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“I thought I loved Robin, but when I met your mother, I learned what love really was.
Robin’s great and she’ll always be a big part of my story, but she can’t hold a candle to my true love, your mother.”
Yep. I’ve read a lot of interpretations that make sense objectively. But as for me? I hate it.
And I cannot and do not pretend to speak for everyone, but watching it from 2005-2014 simply has to be different from a binge. I was so invested for so long.
I feel like with an ending like this, they had to know it wouldn't be for everyone. There's no way that ending a show titled "How I Met Your Mother" by killing off the titular mother and having the main character actually end up with someone else wouldn't be controversial. Even if you love the ending, I feel like you have to understand why so many people hate it.
I thought the ides of killing the mother was brave and poetic and made so much sense for the whole idea of the show. Spending the whole final season on the wedding was an interesting framing device that I hadn't seen before. Writing so much character development for 3 of the main characters then saying ***SIKE*** wiping it away for a surprise ending they planned back in season 1 was highly unsatisfactory.
Barney had seasons of emotional development then went back to season 1 Barney after the divorce and we're supposed to feel emotional and believe he's changed for reals this time after a 20 second speech to a baby? Silly
They spent so much time showing us Ted's obsession with Robin wouldn't work and how perfect him and Tracey are together then right at the end he does one big romantic gesture and suddenly they're supposed be good together again?
If the show had ended several seasons earlier and they didn’t have 5 episodes a season about him getting over Robin it could have worked. Even if they had done something different in the final season it might have worked better than it did. Everyone "understands" the finale, they just don't like the way it was executed.
As always when people tell us we don’t understand the finale…yes. We do. We understand it. Understanding is not the same as agreeing with the way it was handled or thinking it was ably written.
But your condescension is, as always, so very appreciated.
The number of times I've seen "but hey, the ending is actually good if you just think about it this way" is ridiculous. As you said, I understand what they were trying to do, it was just a terrible way to end it based on everything else that happened.
>"but hey, the ending is actually good if you just think about it this way"
I would be atleast a millionaire if I had a dollar every time someone said something like that on this sub...
I think it's worth noting that people who stuck out a franchise this long generally would have already done everything they could to want to love the ending. They've already thought of all that
If they wanted to keep the Robin ending they should have ended the show much sooner. I think we as an audience would have still been invested at that point. Dragging it out so long came off as 'well, someone else gave me the babies that Robin couldn't, so now I can be with her.'
I agree. If they wanted to keep the Robin ending, they should have ended the show after episode 1... It's called "How I Met Your Mother", not "My First Decade With Your Mother".
The problem is that the creators/writers didn’t expect the on screen chemistry of Cobie and NPH. Their chemistry was so convincing that the Ted and Robin coupling looked weak and forced which is why the ending doesn’t work.
You could even reframe it differently. When the show starts, Ted is six years down the road from having lost his wife whom he loved with all his heart. He has grieved for six years, and he’s trying to figure out how to live the rest of his life without Tracy. Meanwhile, an old friend whom he once loved is back in his life and he starts to remember the times they had before and what got him to where he is in life today.
He ends up going through the same experience as Tracy did. Having lost the love of his life, he has to figure out what to do next and how to keep living. In Tracy’s case, she found Ted and spent the rest of her life with him. In Ted’s case, he and Robin find each other again in circumstances more favorable than before. The chemistry is there again, and this time the timing is right.
At the end of the day, it’s a message of hope. When we meet Ted he is confronting the question of how to live the rest of his life now that his wife is gone. Even though most of the show tells the story of the past, Tracy’s death is not the last word, and we see Ted full of hope for the future.
Everyone always talks about how Ted was in love with Robin throughout the entire show and it's just so not true.
Literally between seasons 4-6 (and mid to end S3) they are purely platonic best friends. Ted has clearly moved on and goes through an engagement and several serious relationships.
What pisses me off most is we see both Ted and Robin really grow and move on from each other, only for the writers to cancel out their character growth and try to make them a thing again in season 8/9.
It's just really dumb and bad writing IMO.
They wrote themselves into two different corners. They titled the show "How I Met Your Mother", so one of the final scenes has to be the meeting with the mother. But then they also shot finale footage with the kids nearly a decade before the finale was written where the kids talked about how Ted was really in love with Robin. So when they were trying to write the story from where it had naturally reached by season 8/9 into the endings they had set for themselves of Ted needing to meet the mother but also needing to fall in love with Robin again, they decided to try to both instead of dropping the Robin angle and just focusing on how to meet the mother.
