"How I Met Your Mother" went off the air in 2014, with a series finale that went down in history as one of the one most polarizing endings of a show in television history. After 9 seasons of waiting to see Ted live happy ever after with his soulmate Tracy, we only see a montage of their life with Ted explaining via voiceover that Tracy actually became terminally ill and is actually dead when he is telling his children the story of how they met. It was absolutely heartbreaking to see, and for a lot of fans understandably infuriating.
The show then ends with Ted realizing he is ready to love again, and at the prodding of his children goes and tries to once again woo Robin, sitting outside of her apartment with the same blue french horn he stole for her in the first season. That only amplified the displeasure about the finale, as fans have seen Robin and Ted go back and forth throughout the course of the whole show and therefore a lot of people had grown tired of it. Adding in the fact that people had just sat through the weakest season of the show and it's easy to see why the finale has left a stain on the show's legacy. However, I think the choices in the finale were the right ones, and I think any attempt to give everyone a 100% happy ending would go against what the show represented in the first place.
To understand where I am coming from, you first need to understand two things. Number one is that I am in no way saying they did everything right in this last season and the finale. I think that the wedding weekend that they stretched out into a whole season should have been a half of a season at best. And they should have taken the hour-long two-part finale and stretched that into multiple episodes to make up the second half of the last season. That way, you spent more time with Tracy as a viewer, which would have led to more weight in her death and not feeling so cheated when she died so quickly from our perspective. The second thing you need to understand is the concept of the show in general. The show is centered around a father telling his kids a story. And over the 9 seasons, we were essentially the children, listening him recall these events of his life.
Now why that is important to understand is think about the context of the story. He's telling the story of apparently meeting his soulmate, but the story is filled with story after story of his life with Robin before he met Tracy. He's subconsciously remembering all the important memories of her because he misses and wishes to be with her. Years have since passed since his wife died when he is telling the story, and he feels that Robin is someone who can fill the emptiness in his heart. He feels understandably guilty about this, but luckily his children understand that and agree that he should pursue Robin and they are the ones who take it from his subconscious and drop it right into his lap. If he had just finished the story, and Tracy walked in and said "Kids, dinner is ready!" it wouldn't have made sense if you think about what was actually shared in the story. Thinking about that you realized it wasn't about Ted telling his children about their mother, but why he feels so drawn to Robin.
The other main reason why the "happy" ending would not have worked out is because it would have gone against the thing that made "HIMYM" so successful and fantastic in the first place. This is a show about life, ugly and unfair. It's about people failing, people having to give up on dreams they didn't know they had. It's about death, and it's about loneliness, and fighting for what you love no matter how it gets. Friendship, love, adventure, all are the foundation of these 5 friends and their lives. Having it all wrap up in a nice little bow would have cheapened all that we had been through with them.
This show imitates life, and in life sometimes things don't go the way you want. For Barney, he found his true happiness with his newborn daughter, something he never imagined would be the missing link in his life. Robin became everything she had ever wanted in her journalism career, even if along the way she lost her marriage to Barney and never really found anyone for most of her adult life. She realized she was meant to explore. Marshall and Lily found that they needed to support each other's dreams, and showed that there is really no magical formula to having a significant other balance life with you, it's a constantly moving and changing landscape. And for Ted, he found his soulmate, the one true love that he had in the world. And he loved her and shared years with her and had children and a beautiful life with her, that didn't last ever after. And that's what happens. Life is messy, and it's beautiful.
"HIMYM" (for the most part) was unapologetically honest. It showed our favorite characters at their best and worst. They did things we didn't like, and things that made us laugh til we cried. Their pain was our pain. It's a show that I think will never find a equal when it comes to the classic sitcom format. The way episodes and stories were framed were unbelievably clever. Gags were set up seasons ahead of when their pay off would come. I hate that when a majority of people think of this show now, they think about how much they didn't like the ending. Especially because I don't think there was a better way for it to end. "HIMYM" was at it's best when it was imperfect, and I think the ending was best proof of that.
