With the year’s biggest spookfest just around the corner, we thought to give a shoutout to How I Met Your Mother and its memorable Halloween episodes, whether they involve a certain Slutty Pumpkin or chief troublemaker Zoey.
For a show that regularly dedicated episodes to different Holidays (seven Christmas outings, five to Thanksgiving, and even three to Valentine’s Day — or, as Barney would refer to it, “Desperation Day”) it’s strange to realize that the gang celebrated Halloween on only three occasions out of the story’s 10-year history.
Still, these three episodes have been etched into our brains due to the festive shenanigans accompanying them. And perhaps because two of them were serialized and tied heavily into Ted’s love life (as if the rest of the show isn’t). At any rate, here’s our ranking for How I Met Your Mother‘s Pumpkin Night episodes.
3. “The Slutty Pumpkin Returns” – Season 7, Episode 8
Ted finally discovers where the girl of her dreams (well, sort of) lives, so he asks her out on a date, only to learn that the two are anything but a match made in heaven. Ted and the so-called Slutty Pumpkin have no chemistry, so they call it quits after just a short while. Meanwhile, Barney learns that he’s part Canadian, much to his dismay, as Lily struggles with the onset of her “pregnancy brain.”
2. “Canning Randy” – Season 6, Episode 7
Ted dresses up as a hog dog and teaches his class about bridges. Zoey is still hell-bent on turning his life into a living hell. Marshall has to fire one of his subordinates but finds that he lacks the strength to do so. This is the perfect How I Met Your Mother holiday outing, full of interesting developments, sagacious life lessons from older Ted, and of course, amazing costumes for the cast all around. I mean, even barring Ted, Barney dresses as Johnny Lawrence from The Karate Kid, while Lily and Marshall cosplay as a matador and a bull, respectively.
1. “The Slutty Pumpkin” – Season 1, Episode 6
There’s something incredibly nostalgic about this episode all the way back in the first season. We were only getting to know the cast, but they appeared in their roles as if they’d been doing it for years. Barney suits up as a Top Gun pilot, while Lily and Marshall get complementary costumes as a pirate and his parrot. Robin isn’t into the whole Holiday spirit, because of course she wouldn’t be, so she ends up fighting with the person she’s currently dating. And yes, this is the episode that marks the beginning of Ted’s search for the “Slutty Pumpkin,” a girl he saw at a Halloween party years ago.