In Defence of How I Met Your Mother’s Ending
About 4 years ago I discovered How I Met Your Mother from reruns on E4. I heard it was ending... and I didn’t care. I wasn’t a huge TV watcher at the time, I knew I liked making things, I did that on YouTube with my mates, but I never sat and thought “I love TV!” or “I can’t wait for this film!”
So I sat and got on with my life.
Fast forward about 3 years later and I’ve become a totally different person. I love film, I love TV. And so when one of my mates come up to me and tell me How I Met Your Mother is one of their favourite shows and I should totally be watching it, I comply.
Fast forward even further and I’ve just concluded my 15th rewatch of the show and I can safely say without a shadow of a doubt: I love it. It’s far from the best show around, it’s got its flaws. I could on and on about the Flanderization of different characters...
But that’s not what we’re here for today.
Today I want to talk about why I believe How I Met Your Mother’s ending is fine... just fine.
In order to talk about this, I’m going to assume you will have watched the whole thing so if you haven’t then maybe skip this and watch. Even if you’re dissatisfied with the ending, the ride is still worth it 100%.
Let’s go through the 4 key relationships in this ending, Marshall and Lily, Barney and Robin, Ted and Tracy, AND Ted and Robin.
In the final season of HIMYM, Lily and Marshall are definitely put on the sideline. You don’t see a huge development in their relationship as it’s all predicated on Marshall’s job and him not being there for 13 episodes, it gives Lily chance to properly talk with the rest of the cast, be Lily without her other half. We learn a lot about Lily because of this, we see her character properly shine. She’s certainly seen as a mother figure by the group but in this first half of the series, she’s just a stressed friend. She wants to see Marshall and Marvin. She misses them even when she learns of Marshall’s acceptance to be a Judge.
This is when we get a very Marshall and Lily central second half of the series. We learn about where Marshall’s head is at in this battle with Lily. When they unpause and start fighting, Marshall brings up the time she left him and Lily storms off.
This leads to ‘Sunset’, one of the best episodes in the series for many reasons (we’ll come back this one a lot), but in this case, it’s seeing Marshall come to terms with why he’s right... except he isn’t. Marshall’s battle with his imaginary wives leads to him realizing how selfish he is being, it leads into him learning about his second baby. It continues the real love shared by this couple, the neverending relationship they share and will never break.
Going into the final episode Lily and Marshall don’t have a huge thing to do. Last Forever really relies on Barney, Robin, Ted and Tracy, however that doesn’t stop us from understanding the impact and final end of the arc for this couple. We see Marshall finally become a Supreme Court Judge to finally follow his dream for saving the environment. We see Lily, after her Italian trip, feel fulfilled as a character. She’s settled as a mother and is happy. They end as happy as they were at the beginning of the show’s pilot and that’s all they needed to be.
Alright, we have to back up a little bit for this one, explain how we get here.
Back in Season 3, Barney fell for Robin. It was a shock, up until that point we knew Barney as a womanizer, a pickup artist... but here he was showing real emotions. This is where we learn Ted’s feelings towards her are still very real but we’ll get into that soon enough.
After eventually getting together at the end of Season 4 and breaking up quite soon after, we see Barney has grown as a person. He’s shown a human side. This is further expressed when he meets Nora and Quinn. His character changes, he becomes a new person, building up to be with Robin.
Looking at Robin, she’s fallen for many guys in this time, including Ted a few times too. The feelings she expresses for Barney in series 7 and 8 are real. She is obsessed with this guy, leading to her proposal where she says the most real, honest and logical things:
“Seriously, Barney? Even you, even someone as CERTIFIABLY INSANE as you must realize that this is too far! You lied to me, manipulated me for weeks - do you really think I could ever kiss you after that?” - Robin, ‘The Robin’
And then she says yes. The proposal is accepted.
I wanted to highlight this bit because I think it’s a proper indictment of their relationship. We see how genuinely perfect Barney and Robin are together throughout the show, however, at this moment even Robin knows this is too much. If Barney had really changed, this manipulation wouldn’t be needed.
But she loves him, and love doesn’t require logic. It goes on emotion alone.
The reason I bring this up is that my main issue with ‘Last Forever’ is that we see Barney and Robin say they got divorced. I know people get really mad about this fact because Robin ends up with Ted, but I’m annoyed at this because there’s a better way to do it.
