‘How I Met Your Mother’: What Was the Series’ Ending?
How I Met Your Mother aired on CBS from 2005 to 2014. This sitcom gave viewers an ensemble show based in New York City right after Friends concluded. The show stars Josh Radnor, Jason Segel, Cobie Smulders, Neil Patrick Harris, Alyson Hannigan, and Cristin Milioti. Bob Saget narrates as older Ted. The premise of the tv show made viewers wonder for years how the series would end. Would they finally get the identity of the “mother” and if so, who would she be? So, what was the ending to How I Met Your Mother?
[Spoiler alert: The following article contains spoilers to the finale for How I Met Your Mother.]
What was ‘How I Met Your Mother’ about?
How I Met Your Mother follows Ted Mosby (Radnor) explaining to his children how he and their mother met. The show takes its audience on a journey through Ted’s love life, including with another main character, Robin Scherbatsky (Smulders).
The series introduces Robin as a prominent person in Ted’s life from the jump. However, she’s immediately known to Ted’s kids as “Aunt Robin,” not as the children’s mother. She has a long relationship with Barney Stinson (Harris). Viewers spent years “shipping” Robin and Barney and also trying to determine the identity of the mother (Milioti). Eventually, Robin and Barney get married.
How I Met Your Mother involves years-long jokes, like the slap bet and a fictional book Bro Code. The show had celebrity guest appearances from Britney Spears, Rachel Bilson, Kyle MacLachlan, and more throughout its nine-season run.
The CBS sitcom was quite popular, and critics enjoyed it too. The show received 30 Emmy Award nominations and won 10, per the Emmys website.
What was the ending in ‘How I Met Your Mother’?
What was the How I Met Your Mother ending? The show concluded with a polarizing episode. In the finale, fans discover that Robin and Barney divorced. At long last, the series finale reveals who the mother is, but also that she is dead in the present day (she dies in 2024). Finally, the kicker: Robin and Ted end up together.
Ted asks his kids how they would feel if he were to pursue their Aunt Robin. They tell him to do it. So, he asks Robin to give it another try between them. And in classic HIMYM fashion, the show calls back an earlier episode (here, the very first) by featuring the blue French Horn.
Some fans were very vocal about disliking the finale. But one of the actors recently defended it.
Cobie Smulders recently defended the ‘How I Met Your Mother’ ending
Smulders gave her opinions on the How I Met Your Mother ending in a 2020 interview with Metro.co.uk, six years after the show’s finale aired.
“People are going to feel how they’re going to feel about that,” Smulders said. “But I think that there’s been enough time.”
She continued: “Watching it as a streaming show now, you get a little bit more of a connection for other relationships.”
“I think at the end of the series between Robin and Barney, that was sort of the relationship everyone was rooting for,” she added. “But when you go back to the very beginning of the show, it was Robin and Ted.”
The actor concluded: “So, I think that it’s a different way to watch the show now when you see it in its entirety.”
