How Big of a Clue Is That Photo in the Future? ‘How I Met Your Father’ Bosses Weigh In
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for How I Met Your Father Season 2 Episode 3, “The Reset Button.”]
In the February 7 episode of How I Met Your Father, Sophie (Hilary Duff) and Jesse (Christopher Lowell) hit the “reset button … sort of,” but did one question in Future Sophie’s (Kim Cattrall) conversation with her son provide a major clue as to what’s to come for them? Not necessarily.
In “The Reset Button,” a couple (Michael McDonald and Jessica St. Clair) buys Sophie’s photo of Jesse and invites both of them over for dinner. But, it turns out, the couple wants to use it as the face of the men’s rights movement. Understandably, Sophie and Jesse try to get it out of there … with her being the distraction while he tries to remove it from the wall. Jesse’s failure to do so disappoints Walter, who orders them to take the photo.
After, Sophie notes that they work well together as friends. After hesitating, Jesse agrees but admits, “if I’d had known you were going to come back that night, I wouldn’t have called Meredith. The thing is….” But she stops him and says, “I get it. She’s the love of your life, and you gotta give it a shot.” According to Future Sophie, that’s how they “hit the reset button … sort of.” Then Sophie puts the photo on a cab, and it drives off.
But in the future, her son wonders how it ended up back here if she lost it. Future Sophie tells him it’s “a story for another time, kid, but trust me, I will get to it.” But does that necessarily mean that he’s the Father or comes back into her life after the Father? After all, it could be awkward for Sophie to have a photo of her ex around if that’s not the case. How much weight should we put on the photo’s existence in the future?
“I think that photo’s a really big clue, but we have to remember that’s not just about Jesse. That’s also the first photo she ever had exhibited in a real gallery,” executive producer Isaac Aptaker tells TV Insider. “That photo also means something to her in a huge way on a professional level. So who’s to say whether it’s about who she winds up with romantically, whether it’s about the start of her photography career, whether she just thought it looked good in her in her living room.”
Meanwhile, in the present day, when Sophie gets home, she’s surprised to find that Valentina (Francia Raisa) slept with a random guy, asking how she’s able to move on from Charlie (Tom Ainsley) so fast. “I always bounce back quickly with guys,” Valentina argues, but as Sophie sees it, “Charlie isn’t just a guy. You were in love with him.” Valentina knows, but she thinks that she and Charlie are still going to end up together. She isn’t worried about him meeting someone else … though what she doesn’t know is he’s getting back out there at just that moment. And don’t forget: Charlie’s still a possible candidate to be the Father.
“Like you said, [Valentina] can believe that, but it doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily true. I think when you’re in the stage of life when you’re sort of falling in love, and you’re trying to figure it out, and sometimes it’s not working out, there’s what you believe very deeply in your heart, and then there’s what path the universe takes you on, and those don’t always line up,” executive producer Elizabeth Berger says. “So I think there’s still a chance that she’s 100 percent correct, or there’s a chance that she’s not.”
Now, all we can do is wait to see for how long that “reset button” works.
How I Met Your Father, Tuesdays, Hulu
