Lily Aldrin
Encyclopedia
Lillian "Lily" Aldrin is a fictional character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...

 created by Carter Bays
Carter Bays
Carter Bays is an American television writer. Along with writing partner Craig Thomas, he is best known as creator, writer, and executive producer of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. He has 70 episodes of the show under his belt from 2005-2009, and has been nominated for six primetime Emmy...

 and Craig Thomas
Craig Thomas
Craig Thomas may refer to:* Craig L. Thomas , American politician who represented Wyoming in the United States Senate from 1995 to 2007...

 for the CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 television series How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother is an American sitcom that premiered on CBS on September 19, 2005, created by Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.As a framing device, the main character, Ted Mosby with narration by Bob Saget, in the year 2030 recounts to his son and daughter the events that led to his meeting...

, portrayed by American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 actress Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Lee Hannigan is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Willow Rosenberg in the cult classic television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michelle Flaherty in three American Pie films, and Lily Aldrin on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother.-Early life:Hannigan was born in...

. She is the wife of Marshall Eriksen
Marshall Eriksen
Marshall Eriksen is a fictional character in the American sitcom How I Met Your Mother, created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas and portrayed by Jason Segel.-Character profile:Marshall is an easy-going, naive optimist from St. Cloud, Minnesota...

 and the best friend of Robin Scherbatsky
Robin Scherbatsky
Robin Charles Scherbatsky, Jr. is a fictional character created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas for the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother, portrayed by Canadian actress Cobie Smulders.- Early life :...

. Lily is a kindergarten
Kindergarten
A kindergarten is a preschool educational institution for children. The term was created by Friedrich Fröbel for the play and activity institute that he created in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg as a social experience for children for their transition from home to school...

 teacher and amateur painter.

Casting

Thomas explained that he based Marshall and Lily on himself and his wife Rebecca. Rebecca was a little upset at the prospect at first, but because she is a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, she agreed if Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Hannigan
Alyson Lee Hannigan is an American actress. She is known for her roles as Willow Rosenberg in the cult classic television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Michelle Flaherty in three American Pie films, and Lily Aldrin on the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother.-Early life:Hannigan was born in...

 could play her. Hannigan was looking to do more comedy work after having worked on the primary American Pie series and was available for the show.

Biography

Lily grew up in Brooklyn, New York. She is the granddaughter of a woman named Lois and the daughter of Janice Aldrin, whom Lily describes as a feminist, she is of Swedish
Swedes
Swedes are a Scandinavian nation and ethnic group native to Sweden, mostly inhabiting Sweden and the other Nordic countries, with descendants living in a number of countries.-Etymology:...

 descent. The creators stated in commentary that there is no evidence to the contrary that Lily's grandfather is astronaut Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history...

 - and like Buzz Aldrin, her grandfather is said to have fought in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

. Her father is revealed to be a man named Mickey, an unsuccessful board game creator living in his parents' basement. Janice and Mickey divorced when Lily was younger.

During her high school and college years, she is shown to have been a part of the goth subculture
Goth subculture
The goth subculture is a contemporary subculture found in many countries. It began in England during the early 1980s in the gothic rock scene, an offshoot of the post-punk genre. The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify...

, with her hair dyed black. Lily dated a guy named Scooter, admitting she only dated him because he looked like Kurt Cobain
Kurt Cobain
Kurt Donald Cobain was an American singer-songwriter, musician and artist, best known as the lead singer and guitarist of the grunge band Nirvana...

. According to a convenience store clerk, she is "taller than described." She met Marshall during her freshman year at Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...

 in 1996 and dated him throughout college.

As of the episode, "Say Cheese
Say Cheese (How I Met Your Mother)
"Say Cheese" is the eighteenth episode of the fifth season of the CBS situation comedy How I Met Your Mother and 106th episode overall. It originally aired on March 22, 2010.- Plot :...

", aired on March 22, 2010, Lily is 32 years old.

Character history

Lily and Marshall became engaged in the fall of 2005, as portrayed in the series pilot. Towards the end of the first season, she reveals to Robin that she has been having second thoughts about getting married without having experienced much else of life before Marshall. Those doubts intensify, and she acts upon them, applying for a painting fellowship in San Francisco. She originally tells Ted that she had decided not to go through with the application, but Marshall finds out she did and was accepted. After arguing the point on and off, with several pause breaks in between for drinks, dinner at Red Lobster
Red Lobster
Red Lobster is a U.S. chain of seafood restaurants. It also operates in Canada, the UAE and Japan . It is aimed at the mid-level "casual dining" segment of the market...