No, they shouldn’t have stayed together, but I think Barney should have died off. I know that’s not how light-hearted TV works, I know why they didn’t even slightly consider that, but, I think killing off Barney as the ending to ‘Last Forever’ Part 1 would have given us a better reason to see Robin and Ted end up together. We’d have the gang dealing with the loss of a man who really brought the best out of everybody. He was everybody’s best friend even if it wasn’t stated. If he ended up dying in Robin’s arms, giving this time would have made the ending so much more impactful.
I think this gives the perfect ending to their arc... and I think that’s where I stand with Barney and Robin. Their relationship was real, but the sparks and doubts are clearly marked. Last Forever handled them wrong, but the alternative wouldn’t be possible and I know that.
Okay. The big one. This is the divisive one... but hear me out, even if you disagree, it’ll make you think.
This last series would not have worked without the chemistry of these two actors on screen. Cristin Milioti and Josh Radnor absolutely deserve to be properly recognized for their performances. One of the key reasons many fans watched this series is to find out how he met the mother. How Ted, in particular, met her.
That train platform at the end will make you cry, seeing Ted walk up and say “Hey” means SO MUCH to the fans as well as Ted.
We’ll go way more into Ted in a second but I want to focus on Tracy for a moment. Her journey to this point is highlighted mostly within the episode “How Your Mother Met Me”, probably the best episode in the entire show. It follows Tracy’s life leading to the moment Ted heard he play the Ukelele on her balcony. During this scene, we saw her broken, destroyed. That is the day she broke up with the man she was with and have a heartbreaking chat with her late partner, Max. She finally lets him go, and she makes the decision to move on by herself, it’s devastating.
Her rendition of La Vie En Rose is my favourite ever. It brings a tear to my eye hearing it. That episode entirely gives the audience a feeling of fate being realized. The teasers being contextualized, the whole thing brings them together perfectly.
And for that episode alone, we didn’t need her to be alive in the end. It makes sense Ted takes (taking into account the show run times) literal months to explain the whole story. He wants to hold onto the memories in his happiest times, still being stung from the loss of his soulmate.
We got the story. Sure, it would be so very lovely to have an ending where Tracy walks in and says “blah blah blah, is your dad finally done yacking?” as a callback to Stella and Ted’s wedding day fiasco but in the end, the story was never about Ted and Tracy. Penny was right in the last episode, he tells a story about how he met his wife, but she’s barely in the story. During the whole series, apart from series 8 and 9, there are almost no ties back to the mother...
No no no, this story has, and will always, be about:
I understand how the story is meant to depict Ted as having moved on from Robin but the number of times they’re attracted to one another whilst not being together in the whole run makes it clear, the feelings never really went away.
This doesn’t invalidate Barney and Robin’s relationship, nor does it invalidate Ted and Tracy’s. What this does is explain the ending.
As I stated earlier, this ending would have been so much more impactful if Barney hadn’t survived. Having a funeral for a very beloved character and having Ted, many years later, get the girl he loves seems way better than how it was handled.
But again, this is a happy sitcom, there was no way that would happen. Happy endings are prevalent in these types of shows, especially in American sitcom TV. Granted Tracy was killed off, but it makes sense based on her joining the cast later on. Leading into that, she’s also moving on. If there’s a possibility of an afterlife, she’s there with Max. She’s up there with the man she loved more than anything in the world.
Throughout the show we see Ted and Robin try to end up together. There’s certainly a gap but during Robin’s relationship with Don, we see Ted and Barney fight over her in ‘Twin Beds’. This is really used to set up Barney and Robin but why is it hard to believe Ted also still loves her.
Going to a more recent example, look at how much effort Ted put into finding Robin’s locket. Look at ‘Sunrise’, granted this episode is supposed to be about everybody letting go of things, the final conversation in the whole episode is referring back to when Robin and Ted first met, back when they should have kissed. Even when he says he’s letting go, he keeps going back to romantic areas with her.
Going to Robin, she wanted to run off with Ted on her wedding day, just like he did with Victoria. Robin even says at the end of ‘Last Forever (Part 1)’ that Ted was “the guy I probably should have ended up with”
Ted never let go. He found Tracy and he let go, Robin married Barney and she let go.
But they never really let go.
It’s satisfying because it was clear from day one. There was never a will they/won’t they because she was always called “Aunt Robin” by Future Ted, but the audience definitely wanted it.
They loved each other. Ted holds up that smurf penis with pride knowing she’ll run down and kiss him.
It’s a fine ending to an extraordinary show... and I love it.
Anyway, those were my thoughts. If you have any other opinions, be sure to share them with me! I hope I at least made you think a little bit about it.
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