Preparing For The 'How I Met Your Mother' Finale

By Julia Bianco on March 31, 2014

Series finales are a hard thing to pull off. Wrapping up all of the loose ends, finishing character arcs and finding a satisfying place to leave the plot are tough endeavors to take on in just one short episode. Which is why I appreciate what long-running CBS comedy series How I Met Your Mother has done with their final season. Although stretching the ninth season out into one long wedding weekend seemed like a crazy idea at first, it really has given the series a chance to have the ending it deserves.

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I was not on board with the initial decision to take the twenty-four episode ninth season and constrict it to the weekend of Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin’s (Cobie Smulders) wedding. It seemed like the characters would run out of things to do in such a small space, and that the storylines would feel forced or unnatural.

And for the first half of the season, it felt like I was right with my predictions— for the most part, the episodes fell flat with viewers and critics, with the wedding setting wearing thin very quickly. In the second half of the season, though, the episodes have started to go deeper, focusing more on the titular Mother (Cristin Milioti) and less on the ridiculous storylines that bogged down the earlier episodes.

These last few episodes have been particularly solid for the series, especially through the character development that they showed. I, along with many other viewers, worried about the trajectory of Ted (Josh Radnor) and Robin’s relationship at the beginning of the season— would the series pull the rug out from under all of our feet and have the two end up together after all? But the series shied away from the move and went through with Barney and Robin’s wedding, which was a very good sign for how seriously they are taking the reveal of the Mother.

Photo by Phrases HIMYM on Flickr.com

It sounds silly to talk about a television character with as much importance as people discuss the Mother, but after eight seasons of build up, seeing her face for the first time really was a magical thing. There are very few shows that have had that much build up to one character’s reveal, and knowing that the hundreds of episodes we’d watched were all leading up to her made it all the more incredible when, for the first time ever, the series didn’t pull a fake out and actually panned up to her face.

But of course, us seeing the Mother for the first time wasn’t the endgame for the series. Ted seeing her was. And with that moment (hopefully) coming up in Monday’s season finale, it looks like us viewers might finally get the closure that we’ve been hoping for since the show first premiered, way back in 2005.

I’m particularly excited for this finale, more so than most other series, because of this. For most series, the finale is a result of one season’s worth of build up— the ending of whatever Big Bad or relationship drama has been brewing as that season’s arc. With How I Met Your Mother, this finale is the product of 208 episodes of build up, which means that it is much more important to viewers than just your run of the mill series finale.

Photo by myownstyle1234 on Flickr.com

There’s still a chance that the finale could be a disappointment, though. We know that somehow Ted ends up looking sad at the Farhampton train station with a bandage on his hand before he meets the Mother, which could mean that something very bad happens at the wedding. If Ted pulls something stupid, like trying to win Robin back, it could ruin all of the progress that he and the other characters have made this season, which would be a very bad move for the series.

There are also some fan theories that spell out a bad ending for the series. The theory that the Mother is dead in 2030 has been picking up steam recently, especially with the touching season between Ted and the Mother at the Farhampton Inn a couple episodes ago. Although there has been some evidence in support of this theory, I personally think that it would be a slap in the face to fans if it were true. If the Mother really is dead, it’s not just Ted’s wife who has died. It’s the character who we as viewers have spent years waiting to know. Finding out that she’s been dead the whole time wouldn’t just ruin the finale— it would put a huge damper on the series as a whole.

I think that the How I Met Your Mother finale will succeed the best if it keeps up the status quo. Keep the gang together, bring together Ted and the Mother, and let everyone end off the series happy. The characters deserve a happy ending and the fans deserve it too.

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