, and sex, Lily cannot promise Marshall that she would return to him after the three-month fellowship, and the engagement ends.

After returning, she confesses that her decision to leave was a mistake, but it takes several episodes until Marshall takes her back. Soon after, they resume their engagement. Episode 10 of season 2 implies that within a year, Marshall and Lily will be married. They finally get married in "Something Borrowed," the penultimate episode of the second season. Lily chose to keep her own last name; Marshall would have preferred otherwise but accepted any name Lily wanted, even jokily suggesting that they call themselves "The Awesomes."

On Thanksgiving Day 2005, Lily is arrested for public urination in St. Cloud, Minnesota
St. Cloud, Minnesota
St. Cloud is a city in the U.S. state of Minnesota and the largest population center in the state's central region. The population was 65,842 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Stearns County...

, after taking a home pregnancy test in an alley behind a convenience store while visiting Marshall's family. (As depicted in "Belly Full of Turkey
Belly Full of Turkey
"Belly Full of Turkey" is the 9th episode in the first season of the television series How I Met Your Mother. It originally aired on November 21, 2005.- Plot :It's Thanksgiving time, and Marshall and Lily are going to visit Marshall's family in Minnesota...

".)

In the third season, it is revealed that Lily is a shopaholic, and goes shopping (particularly for shoes and boots) whenever something bad happens. Her multiple credit cards are kept in a "box of shame". This fact is subtly hinted at during the season one episode "Cupcake". Upon ruining a wedding dress Lily is asked "How will you be paying?" and her reply is "credit card... s". She and Marshall struggled with her credit card bills especially when they were about to buy an apartment, which caused Marshall to take a job at a big corporate firm. They eventually get the house, only to find out that the neighborhood is situated near a water sewage treatment plant and that the floor of their apartment is crooked. In season 4 she and Marshall move into their new home.

Out of all of the characters, she is the only one Barney
Barney Stinson
Barnabas "Barney" Stinson is a fictional character created by Carter Bays and Craig Thomas for the CBS television series How I Met Your Mother, portrayed by Neil Patrick Harris. The character has been extremely well received by critics and has been credited for much of the show's success...

 chooses to confide in when he realizes that he is in love with Robin in the season 4 premiere, "Do I Know You?
Do I Know You?
"Do I Know You?" is the first episode in the fourth season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and sixty-fifth overall. It originally aired on September 22, 2008.- Plot :...

". Barney has also called Lily to ask her to uncuff him from a sex swing. In "Do I Know You?", she says that Robin is her best friend and that she would not pretend she "hadn't noticed her body."

Lily, along with Ted and Marshall, occasionally indulged in "sandwiches" (Future Ted's euphemism for marijuana
Cannabis (drug)
Cannabis, also known as marijuana among many other names, refers to any number of preparations of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug or for medicinal purposes. The English term marijuana comes from the Mexican Spanish word marihuana...

) during college and at their 20th college reunion.

At times, Lily's sexual drive is shown to be slightly overdeveloped. Because of the fact that Marshall is the only person she has ever had sex with, she appears openly curious about other sexual lifestyles and activities. She admits in Robin 101
Robin 101
"Robin 101" is the third episode of season 5 of the How I Met Your Mother TV series and 91st overall. It originally aired on October 5, 2009.- Plot :...

 that she has lesbian fantasies about Robin, and comments on Robin's body several times over the course of the show. She also appears unnaturally invested in Barney's sex life - she is always the one who Barney calls when he gets tied in his sex swing (as shown in Do I Know You?", attempts to steal Barney's collection of pornography from Barney and later from Ted in The Rough Patch, and when Ted tries to watch a porn film which Barney tapes over with a short message and later a sex tape of his own (also in The Rough Patch) and goes to turn it off, Lily insists they remain watching to see Barney's sexual activities.

In the fifth season premiere, Lily forces Robin and Barney to confess being a couple. She does this by detaching the doorknob of Robin's room at the apartment and waits for them to have "the Talk." Robin and Barney pass a few notes under the door with vague explanations, none of which satisfy her, but they eventually give in and lie but Lily notes that they did not realize they were not lying. It was discovered that Lily has a doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...

 named Jasmine, who is a stripper. Lily is especially excited about this, and is so enthralled by her stripper twin that she and Marshall get a private dance. At the end of the night, Lily switches place with Jasmine and dances with much difficulty on stage, eventually falling into the crowd, to Marshall's horror.

