# "How I Met Your Mother" \[final season\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 24, 2013, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560 "2013-09-24T03:06:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 23
**Author:** ![Draelin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce73a5/32.png) [@Draelin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Draelin)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/441 "2014-04-02T19:30:18Z")
I’m still torn. On the one hand, I loved it–we got to see a good portion of the “big moments” for the next fifteen years in their lives, interspersed with a bunch of the things that make getting older and changing such a bummer (breakups, drifting apart, etc.). I didn’t necessarily love the idea of Tracy being dead, but I had come to accept it long before it was actually stated, and sometimes life sucks, whether it’s real or fictional. I liked the idea that Ted and Tracy were together for a long time before they got around to getting married, simply because so much of Ted’s being had been focused on finding a _wife_ for so long that I really enjoyed the portrayal of his happiness not being tied to his marital status. Looking back on the whole story as not “How I Met Your Mother,” but instead “Your Mother’s Gone, and I’d Like to Move On” changes the whole feel of the series, and that’s where I keep getting stuck on actually _liking_ how it ended. I was so sick of the Ted and Robin stuff, but my feelings on that have a lot to do with a multiply-failed relationship in my own life, and the way two people can suck as a couple at one point in their lives and be good at it later hit home in a way that’s still making me think. I thought this season had a lot of misses with about an equal amount of hits, but I can definitely call the ending “satisfying,” in my opinion. I just still don’t know if it was _good._ ---
**Author:** ![oft\_wears\_hats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7993a0/32.png) [@oft\_wears\_hats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/oft_wears_hats)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/442 "2014-04-02T19:31:41Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Bah, sorry if that came off as me being particularly upset. I just don’t get these types of arguments. I guess I could see them as a secondary view, but not one that makes the original ideas “bullpucky.” And I don’t see how you can think frustrating your audience is a good thing. > > This episode could have had it all, but they chose to cram it all together. They may have technically covered all the required narrative points, but they left a lot of people dissatisfied. They were already having to do things people wouldn’t like: breaking up Barney and Robin after taking three years to get people to support them, putting Ted back with Robin after spending years convincing the viewers that it would never work, and killing off the mother after people had started liking her. They needed to focus heavily on softening the blow from all of these. > > On paper, the episode sounds good, like it brings closure to the series. But, when some people watch it, they feel like it was executed poorly. That some people had to come here and read about what they were trying to do is not a good thing. It should all be on the screen: a work of fiction should stand alone. Agreed. I’m still forming an opinion about the ending, but I didn’t care for the extremely fast handling of Ted’s relationship with Tracey, her death, and his re-re-return to Robin. Barney and Robin divorcing after three years also felt like a slap in the face, however necessary it may or may not have been. If that was the plan, they shouldn’t have spent the entire ninth season focusing on the wedding. Given what they planned to do, I feel like it would have been better to stretch the finale out for most of season nine, so all those monumental events could be given the attention they deserved. Instead, we got a concentrated blast of shocking things, each new one happening before we had any time to process the last. The actual plot didn’t bother me so much as the execution did. Any hope I may have felt for Ted and Robin starting over again was drowned out by sadness at Tracey’s death and at how little of their relationship we got to see. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/443 "2014-04-02T20:02:53Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > How is it an excellent point? Ted is not a real person. Neither are the children. Nothing at all can be cruel to a fictitious entity. The audience are real people. They are the ones evaluating the episodes. The entire point of my post was explaining why some people found the ending dissatisfying. This was a comedy show. They introduced melodrama along the way, but they managed to get back to it’s comedy roots each time. It’s my opinion that character development ruins comedy. The show ended with characters in their original state, a despondent Ted, a happily married Robin and Barney might have hurt the show. Just my own opinions. ---
**Author:** ![TruCelt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trucelt/32/523_2.png) [@TruCelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TruCelt)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/444 "2014-04-02T20:21:06Z")
It’s true that, if Robin is now settled in New York, and Barney is settling down now that he has a daughter, then Robin and Barney could work now. I actually thought that’s where we were headed during the whole “Hello Daddy” conversation. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/445 "2014-04-02T20:22:43Z")