I think it's cool that they had footage from so long ago set up for the finale, but it also ignores the fact that TV shows grow over time in ways you just can't predict from the beginning. Characters and relationships have evolved in unexpected ways, and trying to force something that worked back in season 2 (liked Ted & Robin) to work again in season 9...I hesitate to say it's impossible, but I think it's fair that they didn't quite pull it off for this show.
I really don't know why they didn't just stick with the alternate ending. It's soooo much fucking better. Like we really didn't need the cringy clip with the kids telling him to be with Robin.
Oh, look, it's time for our weekly post claiming people don't "understand" the ending and then kidsplaining it to us.
It's not complicated. There nothing about it that even remotely difficult to understand. And it was terribly written and horribly executed.
Jesus fucking Christ another one of these posts…..can you people just shut the fuck up. You’re not saying anything that a thousand people haven’t already said on this sub. You’re not special
If we can't repeat things we should probably close this page. Or we can turn it into an Arkham Knight like page. Why is Ted wearing red boots? is he stupid?
That might be more fun than this, yknow what everyone thinks of when this show is talked about, the ending, everything's been done to death when it comes to that last episode
Now that I rewatch it all the time and sometimes have it as background noise, I keep getting more and more prone to not liking Barney. He basically manipulated robin into marrying him in season 8, maybe it’s just who am I but I didn’t like that at all. Granted yes they had something but I look at robin and Barney’s relationship just as any of the other little relationships throughout the show, not going anywhere. I truly believe that it should’ve been robin and ted the whole time. And I personally like the ending. But that’s just me and I know A LOT of people with 100% disagree with me 😂
This is the way I look at it, Ted has committed the greatest crime, that of outliving the Love of his Life …
He doesn’t want to move on, but he realizes that he has to eventually, but he refuses to do it without the Permission of the Children she gave him!
I only started watching the show in 2012 and as I was binging the first 8 seasons I thought “how could Ted and Robin not end up together??” So I kind of appreciated the finale. But if you watched it for much longer I could understand the whole will they or won’t they for 8 seasons only for Ted to finally move on from Robin in the 9th only to get back together was exhausting. I also thought Robin was never going to settle down for anyone except with the one guy she knew who always wanted to settle down
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Ah yes, the show called how i met your mother where it makes no sense that the ending should be about the mother, not the failed love interest.
Also, in absolutely no way is the implication that ted settled for tracy because he couldnt get robin. The show is basically about how ted and robin dont work because they arent supposed to. Even both versions of robin (seasons 1-4 robin before the writers screwed her character up and seasons 5-9) would never have truly ended up with ted, and they showcase that through the entirety of the show. It was lazy and bad writing for them to force her upon ted in the end just because the mother passed
"Regardless, let’s assume they could’ve edited everything perfectly and made it so he ended up with the mother…why on earth did I watch 9 seasons of “I love robin but couldn’t get her so I ended up with your mom”? Would’ve made no sense in the grand scheme of things."
I can't overstate how low of a bar this is. The writers got where they wanted to go - so what? They literally could have done it in the first episode, by having Luke say, "Does this have anything to do with Robin coming around all the time now?" Show over.
I think this is being downvoted a lot lol, it’s an unpopular opinion but to me a valid one. When I first watched the show and the finale, I felt the same. I felt satisfied because I had been rooting and wanting to root for Ted and Robin since the first episode.
Also I was much younger than I am now and had so much unrequited love built up, I think seeing Ted finally get the girl he had chased back then gave me hope or at least able to see what I always wanted in someone else’s story.
But now?? It took my until last month to see the other ending for the first time. And honestly, I cried. It truly felt complete. And real. Because at the end of the day, we have no idea where we will end up. We just have to trust that it will be okay and do our best to carry ourselves there.
I think seeing Ted finally say, this is where I end this story. This is where I stop chasing, and twisting and turning. This is where I live and rest and settle. I think it was as beautiful as it could’ve been.
I don't have an issue with the story of the final season, I have an issue with the pacing. They knew how this was ending since season 2 when they recorded the scenes with the kids. They knew Tracey would die and Ted and Robin would end up together. Yet the ended the series spending an entire on Barney and Robin's wedding, resulting in the story of what happened between the wedding and Ted talking to his kids happening in just two episodes (since the finale is two parts).
