They had been planning it since Season 2 when they shot the scenes with the kids, so this wasn't some surprise ending. They spent the entire series building to that ending. I know a lot of people who felt really betrayed by the ending: Spoiler When the Mother was revealed to be dead the whole time, and Ted ending up with Robin, people just felt betrayed. I'm not sure why. The entire series, even in the last season leading up to Robin and Barney's wedding, they still couldn't shake the "Ted and Robin" storyline. I thought the idea of him letting Robin go and meeting the mother was right, and the relationship between Ted and the Mother was really, really well done. The fact that people felt betrayed actually, to me, means they absolutely did everything right. They had one season to make you care about the Mother after meeting her, and they did a pretty damn good job of it. The mother being dead wouldn't have had as big of an impact if she had been just some character he met at the end, or some character we'd never met before. Cristin Milioti did a great job as the Mother in that last season, too. Ultimately, even though I saw the ending coming a long time ago, I was satisfied. Every character got a good ending, including Barney. The biggest complaint I've seen is that people are claiming they wiped out 9 years of character development, but did they? Even when Barney was marrying Robin, he was still Barney. He did an entire elaborate "Play" to set up his engagement to her, and the night before his wedding he got completely trashed and went out and "taught" some people how to be like him. That is *classic* Barney, in as much as the entire first two seasons is Barney trying to teach Ted how to be more like him. His biggest development was the realization that he wanted kids (which he could never do with Robin, meaning their marriage was doomed from the beginning), and the scene where he met his daughter was really well done. Marshall and Lilly kind of stopped growing after they had Marvin, so there was really no place left to go for those two. They really coasted towards the end, and if anything, they became my least favorite part of the last season, despite Marshall being my favorite character. Ted pined for Robin the entire series, and people who said he didn't grow didn't realize a simple fact: The story is told BY TED. If, all those years later, Ted is telling the story as if Robin is the most important person in the world to him, them maybe she really is, and maybe that is what the story was really about. People got completely hung up on the title of it, but the reality was the story was never about how Ted met the mother. Even the kids, at the end, said that. The story wasn't about Ted meeting the mother, it was about Ted coming to terms with the fact that he was still, after all those years, after a marriage, two kids, and a wife he clearly loved and cared about, Ted was still in love with Robin. TL;DR: People who hated the ending weren't paying attention during the entire series, and didn't want a payoff to the story as a whole; they wanted a payoff to the title, and to me that is just silly. Interesting note (I don't remember if I saw it here or not) but if the series had ended after last season, the plan was for Victoria to be the Mother. In retrospect, I'm glad they got that last season to set up the new Mother and detail her and Ted's relationship a bit more. I just feel like Victoria being the mother might've been a bit of a cop out, and I don't think the ending (which, again, was the plan at least from the start of season 2) would have had as much of an impact. Season nine was somewhat up and down, but I think it was still better than season 8 by a long shot (and better than any season that had Zoey in it).
I believe the Victoria as mother idea was a contingency plan for cancellations from half way on. I actually called the ending half way through the final season. I don't say so with any arrogance, but more so the fact it seemed the only natural conclusion.
I HATE the finale. It's awful. The ENTIRE final season was a lead up to Barney & Robin's wedding. Their marriage lasted twenty minutes. The ENTIRETY of the show was leading up to Ted meeting the love of his life, the end of his long emotional journey. Again, their marriage lasted twenty minutes. She was a footnote, they didn't even bother telling us what she died from. They didn't even bother showing a funeral. Aside from that laughable voice-over, there is no evidence whatsoever that her death had any effect on Ted, aside from making him briefly hesitant to go after Robin again. The love of his life was a speed bump on the road to Robin. The fact that the creators knew that and filmed the last interaction with the kids giving their blessing to Ted so long ago makes it even worse. It's cheap and they could have used the last seasons better instead of shoehorning what was supposed to be a defining relationship into the last episodes of the series.
I think the problem is more with the last season than the last episode. I'm fine with the way it ended, but it seems like they crammed too much into one episode. If you have more episodes with flash forwards etc. that show a little more of Ted's life with the mother(specifically her getting sick) the episode could have been a lot more impactful. One of this show's greatest strength was it's ability the realistically show the soul crushing parts of life. Too gloss over Ted's tragedy with his wife is a big disservice to the characters, and the fans. So I enjoyed the finale, but thought they could have done more with it.