Due to their poor past experiences with other couples at double dates, Lily and Marshall are both ecstatic to have another couple to hang out with for another try. They invite Robin and Barney for a evening together, but this fails miserably when the other two admits to Ted that it was the most boring night ever. Eventually, Barney and Robin both realize they miss Lily and Marshall; they all profess their desire to be a foursome under the rain. In "Bagpipes
Bagpipes (How I Met Your Mother)
"Bagpipes" is the sixth episode of the fifth season of the CBS situation comedy How I Met Your Mother and 94th overall. It originally aired on November 2, 2009.- Plot :...

", Lily and Marshall get in a huge fight because of dirty dishes and Barney's insistence to Marshall that he should not be responsible for them. She promptly kicks him out after Marshall's incoherent arguing escalates into several separate issues. When Barney and Robin admit to Lily and Marshall about their own problems, they start to appreciate how solid their own relationship is, and forgive each other immediately.

When Barney describes his relationship in a depressing manner to Marshall, he assumes Barney is unhappy. He and Ted ask Lily to help break up Barney and Robin, given her experience in plotting breakups ("The Front Porch
The Front Porch
"The Front Porch" is the 17th episode in the fourth season of the television series How I Met Your Mother and 81st overall. It originally aired on March 16, 2009.-Plot:...

"). While she insists that she is "retired" from that pursuit, Marshall and Ted's breakup method leads to Barney and Robin getting engaged, which Lily responds to by promptly "coming out of retirement". Lily executes her plan to get them into a big argument; this fails, but Barney and Robin both realize they don't work as a couple.

In Big Days
Big Days
"Big Days" is the first episode of the sixth season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and the 113th episode overall. It originally aired on September 20, 2010.- Plot :...

, Marshall and Lily show up at MacLaren's, arguing about trying to get pregnant. Lily had set a romantic evening at home, with candles and banjo music, but when she finds out that Marshall has told his father that they are trying, Lily freaks out about how invasive Marvin Erikson is. Marshall argues that his father is a part of his life and deserves to know, but Lily can't stand Mr. Eriksen's constant calls and domineering personality. (Barney mentions that if he knew his father's phone number, he'd be calling him all the time, before turning his focus elsewhere.) Lily goes after Marshall, and the two reconcile, agreeing that his father is somewhat insane and very enthusiastic, just like Marshall. They both then head upstairs.

In season 6 episode 4, Lily and Marshall discuss their concerns about not conceiving a baby yet. They then agree there is really no rush to become parents, and promptly decide to head to Coney Island
Coney Island
Coney Island is a peninsula and beach on the Atlantic Ocean in southern Brooklyn, New York, United States. The site was formerly an outer barrier island, but became partially connected to the mainland by landfill....

 to have fun.

Lily and Marshall visit Stuart and Claudia (Baby Talk
Baby Talk (How I Met Your Mother)
"Baby Talk" is the sixth episode of the sixth season of the CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and the 118th episode overall. It aired on October 25, 2010.- Plot :Marshall and Lily visit Stuart and Claudia, who are having trouble naming their newborn baby...

), who are having trouble naming their newborn baby. Lily and Marshall try to come up with baby names on their own - Marshall with boy names that Lily rejects because of her past experiences with trouble-making kindergarten boys, and Lily with a couple of girl names that Marshall rejects because of his experience with a hot girl from his school and a stripper. One of these fantasies of the future includes a Barney lookalike hitting on and subsequently marrying their daughter. Marshall, worried that he might have to raise a daughter, consults his father on how to ensure that his child will be male. What he doesn't realize is that Lily has been searching for ways to make sure their child will be female. When Lily and Marshall find out what the other has been doing, they realize that they have no control over the gender of their baby, and decide to give him/her the gender-neutral name Jamie. However, Lily rejects the name later because of a troublemaker in her class named Jamie.

In season 6 episode 24, Lily is revealed to be pregnant, after being thought to have received toxic food poisoning.

In season 7, episode 6, Lily and Marshall discover that they are expecting a boy.

Reception

Alyson Hannigan, including the People's Choice Award
People's Choice Awards
The People's Choice Awards is an American awards show recognizing the people and the work of popular culture. The show has been held annually since 1975 and is voted on by the general public. The People's Choice Awards air on CBS and are produced by Procter & Gamble and Survivor magnate Mark Burnett...

for Favorite TV Comedy Actress.
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