“How I Met Your Mother,” is a sitcom classic, people’s favorite watch, just a feel-good show. Through watching, we all fell in love with each individual character, with their uniquely flawed selves. The show was doing everything right – until it came time to the finale. The backlash was intense, with fans feeling betrayed, blindsided and even angry.
But the problem, I argue, is not with the ending itself. That, perhaps, the issue all along was people not understanding the kind of story we were watching. If you take a closer look, the ending makes perfect sense, flowing seamlessly with the show’s structure, character arcs and core themes.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it was always Robin. From the very first episode, Robin was key to the emotional arc of the entire story. Despite Ted’s initial interest, the show makes clear that she is not the eventual “mother.” Their relationship, however, is the one that continuously challenges Ted’s ideas of love and timing. Since the blue French horn, there was always a lingering connection, one that was building up to something. It was never a twist, it was the point.
Tracy, the mother in question, was a tool to drive the story’s plot. She was everything Ted, and the audience, wanted. Her role in the narrative was completing the story Ted told to his children, not the story itself. “How I Met Your Mother,” is a show about life’s unpredictability. So her death, although heartbreaking, was another way to explore that theme. It was also at that point that Ted could let go of his perfect ending.
The best writing in the show comes from the death of Ted’s wife because leading up to that point the structure of the plot leads viewers to assume a “happily ever after.” This turns that notion on its head. The real point of the sitcom was not Ted finding love, but learning how to love and lose and ultimately move forward.
Life is complicated, as this show explains to us. The ending is what really seals that final message. Ted and Robin’s reunion wasn’t a cop out or some lazy writing, it was a natural progression of years of emotional evolution.