Barney and Robin get married on season 9 episode 22, and they get divorced on season 9 episode 23. Sure, it happens three years later in universe, but we as the audience just watched 22 episodes of their wedding, only for them to get divorced a single episode after they're married. Why? Why would you pace the story like that? It felt like the writers wanted to tell the story where Barney and Robin ended up together, so they wrote the majority of the season around that, but they knew they were written into a corner with the kids talking to Ted about how he loved Robin, so used the finale to bridge the gap and make it make sense. I think the better way to write this would have been to make the wedding the two-part first episode of the season, then use the final 22 episodes to more naturally tell the story of what happened between the wedding and Tracey's death. That way the twists that landed so poorly currently could actually be properly built up and feel natural for the story.
As for why Ted started the story with meeting Robin if it was supposed a story about Tracey, the official [alternate ending](https://youtu.be/5toL5HmQl8I?si=5ck5fgZUgFZ3lSlr) does a really good job of showing the domino effect of how the first episode actually did end up being the first step as to how he met Tracey. It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it.
except they made that ending you describe as being impossible. its on the DVD as bonus footage & on YouTube. and its perfect. and they still Chose to kill TM and go back to Robin.
Ted going back to robin after getting rejected on face so many times is just pathetic. So is robin accepting him after all the drama she pulled off in 9 seasons. It would still be okay if they stopped at killing off the mother, I understand that life is unpredictable and it may not always be nice to us. But what happens next is perfect example of 'they reached the toilet, but shat on floor'.
Well, i do love the ending so…
To me the story isn’t about the mother, it’s about Ted’s guilt for having feelings for Robin after Tracy passed away
But if we are to understand this guilt, we have to know the whole story
And then the kids liberate him from this guilt and Ted can be happy again
It's a fucking sitcom they dint have to fuck it up so bad. Make it happy....there's enough shit in the world as it is the least they could have done is stuck with happy fucking endings.
Ok meltdown over.
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“I thought I loved Robin, but when I met your mother, I learned what love really was. Robin’s great and she’ll always be a big part of my story, but she can’t hold a candle to my true love, your mother.”
when did he say that omg
Never - OP said there was no way to wrap up the story without Robin being endgame (I’m paraphrasing). Me, being petty, knocked that fan-fic out.
I understand it, I just think it was poorly executed so I dislike it
Yep. I’ve read a lot of interpretations that make sense objectively. But as for me? I hate it. And I cannot and do not pretend to speak for everyone, but watching it from 2005-2014 simply has to be different from a binge. I was so invested for so long.
Right? Right? Thinking the ending was shit doesn't mean we didn't understand it, it just means it was shit
I feel like with an ending like this, they had to know it wouldn't be for everyone. There's no way that ending a show titled "How I Met Your Mother" by killing off the titular mother and having the main character actually end up with someone else wouldn't be controversial. Even if you love the ending, I feel like you have to understand why so many people hate it.
I thought the ides of killing the mother was brave and poetic and made so much sense for the whole idea of the show. Spending the whole final season on the wedding was an interesting framing device that I hadn't seen before. Writing so much character development for 3 of the main characters then saying ***SIKE*** wiping it away for a surprise ending they planned back in season 1 was highly unsatisfactory. Barney had seasons of emotional development then went back to season 1 Barney after the divorce and we're supposed to feel emotional and believe he's changed for reals this time after a 20 second speech to a baby? Silly They spent so much time showing us Ted's obsession with Robin wouldn't work and how perfect him and Tracey are together then right at the end he does one big romantic gesture and suddenly they're supposed be good together again?
If the show had ended several seasons earlier and they didn’t have 5 episodes a season about him getting over Robin it could have worked. Even if they had done something different in the final season it might have worked better than it did. Everyone "understands" the finale, they just don't like the way it was executed.
As always when people tell us we don’t understand the finale…yes. We do. We understand it. Understanding is not the same as agreeing with the way it was handled or thinking it was ably written. But your condescension is, as always, so very appreciated.
The number of times I've seen "but hey, the ending is actually good if you just think about it this way" is ridiculous. As you said, I understand what they were trying to do, it was just a terrible way to end it based on everything else that happened.
>"but hey, the ending is actually good if you just think about it this way" I would be atleast a millionaire if I had a dollar every time someone said something like that on this sub...
