Cobie Smulders returning for ‘Shrinking’ season 3

How I met your new mother?

Cobie Smulders is officially returning to Shrinking for season 3 as Sofi, the potential new love interest for Jason Segel’s Jimmy, continuing their How I Met Your Mother reunion.

Shrinking co-creator Bill Lawrence revealed the news in an interview with TVLine, adding that Smulders will been seen a lot more as she recurs in season 3 after her charming appearance in the season 2 episode “Changing Patterns.”

“The cool thing about the show — and we even told all the actors and actresses this when we started — is that this is a show about a tiny found family that built a nuclear safety bubble around themselves to get through s‑‑‑, and then people forgive and open up these doors,” Lawrence told the outlet. “That’s why you see someone like [One Day at a Time vet] Isabella Gomez, who is playing a love interest for Luke Tennie’s character [Sean]… You see Michael J. Fox coming in… [and] you see Cobie Smulders come in for Jason as a guy that — you know, you talk about moving forward, and whether or not [Jimmy] can find a way to even imagine himself being happy again.”

Segel and Smulders first starred opposite each other on nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother, and Shrinking staged an onscreen reunion between the actors as recently divorced Sofi sold a yellow Mini Cooper to Jimmy for his daughter Alice’s (Lukita Maxwell) 18th birthday present. During the sale, sparks flew between Jimmy and Sofi as they bonded over the loss of their partners — although Sofi’s situation was a bit different, as her ex-husband left her for her best friend (yikes!). This connection is important, as Sofi is the first woman to catch Jimmy’s eye in a healthy way since the loss of his wife.

“I get to work with Jason again, which I very much miss doing,” Smulders previously told Entertainment Weekly about her season 2 appearance. “It was immediately one of my buddies [sharing the scene]. The show is so well written, and when anyone comes into a project and the character is already alive from the script, it makes everything so easy… I already have an intimacy with Jason, so it was just playing with a different color when on camera. But Jason is just so damn likable that it’s very easy to be charmed by him.”

At the time of her episode’s debut, Smulders was uncertain if Sofi would return. “He’s in the driver’s seat of that,” she said. “Jimmy has a very complicated past, and my character came in and went like, ‘There are other things out there.’ I don’t know if we’ll build on that. I have no idea what’s in store, but it was nice to see this character having a flirtation and being surprised by that.”

Earlier this month, when EW asked Segel if Smulders would return as Sofi in season 3, he kept things vague.

“I can’t give away such things,” Segel said. “But I will say, each season we have a word that is our true north for the theme of the season. Season 1 was ‘grief,’ season 2 was ‘forgiveness,’ and season 3 — I acknowledge that this is two words — is ‘moving forward.'”

Segel also said he loved how his one scene (so far) with Smulders got to show a different side of Jimmy.

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“There’s a very easy trope to fall into when you’re writing a tall goofy man, is that they are afraid of girls… Like Ross from Friends or some of my early rom-coms,” Segel said. “It’s like they’re scared of girls, you’re fumbling around them. And my gentle nudge around Jimmy, which I like and it makes it exciting for me, is that he’s not afraid of women. He’s not bad with women. As a matter of fact, he had an amazing wife who he met in his early 20s and has had a fully realized relationship with all of the stuff, including the death of a spouse.”

He continued, “So I didn’t want those scenes to be the typical fumbling date, someone who doesn’t know how to talk to a woman… Instead, I wanted it to be a guy who actually has some underlying shame. So his thing is, ‘This woman deserves better than me.’ So that’s what I think Jimmy takes into the scenes. ‘If she saw the real me, she would know she deserves better.'”

Meanwhile, Shrinking star Jessica Williams was rooting for Smulders to return. “As a fan, I want to see more of that,” she told EW. “And I want to do things with her.”