boy named Ronnie who dumps her as soon as another girl shows interest in him.

Being unexpectedly propelled into the scene mid-How I Met Your Father felt like cracking open a decades-old time capsule and unleashing a flood of iconic fashion, feelings, and nostalgia. This right here is my Multiverse of Madness. And though Duff shared a teaser on Instagram to get followers hyped, trust me when I say that watching the entire scene unfold in the episode hits different. You’ll scream. You’ll cry. You’ll want to wear a choker. You’ll genuinely consider subscribing to Disney+ to embark on a full Lizzie McGuire rewatch.

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The scene is a glorious How I Met Your Father Easter egg for longtime fans of Duff, but it also serves as a treat for Lizzie McGuire stans whose hopes for a reboot were crushed in 2020, when the Disney+ project was scrapped after filming already began.

In an interview with Women’s Health , Duff said she wanted to move forward with the reboot, provided it felt right and was reflective of her character’s age. “She had to be 30 years old doing 30-year-old things,” Duff explained. “She didn’t need to be doing bong rips and having one-night stands all the time, but it had to be authentic…I think they got spooked.”

The success of How I Met Your Father — which shows Duff embracing her character’s best, messiest 30-something life — should prove that fans of the actor who grew up watching Lizzie McGuire have matured and can handle Lizzie living authentically. Quite frankly, it’d be weird if Lizzie was still acting like a middle/high school student in the reboot. Come on, Disney+!

Duff remains optimistic that she could return to screen as Lizzie one day, but until that day arrives, at least we have this LEGEN — wait for it — DARY Lizzie and Sophie connection to look back on.

New episodes of How I Met Your Father premiere on Hulu every Tuesday.