Reaction mixed to series ending
How I Met Your Mother finally reveals the mystery in its title after nine seasons
NEW YORK — For those still waiting to watch the finale of How I Met Your Mother, beware spoilers below. But most hard-core fans of the sitcom — even casual watchers — have already seen or know the ending of the CBS sitcom.
As the series ended Monday night after nine seasons, #HIMYM Finale was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter. Fan reaction was split.
“Always kind of figured Ted would end up with Robin,” one fan tweeted, but another was not convinced: “Ted & Tracy were actually perfect,” that fan tweeted. “He admitted that. It’s so out of his character to go back to Robin. His crush ended years ago.”
Wrote another: “There were maybe like a million possible endings and they picked up the worst one.” “Good episode ... Awful ending!” another fan tweeted, summing up the mixed feelings overall.
In its 208th and final episode, the sitcom finally revealed the mystery in its title and ended with a twist designed to reward longtime fans.
Actor Josh Radnor’s character, Ted, meets the mom (played by Cristin Milioti) on a rainy train platform after his friends, Barney and Robin, are married.
But that marriage doesn’t last, and neither does Ted’s — because Milioti’s character, Tracy, dies after the couple has two children together. At the end of the one-hour episode, the romance that seemed natural at the show’s beginning, between Ted and Robin, is rekindled.
Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas say they knew the plot for the final episode
“There were maybe like a million possible endings and they picked up
the worst one.”
HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER VIEWER
when the series began. Success kept them stringing along the story, even though part of Monday’s finale was filmed in 2006 for fear the teenage actors who played Ted’s children would become unrecognizable.
The series has been a solid if not spectacular performer for CBS, and its average of 9.8 million viewers this season means it will likely be its most-watched ever. It has never averaged below 8.25 million viewers in a season, Nielsen ratings show, and its success in syndication means reruns will likely be seen for years.
Most of the last season has been set in one weekend: Robin and Barney’s wedding, where Tracy was the bass player in the wedding band.
The final episode skips through several years, where we learn the marriage of Robin and Barney (Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris) splits over her success as a TV correspondent. Barney has a baby through a one-night stand and Marshall and Lily (Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan) have three kids and he becomes a judge.
Ted and Tracy get married after a long engagement and the kids, but she gets sick and dies, a development many fans speculated upon in recent weeks because of a foreshadowing in an earlier episode.
After that, Ted wraps up the story — how I met your mother — that he has been telling his children throughout the length of the show.
But the kids tell him it’s also a story about how he loves their Aunt Robin. They say his attraction to her is obvious and he should ask her on a date. “C’mon, dad,” says the daughter (Lyndsy Fonseca). “Mom’s gone for six years now. It’s time.”
Ted and Robin dated early in the show’s history and seemed a natural match. Yet the producers made clear that Robin was not the “mother” of the title, disappointing many fans at the time.
The children urge Ted to pick up the phone and call Robin. He thinks better of it and drives to her apartment. She opens the window to see him holding a blue horn — a reference to a story from when they had dated — and the series ends.
The producers are at work on a pilot for a spinoff series, How I Met Your Dad, that involves different actors. This cast has already scattered, and commercials that aired during the finale advertised an upcoming movie starring Segel and a Broadway show where Harris is appearing.
On Monday night, Smulders appeared at a New York screening for the movie Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which she performs.
Smulders said that after the screening, she planned to go home and watch the finale with friends. She said many of the emotions felt by the characters in the last episode mirrored what the actors were feeling.
“I am personally really thrilled,” she said. “The show comes full circle.”