For nine years, fans have been patiently waiting in front of their TVs every Monday night for the story of how quirky love-struck Ted Mosby, played by Josh Radnor, would meet the mother of his children. Finally, during the March 31 series finale, Ted met her, leaving fans in a tizzy.
However, did the show end on a high note or were fans left wanting more?
Long story short, Barney, played by Neil Patrick Harris, and Robin, played by Cobie Smulders, divorce within the first few minutes of the episode. Barney quickly goes back to his old womanizing ways, but falls in love when he meets his daughter, Ellie, after a one-night stand gone wrong. The years go by and Robin leaves her former best friends, too busy traveling as an anchorwoman.
Then, in the final minutes of the episode, the mother dies and Ted gets with Robin.
I couldn’t believe it; I still can’t. I could have sworn this was all too surreal. It must have been an early April Fools joke gone horribly wrong. For years, I had been waiting for Ted to meet the mother. Then, when he finally does, she dies and Ted quickly moves on to Robin.
I was livid. I could not believe the writers could betray us so terribly like that. What was even the point of having the characters grow throughout the series, if we were just sent back to season one, when Ted was still swooning over Robin? The series finale managed to ignore all the character growth that occurred in nine years and treat it as if it had never happened.
Let’s start off with Barney. Barney, who had previously reprimanded his old ways, just as easily returned to his old ways of picking up strange women at bars, despite all that he has done in the past. This does, however, lead up to one of the only good thing about this episode: Barney accidentally impregnates a woman simply referred to as “Number 31” with his future daughter, Ellie. In a heartbreaking scene, Barney meets his daughter for the first time and completely gives his all to his daughter, finally growing up. This, I felt, was one of the only good scenes in the episode. It was a truly beautiful moment between Barney and his daughter.
The story of Ted could have been much better if it had not been for the weak delivery. Even if you liked the Ted and Robin relationship, the execution left much to be desired. The biggest problem with this finale was the juxtaposition of it with the rest of season nine. Fans were left out in the cold as Ted quickly rushed through a 20-year flash-forward of his future less in less than an hour of show time. Quickly, we learned that Robin’s marriage to Barney, which had just played out on our screens, was doomed from the start, despite the writers spending one entire season building up to the wedding.
The mother, Tracy, should have been integrated into the story much more than she was. In the story, she had been dead for six years, but that passage of time was excluded from the fans. To the viewers, Tracy died and Ted quickly moved on to Robin, and that did not feel good at all.
If each plot arch in the series finale had been its own episode, rather than a 2-minute reveal, the season would have been much better. The writers expected the viewers to get over Tracy’s death as if it had been insignificant, and that was simply unacceptable.
The finale would have been stronger if we had not experienced seven years of Ted trying to find the mother. The problem is, show creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas had planned this from the beginning, and they could have avoided this terrible ending from happening. They didn’t account for the fans falling in love with Tracy Mosby, to just kill her off-screen, treating her like a baby-maker for Ted to provide him a family. They didn’t account for Robin and Barney getting along so well. Instead, we were left to mourn a character that we had just gotten to know and love.
And that, kids, was how “How I Met Your Mother” ended, leaving so many fans dismayed.
