Who is Robin Scherbatsky in How I Met Your Mother?

Show

How I Met Your Mother

Played by

Cobie Smulders

First episode

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

Role

Main cast

Network

CBS

Occupation

TV news reporter, later anchor

Show run

2005 to 2014

Also known as

Robin Sparkles, Robin Daggers, Robin Charles Scherbatsky Jr.

Robin Scherbatsky is a Canadian news reporter who moved to New York to make it in television, and the woman Ted meets at the bar in the very first episode. Played by Cobie Smulders, she is tough, ambitious, and wary of marriage, with a hidden past as a teen pop singer.

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

Who is Robin Scherbatsky?

Robin grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia, raised by a father who treated her like the son he wanted. She moves to New York to work in TV news, starting with fluffy end-of-broadcast segments and steadily climbing toward the anchor chair. Ted meets her at MacLaren's in the pilot, and within minutes he is convinced she could be the one.

The twist, which the show reveals right away, is that Robin is not the Mother. Instead she becomes Ted's friend, sometime girlfriend, and roommate, and Lily's best friend. Robin does not want to get married or have children, at least at first, and that independence drives many of her stories.

Personality and comedy

Robin is the least sentimental member of the group. She smokes cigars, drinks scotch, loves guns and hockey, and has little patience for the romantic gestures Ted keeps attempting. Her American friends never stop teasing her about being Canadian, and she is quick to defend her home country.

Her biggest secret is Robin Sparkles, the bubblegum pop persona she had as a teenager in Canada, complete with a mall-themed music video. When Barney finally digs up the tape in "Slap Bet," it becomes one of the show's most beloved running gags, followed by more embarrassing discoveries about her music and children's TV career.

Key storylines

Ted and Robin date through season two and break up when they realize they want different futures. Robin later sleeps with Barney, dates him briefly in season five, and moves through a series of boyfriends while her career takes her from local news to a stint in Japan and back. In season seven she learns she cannot have children, which hits her harder than she expected.

In season eight, Barney reveals that his relationship with the cheerful coworker Patrice was an elaborate scheme to win Robin back, and he proposes in "The Final Page," and Robin says yes. The entire final season covers their wedding weekend, including Robin's last-minute doubts, and they marry in "The End of the Aisle." The finale reveals that they divorce after three years because her work as a globe-trotting correspondent keeps them apart.

Casting and the ending

The creators always intended that Robin would not be the Mother. They have said a well-known actress, later revealed to be Jennifer Love Hewitt, turned the role down, and they cast the then unknown Cobie Smulders instead. They have credited that choice with helping the show, because audiences met Robin for the first time just as Ted did.

In the broadcast finale, set years after Tracy's death, Ted's children encourage him to ask Robin out, and the series ends with Ted outside her apartment holding the blue French horn from their first date. Smulders went on to a big film career, including playing Maria Hill in the Marvel movies.

Robin Scherbatsky: frequently asked questions

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