What’s Cobie Smulders Doing After ‘Avengers?’

You might know her as Robin Scherbatsky from How I Met Your Mother, but your kids and the rest of the general population under 25 know her as that bad-ass agent from the Avengers movies who often stole shared scenes with Samuel L. Jackson. Yep, we’re talking about Cobie Smulders, who is actually having a whole new career after making it big in the superhero world. 

Little known fact: Smulders played Commander Maria Hill, the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (it’s a Marvel thing) while she was staring in a whopping 208 episodes of HIMYM. Her first time playing Hill was in The Avengers, the first installment of the hero franchise in 2012 (HIMYM aired from 2005 to 2014—feel old yet?). She reprised that role in 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier and went on to do so again and again in other Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbusters like Avengers: Age of Ultron, Avengers: Infinity War, Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: Far from Home and the TV show, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. She also voiced the character of Wonder Woman for The Lego Movie and its aptly named sequel The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part.

And what about life after being in the same movies as Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth (if such a thing even exists)? For Smulders it’s called Stumptown, her new show on ABC that was just picked up for a sophomore season while still in its first. The show is based on a graphic novel and stars Smulders as Dex Parios, a hardened, sharp-witted military veteran-turned private detective in Portland, Oregon. Her plays-by-her-own-rules character has endeared herself to fans, and, as a result, the show has become the sleeper hit of the season with nearly 3 million viewers per episode on average. 

And as for her personal life, we’re glad to say the star is finally cancer-free after a battle with ovarian cancer that started in 2010 when Smulders was just 25 years old. Ovarian cancer kills nearly 14,000 women each year and accounts for the most deaths of all female reproductive cancers. It’s typically a disease that women over 63 face but as Smulders knows, sometimes statistics don’t matter. 

“I had tumors on both ovaries," she told Women’s Health in 2015. “And the cancer had spread into my lymph nodes and surrounding tissues.”

After multiple surgeries over the course of two years, Smulders finally emerged in good health, but the experience left her eyes wide open to how susceptible we all can be to major health issues. 

"I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’m cancer-free,” she said. “Now that I’m five years out, I’m trying to think of it as a positive thing and what can I learn from it. And if I can create more awareness, I’ll do it.”