After nine seasons, “How I Met Your Mother” has finally come to an end, leaving behind a lot of hilarious memories and recurring jokes—most of which were used very well in the final episode of the show.
However, the finale of this long story of how Ted Mosby finally met the mother of his children was a lot less than legendary. It’s safe to say that the episode was a tad disappointing. For the final season of the show, the show’s makers have focused on the Robin Scherbatsky and Barney Stinson’s wedding, while gradually divulging more information about the mother. Thus, “Mother’s” audience has been getting more and more excited about finally meeting the titular character.
In the span of the past few years, the creators have continued to focus on the fact that Barney and Robin are the perfect match. But within the first few minutes of the finale, the show reveals Barney and Robin’s subsequent divorce. This messes with the character development that had taken place over the past three seasons. The finale takes the story from 2014 to 2030 in the span of 40 minutes, which seemed rushed and did not work at all. Within the first 20 minutes, we saw the couple who was going to be married all season get divorced, Marshall and Lily had a third child, and Robin expressed how she should have ended up with Ted instead. It was a fast forward into the lives of the “gang” that has decided that they aren’t really a close group of friends anymore.
One of the problems I had with the episode is the way it completely chose to ignore the titular character throughout the entirety of the episode. The mother, whom the audience was waiting for, was just used as a minor plot device to finally get Robin and Ted together. Her story was mashed into a random series of forward skips, and her death, which should have been a big deal, was used as the impetus to finally get the writers to give us the seemingly happy ending that none of the viewers cared about. As a viewer I felt cheated because the entire story just seemed pointless.
Neil Patrick Harris’ character, Barney, definitely got the short end of the stick, as the finale showed him going back to his womanizing ways. When he meets his daughter, born of a woman he accidentally impregnated, his feelings are slightly altered, and although the one moment is beautiful, the rest of the episode clashes with the four seasons we saw before, where Barney finally became a good and caring person. All of this was thrown away. It was a terrible end for his character.
If the final episode had been different, I would have said that this was one of the best seasons of the show, as it tried to give closure to a lot of open ends from previous episodes. Yet the messy and cheesy finale ruined the season and, to a certain extent, the entire show for me and a lot of other devoted fans. Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas could have salvaged the finale if they hadn’t included the last five minutes when Ted’s kids give permission to their father to find his happy ending with Robin. The finale says that the story was really that of Ted falling in love with Robin, which was immensely disappointing.
“How I Met Your Mother” has been a beloved comedy, and its antics and hilarity will still be missed despite of the ending. I have been watching this show for a long time, and I will definitely miss seeing the “gang” try to figure out their lives on my TV screen.
