Who is Lily Aldrin in How I Met Your Mother?

Show

How I Met Your Mother

Played by

Alyson Hannigan

First episode

“Pilot”Season 1, Episode 1, aired September 19, 2005

Role

Main cast

Network

CBS

Occupation

Kindergarten teacher, later art consultant

Show run

2005 to 2014

Also known as

Lilypad

Lily Aldrin teaches kindergarten, paints in her spare time, and has been with Marshall since their first week of college. Played by Alyson Hannigan, she looks like the gentlest person in the group and turns out to be its most fearsome strategist.

On How I Met Your Mother, Lily Aldrin's story runs through Marshall Eriksen (Husband), Ted Mosby (Best Friend), Robin Scherbatsky (Best Friend), Barney Stinson (Friend), and Tracy McConnell (Friend).

Who is Lily Aldrin?

Lily grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn, met Marshall and Ted at Wesleyan University, and moved into the New York apartment with both of them after graduation. When the series begins she is teaching kindergarten and quietly wondering whether she gave up on being an artist too soon. Marshall's proposal in the pilot sets the story in motion.

She is fiercely loyal to her friends, especially Ted and Robin, and she has strong opinions about who belongs with whom. Lily is the friend who hosts, comforts, and nags, and she is also the one most likely to stage an intervention or quietly end a relationship she does not approve of.

Personality and comedy

A lot of Lily's comedy comes from the contrast between her sunny, motherly side and a competitive, manipulative streak. Barney calls her a puppet master, and the show backs him up: she breaks up couples she thinks are wrong for each other, cannot keep a secret to save her life, and shops her way through stress until her credit card debt becomes a plot point of its own.

She also went through a goth phase in high school and college, and the show keeps up a running joke about her crush on Robin. Alyson Hannigan, already known from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the American Pie films, plays all of it with a warmth that keeps Lily lovable even at her most devious.

Key storylines

At the end of season one, Lily applies for a painting fellowship in San Francisco, and she and Marshall break up when she cannot promise to come back. She returns months later realizing she made a mistake, wins Marshall back, and the two finally marry at the end of season two. Later seasons deal with their money troubles, a slanted apartment near a sewage plant, and their long effort to start a family.

Lily learns she is pregnant in the season six finale and gives birth to their son Marvin at the end of season seven. In season eight she finally gets her art career, working as a consultant for a wealthy collector known as the Captain, who offers her a year in Rome. That plan collides with Marshall's secret judgeship during the final season, and the couple make it work after Lily learns she is expecting again.

Behind the scenes

Co-creator Craig Thomas has said he based Marshall and Lily on himself and his wife, Rebecca. She was reportedly unhappy to learn this at first, but was won over as a Buffy fan once Alyson Hannigan was cast. Hannigan had been looking for more comedy work after American Pie and stayed for the entire nine-season run, though Lily is the only member of the original main cast who misses some episodes, because Hannigan took maternity leave after her first child was born.

In the finale, Lily is the friend who works hardest to keep the group together as everyone's lives move in different directions, from Barney and Robin's divorce to Ted's wedding to Tracy. She and Marshall end the series raising three kids, with Marshall on his way to becoming a judge.

Lily Aldrin: frequently asked questions

All How I Met Your Mother charactersEssential How I Met Your Mother episodesHow I Met Your Mother triviaMore 2000s sitcom characters

All sitcom characters A to Z