Published Jan 29, 2026, 7:00 PM EST
Angel Shaw is a Lead Writer and Peer Mentor on ScreenRant's New TV team, covering new-release TV shows across all major streaming platforms. She has been a writer with ScreenRant since 2022 and specializes in Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and fantasy.
Angel holds a bachelor's degree in language interpreting and is passionate about all things culture and communication—especially in how it relates to popular media throughout history (from Shakespeare to Friends to Game of Thrones).
It's been 12 years since Jason Segel was on How I Met Your Mother, but season 3 of Shrinking proves that this time in his career is not forgotten. The Apple TV series stars Segel as Jimmy, a therapist struggling to get his life together following the tragic death of his wife. He does so with the help of his boss and mentor, Paul (Harrison Ford), colleague Gaby (Jessica Williams), his daughter, Alice (Lukita Maxwell), and the rest of his found family.
Shrinking and How I Met Your Mother are entirely different in tone and premise. They're both comedies, but they fall in different categories within that broad umbrella. Still, Segel, a co-creator of Shrinking alongside Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein, is a prominent presence in both TV shows. It's only natural that viewers would be ready and eager to make comparisons. Luckily for us, Shrinking season 3 delivered another opportunity.
Alice Going To Wesleyan In Shrinking Pays Homage To Jason Segel's How I Met Your Mother Character
In the Shrinking season 3 premiere, Jimmy has to cope with the reality that Alice will soon be heading away to college. Despite his desire to keep her at home with him forever, he ultimately resolves to do all he can to get his daughter into her dream school. This means Jimmy has to pour every ounce of positive energy into Alice when a Wesleyan University scout comes to her soccer game.
The ears of How I Met Your Mother fans would certainly have perked up when Segel's Jimmy mentioned Wesleyan in Shrinking season 3, episode 1. After all, this is where Marshall, Ted, and Lily canonically met one another before they all moved to the apartment above MacLaren's in New York City. There are several big Wesleyan flashbacks in How I Met Your Mother, so the decision for Alice to attend this university in Shrinking feels like a delightful homage.
Shrinking Already Featured A Fun How I Met Your Mother Reunion
The Wesleyan reference isn't Shrinking's first connection to How I Met Your Mother outside of Segel's presence, and it won't be the last. In season 2, Jimmy wanted to buy a yellow Mini Cooper for Alice, and he found one owned by a cute, recently divorced woman named Sofi. This character was played by none other than Cobie Smulders, who played Robin in How I Met Your Mother.
This was, naturally, a pretty exciting moment, since Segel and Smulders haven't acted together since How I Met Your Mother came to a close. It only gets better, however, since Smulders is set to appear in season 3 episodes of Shrinking as Sofi becomes a potential love interest for Jimmy.
It's rather laughable that Segel and Smulders would play a romantic pair, since it's a running joke in How I Met Your Mother that Marshall and Robin were the least romantic of anyone in the group. Of course, this did nothing to impair their on-screen chemistry. These are two actors who've known one another for decades, and our familiarity with them only adds to that buzzy spark. How I Met Your Mother may be long over, but Shrinking lets us step back into that time once more.
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