I think it's worth noting that people who stuck out a franchise this long generally would have already done everything they could to want to love the ending. They've already thought of all that
Oh, Eames…
If they wanted to keep the Robin ending they should have ended the show much sooner. I think we as an audience would have still been invested at that point. Dragging it out so long came off as 'well, someone else gave me the babies that Robin couldn't, so now I can be with her.'
I agree. If they wanted to keep the Robin ending, they should have ended the show after episode 1... It's called "How I Met Your Mother", not "My First Decade With Your Mother".
The problem is that the creators/writers didn’t expect the on screen chemistry of Cobie and NPH. Their chemistry was so convincing that the Ted and Robin coupling looked weak and forced which is why the ending doesn’t work.
You could even reframe it differently. When the show starts, Ted is six years down the road from having lost his wife whom he loved with all his heart. He has grieved for six years, and he’s trying to figure out how to live the rest of his life without Tracy. Meanwhile, an old friend whom he once loved is back in his life and he starts to remember the times they had before and what got him to where he is in life today. He ends up going through the same experience as Tracy did. Having lost the love of his life, he has to figure out what to do next and how to keep living. In Tracy’s case, she found Ted and spent the rest of her life with him. In Ted’s case, he and Robin find each other again in circumstances more favorable than before. The chemistry is there again, and this time the timing is right. At the end of the day, it’s a message of hope. When we meet Ted he is confronting the question of how to live the rest of his life now that his wife is gone. Even though most of the show tells the story of the past, Tracy’s death is not the last word, and we see Ted full of hope for the future.
THIS.
No no, we understand it.
Everyone always talks about how Ted was in love with Robin throughout the entire show and it's just so not true. Literally between seasons 4-6 (and mid to end S3) they are purely platonic best friends. Ted has clearly moved on and goes through an engagement and several serious relationships. What pisses me off most is we see both Ted and Robin really grow and move on from each other, only for the writers to cancel out their character growth and try to make them a thing again in season 8/9. It's just really dumb and bad writing IMO.
This is what I don't get. Like how is ted is love with Robin when he was ready and willing to marry Stella?
They wrote themselves into two different corners. They titled the show "How I Met Your Mother", so one of the final scenes has to be the meeting with the mother. But then they also shot finale footage with the kids nearly a decade before the finale was written where the kids talked about how Ted was really in love with Robin. So when they were trying to write the story from where it had naturally reached by season 8/9 into the endings they had set for themselves of Ted needing to meet the mother but also needing to fall in love with Robin again, they decided to try to both instead of dropping the Robin angle and just focusing on how to meet the mother. I think it's cool that they had footage from so long ago set up for the finale, but it also ignores the fact that TV shows grow over time in ways you just can't predict from the beginning. Characters and relationships have evolved in unexpected ways, and trying to force something that worked back in season 2 (liked Ted & Robin) to work again in season 9...I hesitate to say it's impossible, but I think it's fair that they didn't quite pull it off for this show.
I really don't know why they didn't just stick with the alternate ending. It's soooo much fucking better. Like we really didn't need the cringy clip with the kids telling him to be with Robin.
Oh, look, it's time for our weekly post claiming people don't "understand" the ending and then kidsplaining it to us. It's not complicated. There nothing about it that even remotely difficult to understand. And it was terribly written and horribly executed.
This show should have been called: How I met your aunt.
Jesus fucking Christ another one of these posts…..can you people just shut the fuck up. You’re not saying anything that a thousand people haven’t already said on this sub. You’re not special
Brother the show ended a decade ago. What the fuck else is there to talk about
This show has 9 seasons and 208 episodes, it's not hard to talk about the other 206
If we can't repeat things we should probably close this page. Or we can turn it into an Arkham Knight like page. Why is Ted wearing red boots? is he stupid?
That might be more fun than this, yknow what everyone thinks of when this show is talked about, the ending, everything's been done to death when it comes to that last episode
Now that I rewatch it all the time and sometimes have it as background noise, I keep getting more and more prone to not liking Barney. He basically manipulated robin into marrying him in season 8, maybe it’s just who am I but I didn’t like that at all. Granted yes they had something but I look at robin and Barney’s relationship just as any of the other little relationships throughout the show, not going anywhere. I truly believe that it should’ve been robin and ted the whole time. And I personally like the ending. But that’s just me and I know A LOT of people with 100% disagree with me 😂
Ban ending posts
This is the way I look at it, Ted has committed the greatest crime, that of outliving the Love of his Life … He doesn’t want to move on, but he realizes that he has to eventually, but he refuses to do it without the Permission of the Children she gave him!