But see, this is exactly the point I was trying to make. People keep saying the show was about how Ted met the mother, except when you watch it, you realize it isn't. Not really, anyway. Just because they were clinging to a title so hard, they wouldn't let the title go and just enjoy the story (irony: these same people hate that Ted couldn't let Robin go and enjoy life). Even the kids recognize it at the end. They specifically say it's strange he would tell the story of how he met their mother and their mother was barely in it. The show was always about Ted and Robin, from day one. It's just that when the finale specifically states that, people felt betrayed by the title of the show. If anything, the finale was perfect, because it forced the viewer to come to the same realization future Ted did: this story was never about the mother, it was about Robin. Some people just hated that conclusion, because they felt lied too, but they fail to understand a basic premise of the finale: Ted was lying to himself about what the story was about. All along he truly thought he was telling his kids how he met their mother, but it wasn't until the end he realized it was about how he still had feelings for Robin.
Although I was never as invested as some of you guys, I've followed the show tangentially and watched the finale. I will say this, I never understood how anyone could ever root for Ted. He was a shitbird and the fact that he "wins" in the end is crap. Show should've been called "How I Met The (Supposed) Love Of My Life But Never Mind That Shit Because I'm Not Over My Ex" Drew Magary hits on a lot of points that annoyed me about the finale, among them the message of "HEY GUYS, YOUR LIFE WILL NEVER BE COMPLETE UNLESS YOU HAVE A BABY." Also, was I the only one creeped out by the fact the kids gave zero fucks about their dead mother? I know they're child actors, but still. You go get that hot piece of ass Dad!
Spoiler The reason I was satisfied is that Ted had his time with the Mother and it got cut short. No happily ever after, Ted and Robin probably can't erase the trauma of past love to get it together, so they are what most families are now: somewhat functional, somewhat broken and just kind of thrown together. Think about how their kids tell this story: "my dad is dating his best friend's ex-wife, who can't have kids and is Canadian. We're kind of ok with it because my mom's been dead for six years. My brother doesn't want them to get married because Mom and Dad already had two kids and still weren't married." Spoiler At some point, you abandon hope of a happy ending, because it's too realistic. Barney's marriage was always going to go to shit, walking down the aisle isn't a "Life Baptism". Robin was always going to put her career first, she faked exit-stage-left several times during the show. Lily and Marshall were only going to get more into each other, they weren't going to branch out into the lives of their single friends. Barney's a baby daddy, with all the ensuing drama, Marshall is a big-shot lawyer and Lily is now relegated to housewife status, Robin is a career woman and Ted's romance gets cut short. None of this is perfect, according to romantic ideals and that's why the ending was satisfying. I liked it because it's kind of how families are formed now.
I didn't hate it until Barney was all stereotypical and lame to the younger girls at the bar. That was just hackneyed and cliche. The moment when he met his daughter was cheesy but made me get misty for some reason. Probably credit to NPH. But then it got lame again. Not creeped out, but implausible. He tells them the whole story of how he met their dead mother, which all has an obvious and glaring undercurrent of being in love with Robin, and they are fine with that, hell they support it? It was just weird. If it just happened organically or something, I could see them being fine with it, but it clearly being about her all the time, I would think the kids would balk. But, speaking of hot ass, Ted's daughter is an absolute scorcher... Also, she's 27. Was 19 when the show started. Kind of amusing that she was cast as a pre-teen/teen and then probably a HS senior by the end.
The story itself is fine. If the writer's deemed it so long ago that Ted ends up with Robin, that's cool too. My gripe is they spent so much time in the preceding seasons making so goddamn many callbacks to the mother. The roommate, the yellow umbrella, the wrong class Ted taught the first day she was in, etc. etc. All of that was leading up to Ted finding the love of his life, who Ted himself said was the mother. And when it finally happened they were together all of thirty minutes in one episode, the series finale. The duration of time it took Ted to get his kids approval and subsequent scenes leading up to the blue horn scene with Robin was literally half the screen time that Ted and the Mother were together. I mean seriously we don't even know what killed her. It's shitty storytelling, and shitty misdirection.
How I Met The Dead Lady That Gave Birth To You It's been taken down from YouTube, but not Uproxx. Alternate Ending I thought one of the best lines belonged to Barney issuing his correction. Something like, "We didn't have a failed marriage. We had a fantastic marriage that only lasted three years."