‘How I Met Your Father’ Creators Tease Leighton Meester’s Return After Surprise Cameo: Will Any ‘HIMYM’ Alums Appear?

usmagazine.com:

XOXO! Leighton Meester makes a surprise appearance in the early episodes of How I Met Your Father — and it’s possible fans haven’t seen the last of her on the show.The 35-year-old Gossip Girl alum pops up on the new Hulu series, which premiered on Tuesday, January 18, as Meredith, an ex-girlfriend of Jesse (Christopher Lowell).

While Meester’s appearance may have been unexpected to viewers, showrunners Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger teased that there could be big plans in store for her character as the season continues.“Just having Leighton Meester in that one little viral video certainly seems like a waste of Leighton Meester,” Aptaker joked while speaking with Us Weekly exclusively before HIMYF‘s debut. “I think that it is reasonable to expect that she’ll be returning at some point.”Hilary Duff stars as Sophie, a hopeless romantic searching for The One, on the spinoff of How I Met Your Mother.

Though Aptaker and Berger wanted to create a different world for the new series, they gave longtime HIMYM fans a common thread to connect to the original sitcom, which ended in 2014 after nine seasons.“I think we really right off the bat really wanted to show, you know, this is a new show, this is a new cast and we’re gonna be on a sort of entirely new ride here,” Berger told Us. “At the same time, we also wanted to make clear that we do exist in the same universe and include a little touch for the very devoted How I Met Your Mother fan base that shows that we’re in that universe right away.”The first episode of the reboot includes little Easter eggs from the OG series, including the instantly recognizable apartment, which felt like “the exact right level” to kickstart “this whole new adventure,” Berger added.Callbacks to the