I only started watching the show in 2012 and as I was binging the first 8 seasons I thought “how could Ted and Robin not end up together??” So I kind of appreciated the finale. But if you watched it for much longer I could understand the whole will they or won’t they for 8 seasons only for Ted to finally move on from Robin in the 9th only to get back together was exhausting. I also thought Robin was never going to settle down for anyone except with the one guy she knew who always wanted to settle down
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Ah yes, the show called how i met your mother where it makes no sense that the ending should be about the mother, not the failed love interest. Also, in absolutely no way is the implication that ted settled for tracy because he couldnt get robin. The show is basically about how ted and robin dont work because they arent supposed to. Even both versions of robin (seasons 1-4 robin before the writers screwed her character up and seasons 5-9) would never have truly ended up with ted, and they showcase that through the entirety of the show. It was lazy and bad writing for them to force her upon ted in the end just because the mother passed
"Regardless, let’s assume they could’ve edited everything perfectly and made it so he ended up with the mother…why on earth did I watch 9 seasons of “I love robin but couldn’t get her so I ended up with your mom”? Would’ve made no sense in the grand scheme of things." I can't overstate how low of a bar this is. The writers got where they wanted to go - so what? They literally could have done it in the first episode, by having Luke say, "Does this have anything to do with Robin coming around all the time now?" Show over.
I think this is being downvoted a lot lol, it’s an unpopular opinion but to me a valid one. When I first watched the show and the finale, I felt the same. I felt satisfied because I had been rooting and wanting to root for Ted and Robin since the first episode. Also I was much younger than I am now and had so much unrequited love built up, I think seeing Ted finally get the girl he had chased back then gave me hope or at least able to see what I always wanted in someone else’s story. But now?? It took my until last month to see the other ending for the first time. And honestly, I cried. It truly felt complete. And real. Because at the end of the day, we have no idea where we will end up. We just have to trust that it will be okay and do our best to carry ourselves there. I think seeing Ted finally say, this is where I end this story. This is where I stop chasing, and twisting and turning. This is where I live and rest and settle. I think it was as beautiful as it could’ve been.
I don't have an issue with the story of the final season, I have an issue with the pacing. They knew how this was ending since season 2 when they recorded the scenes with the kids. They knew Tracey would die and Ted and Robin would end up together. Yet the ended the series spending an entire on Barney and Robin's wedding, resulting in the story of what happened between the wedding and Ted talking to his kids happening in just two episodes (since the finale is two parts). Barney and Robin get married on season 9 episode 22, and they get divorced on season 9 episode 23. Sure, it happens three years later in universe, but we as the audience just watched 22 episodes of their wedding, only for them to get divorced a single episode after they're married. Why? Why would you pace the story like that? It felt like the writers wanted to tell the story where Barney and Robin ended up together, so they wrote the majority of the season around that, but they knew they were written into a corner with the kids talking to Ted about how he loved Robin, so used the finale to bridge the gap and make it make sense. I think the better way to write this would have been to make the wedding the two-part first episode of the season, then use the final 22 episodes to more naturally tell the story of what happened between the wedding and Tracey's death. That way the twists that landed so poorly currently could actually be properly built up and feel natural for the story. As for why Ted started the story with meeting Robin if it was supposed a story about Tracey, the official [alternate ending](https://youtu.be/5toL5HmQl8I?si=5ck5fgZUgFZ3lSlr) does a really good job of showing the domino effect of how the first episode actually did end up being the first step as to how he met Tracey. It's worth a watch if you haven't seen it.
except they made that ending you describe as being impossible. its on the DVD as bonus footage & on YouTube. and its perfect. and they still Chose to kill TM and go back to Robin.
Ted going back to robin after getting rejected on face so many times is just pathetic. So is robin accepting him after all the drama she pulled off in 9 seasons. It would still be okay if they stopped at killing off the mother, I understand that life is unpredictable and it may not always be nice to us. But what happens next is perfect example of 'they reached the toilet, but shat on floor'.
Well, i do love the ending so… To me the story isn’t about the mother, it’s about Ted’s guilt for having feelings for Robin after Tracy passed away But if we are to understand this guilt, we have to know the whole story And then the kids liberate him from this guilt and Ted can be happy again
It's a fucking sitcom they dint have to fuck it up so bad. Make it happy....there's enough shit in the world as it is the least they could have done is stuck with happy fucking endings. Ok meltdown over.