Nothing Lasts Forever

Your relationships will all change drastically

Photo by Matheus Ferrero on Unsplash

I’m going to do something a little different this time.

I’m going to talk in-depth about one of my favorite shows. I promise you the point will be worthwhile. You’ll appreciate the show more and (hopefully) learn a valuable life lesson.

Fair warning, major spoilers ahead for the show in question.

The Greatest Finale of All Time

Let me let you in on a little secret: I loved the finale of How I Met Your Mother.

This makes me a bit unusual, because the reaction against this particular series finale was quite extreme. Most of the people I’ve talked to hated it, the internet seems to hate it. I even remember after it aired that Sports Center anchors hated it (I believe I remember that they called a team’s performance “more disappointing than the How I Met Your Mother finale).

So why did everyone hate it so much?

Chances are there are lots of reasons, but they all revolve around a stunning twist at the end. Although some people had predicted it, it was still shocking that the show followed through with it.

A quick recap of the premise of the show for those not familiar:

Ted Mosby is a hopeless romantic who desperately wants to find “the one” and get married, but things just never seems to work out for him. The story is narrated by his future self telling his children how he met their mother.

This sets our expectations right from the beginning. It’s going to be a long hard journey for Ted, but things work out in the end.

In the first episode, Ted talks about falling for a girl he met in a bar. His kids presumably think that he’s talking about their mom, but at the end of the episode he mentions that it was the story of how he met their “Aunt Robin” and that the story of how he met their mom will be much longer.

He has an on again off again relationship with Robin, but can never seem to get over her. In later seasons, Robin falls in love with Ted’s friend Barney (Barney would remind me to say “best” friend here) and they end up getting married.