I sure would have preferred a reunited Robin & Barney, and as TruCelt explained, it makes as much sense as Robin and Ted. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/446 "2014-04-02T20:28:56Z")
Saying nothing can be cruel to a fictitious entity doesn’t mean that the viewers won’t think that it would be cruel to these fictitious characters - who don’t necessarily exist as a cipher for viewer emotion, but exist as actual people in the context of the story. ---
**Author:** ![Draelin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ce73a5/32.png) [@Draelin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Draelin)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/447 "2014-04-02T20:46:10Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > It’s true that, if Robin is now settled in New York, and Barney is settling down now that he has a daughter, then Robin and Barney could work now. I actually thought that’s where we were headed during the whole “Hello Daddy” conversation. Agreed, I thought it was going to go that way. So I guess the ultimate ending _was_ a surprise for me. ---
**Author:** ![GrandWino](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grandwino/32/67_2.png) [@GrandWino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrandWino)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/448 "2014-04-02T21:53:14Z")
Anybody link yet to this superior[fan-edited finale ending](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E#t=180)? Seriously, if they had done it this way it could have been a nearly perfect ending. ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/449 "2014-04-02T21:59:31Z")
One question that came up for me was, if they recorded the final scene with the kids back in 2006, there was a minor risk that TV technology would not have let them integrate it in the finale. That is, if by 2014 all TV shows were in 3D 4K definition, then just editing in the 2D HD definition scene with the kids would not have worked. So, there was a small gamble, though of course, not that much. ---
**Author:** ![well\_he\_s\_back](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/3ab097/32.png) [@well\_he\_s\_back](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/well_he_s_back)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/450 "2014-04-02T22:03:13Z")
I prefer that fan edited ending, bob ducca. I think I linked to it in another thread. When I watched it I pretended robin & Barney reconciled ---
**Author:** ![Polerius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/d78d45/32.png) [@Polerius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polerius)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/451 "2014-04-02T22:05:09Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Anybody link yet to this superior[fan-edited finale ending](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E#t=180)? Seriously, if they had done it this way it could have been a nearly perfect ending. Perfect. This is how I imagine it to have ended. I don’t care what the writers think happened 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/452 "2014-04-02T22:23:22Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Anybody link yet to this superior[fan-edited finale ending](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E#t=180)? Seriously, if they had done it this way it could have been a nearly perfect ending. Hahahaha, that’s a good joke. ---
**Author:** ![Southern\_Yankee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/southern_yankee/32/2800_2.png) [@Southern\_Yankee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southern_Yankee)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/453 "2014-04-02T23:15:00Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > Pretty decent episode up until the very end, when it became BRILLIANT. > > The kids looked as old as they always did, so I guess that was all filmed about 9 seasons ago? > > Really really satisfying and touching 🙂 > [@What\_Exit](#): > > That was an excellent wrap up. They went out well. Excellently done. Did Barney marry #31 or not though? > [@Labrador\_Deceiver](#): > > Very well done. They managed to put together an ending that appropriately summed up what the show was always about - this group of 5 people. The mother was always secondary, but the writers got everyone to take their eyes off the ball and become singularly focused on Ted meeting the mother. Nobody saw the final twist, which was made even better by the realization that the ending has been planned all along. > > I hated that they broke up Barney and Robin two seconds after a season-long wedding, and I hated that they killed off the mother… right up until I realized where they were going. Then I was mildly impressed. > > Very nice ending. Agreed. IMO, one of the better wrap ups for a ling running show. I think Ted and Robin eventually getting back together makes perfect sense, based on ted’s romantic history on the show. I enjoyed it thoroughly. ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [April 2, 2014, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/454 "2014-04-02T23:44:21Z")
> [@well\_he\_s\_back](#): > > I sure would have preferred a reunited Robin & Barney, and as TruCelt explained, it makes as much sense as Robin and Ted. Now Ted and Barney can go back to fighting bitterly over Robin. Actually, I’d watch that show. 🙂 > [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Anybody link yet to this superior[fan-edited finale ending](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E#t=180)? Seriously, if they had done it this way it could have been a nearly perfect ending. Shit, you’re right - that is damned near perfect. > [@drewtwo99](#): > > Hahahaha, that’s a good joke. I don’t get it. 😕 ---
**Author:** ![drewtwo99](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d07c76/32.png) [@drewtwo99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewtwo99)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/455 "2014-04-03T00:23:24Z")
That fan ending is absolutely lame and predictable. I love the way HIMYM ended in reality, but some people prefer delusion to reality, and to me, that’s funny. Furthermore, I think it’s rather odd to “fix” a creative work that was as well planned out and as well written as HIMYM. Not to mention that the video is blowing up everywhere with “THIS IS THE ENDING YOU DESERVE!” and such, as if we were all cheated. Guess what? Ted and the Mother met, and they lived happily together and had a wonderful marriage, until death did them part. That’s what we all wanted. Just because death happened to come relatively early on for one of them does not mean we were cheated out of anything. Then we get an hilarious scene with the kids prompting Dad to date Robin and it was touching and funny, and did nothing to cheapen the wonderful relationship Tracy and Ted had. That’s life. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/456 "2014-04-03T00:32:46Z")
> [@Bob Ducca](#): > > Anybody link yet to this superior[fan-edited finale ending](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0caCEG1nH3E#t=180)? Seriously, if they had done it this way it could have been a nearly perfect ending. Eh, I prefer the actual ending (thought I agree it would’ve better if Tracy only appeared in the series finale). I did see that promo clip with the kids as adults, and it was f\*\*\*ing hilarious! 🙂 Also David Henrie has really grown into a hottie. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/457 "2014-04-03T03:10:20Z")
> [@drewtwo99](#): > > That fan ending is absolutely lame and predictable. I love the way HIMYM ended in reality, but some people prefer delusion to reality, and to me, that’s funny. Furthermore, I think it’s rather odd to “fix” a creative work that was as well planned out and as well written as HIMYM. Not to mention that the video is blowing up everywhere with “THIS IS THE ENDING YOU DESERVE!” and such, as if we were all cheated. > > Guess what? Ted and the Mother met, and they lived happily together and had a wonderful marriage, until death did them part. That’s what we all wanted. Just because death happened to come relatively early on for one of them does not mean we were cheated out of anything. > > Then we get an hilarious scene with the kids prompting Dad to date Robin and it was touching and funny, and did nothing to cheapen the wonderful relationship Tracy and Ted had. That’s life. And, of course, the kids were right. That wasn’t a story about Ted meeting the mother - she doesn’t show up until like the last 1/9th(ish) of the story. The fan ending would have left numerous questions of how in the world was that a story about how Ted met the mother when the actual story was like 1/10th of what the show was. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/458 "2014-04-03T11:19:41Z")
The fan-edit is gone now, can someone who saw it summarize please? ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/459 "2014-04-03T11:50:18Z")
> [@Fenris](#): > > The fan-edit is gone now, can someone who saw it summarize please? They did the whole end montage of “life with Tracy,” took out the reference to her sickness, and ended it at the umbrella scene “…and that, kids, is how I met your Mother.” Fade to black. Credits. ---
**Author:** ![Fenris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fenris/32/498_2.png) [@Fenris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fenris)\ **Post date:** [April 3, 2014, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560/460 "2014-04-03T13:08:31Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > They did the whole end montage of “life with Tracy,” took out the reference to her sickness, and ended it at the umbrella scene “…and that, kids, is how I met your Mother.” Fade to black. Credits. Thanks for the info. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560.md?page=22) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-i-met-your-mother-final-season/669560.md?page=24)