MsMojo Can Fix It: Rewriting How I Met Your Mother's Final Season

MsMojo Can Fix It: Fixing the Final Season of How I Met Your Mother

Welcome to MsMojo, and today we’re breaking down the final season of “How I Met Your Mother” and giving it the narrative makeover that we believe would make it more “Legen…wait for it…” Oh, we are talking plot points and character developments so here’s your spoiler warning.

Season Nine in a Nutshell

Season nine takes place over a weekend no one could have predicted back in the early days: Barney and Robin’s wedding. Each episode covers a singular event or two leading up to the big day, with flashbacks and flash-forwards tying the story together.
Marshall has been visiting his mother in Minnesota with baby Marvin ahead of his and Lily’s trip to Italy, and after getting kicked off his flight, he ends up on quite the adventure to make it to Farhampton in time for the wedding. We also get to know the titular mother better through flashbacks and other moments showing her chance meetings with her future husband’s friends.

Eventually, Robin and Barney make it down the aisle, but before everyone can recover from their champagne headaches, the couple announces their divorce. This essentially becomes a catalyst for the group to drift apart, with Robin unsurprisingly not so keen on hanging out with her ex-husband and the one that got away.
Meanwhile, Ted heads back to the city ahead of his big move to Chicago and has an admittedly charming meet-cute with Tracy. The writers make us root for this pair, only to pull the rug out from under us by revealing her fate. We circle back to the beginning, where Ted’s kids say what

Where It Went Wrong

Choosing to set an entire season over one weekend was certainly an ambitious move. Perhaps it could’ve been great had it not felt like the writers had simply run out of steam. Many of the plot points felt contrived as if we were just trudging along until the big finale. It all felt very scattered, jumping between different storylines without fully developing any of them. Honestly, you could probably skip a bunch of episodes and not feel like you’ve missed anything significant. This arguably led to a lack of comedic rhythm and pacing. Some jokes and running gags felt forced or out of character, lacking the spontaneity and wit that defined earlier seasons. It also over-relied on more dramatic moments or sentimental ones, which really wasn’t at the heart of the series before.

Also, with Marshall sidelined, the group dynamic felt a bit off-balance. But that was nothing compared to his arc, which felt as forced as rhyming “Canada” with “janitor” (no offense, Lin-Manuel Miranda). While visiting his mother in Minnesota, Marshall gets life-changing news: he’s been offered a judgeship. Trying to keep it a secret from Lily, he gets kicked off his flight and ends up on a road trip with Daphne, a fellow passenger who is his complete opposite.

Now, we adore Sherri Shepherd, so you know we mean it when we say this whole storyline dragged on for far too long. You could say that her most significant contribution was dropping a lit match in the powder keg of Lily and Marshall’s relationship.

Apparently, Jason Segel wasn’t too keen on returning for another season, wanting to explore other projects. After much negotiation, the creators got him back with a more flexible shooting schedule. Even so, it seemed like they didn’t really know what to do with his character outside of the main story.

Indeed, back to the main story, the entire season centers around Barney and Robin’s wedding. However, most storylines focus on family members and wedding guests rather than the love story of the couple about to get married. Barney is busy trying to “Parent Trap” his parents, mediating between Robin and Loretta and passive-aggressively punishing Ted for having feelings for Robin. Meanwhile, Robin hardly seems fazed that it’s her wedding weekend. Yet somehow, the big day arrives, and they say their “I dos.” Only as we flash forward in the following episode, the couple tell their friends that they got divorced. So, basically, we watched an entire season building up to an event that didn’t even last an entire episode.

That wasn’t the only way the writers unraveled character development. Take Barney, for example. We spent some time watching him try to prove he was more than a crass womanizer while trying to be a man Robin could marry. Yet after their divorce, he wastes no time reverting to the guy who uses sleazy pickup lines on young women. Sure, it’s nice that another special lady ultimately makes him change, but he’s clearly still a work in progress, as we see in the short-lived spin-off “How I Met Your Father.”

Robin throwing herself into her career after the divorce makes sense, but it’s hard to believe she’d give up her friends so easily. Hanging out with Barney, Ted, and Tracy might be awkward, but do they always have to meet as a group? Couldn’t she and Lily grab a drink now and then? Maybe, like us, she just felt her friends’ growth had stalled since her wedding weekend.

Speaking of lack of character development, we get that there was this whole big build-up to the eventual mother reveal. However, the writers really left themselves very little time to truly develop the character. We loved Tracy, and thanks to Cristin Milioti, she quickly felt like someone we’d want as a friend. But imagine how much more connected we’d feel if she’d been introduced sooner and her story unfolded more alongside the main gang’s. That being said, it cut incredibly deeply when they did finally reveal her fate. Milioti shared that when she first found out what happens to her character, she was so devastated for Ted that she broke down in tears in front of the series creators. While many of us felt betrayed by this plot twist, it was just the tip of the disappointment iceberg.

Back in 2005, we got hooked on this charming new show, “How I Met Your Mother.” We spent nine seasons invested in Ted’s quest to find the love of his life, only to realize we were actually watching him work up the courage to ask his kids about getting back together with Robin. The idea of framing the series as Ted telling his kids how he met their mother had the potential to be a creative and fresh narrative device, and it often was. However, it also meant the writers had written themselves into a corner.

David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca, who played Ted and Tracy’s children, were still coming-of-age when they shot the earlier seasons, but understandably, it might have been harder to convince the audience that minutes or maybe hours had passed rather than nine years by the final season. So, they had the young actors film their final scene way back in the series’ early days and basically swore them to secrecy with NDAs. This meant that no matter what happened from that moment on, the writers had locked themselves into an ending they couldn’t change.

How Do We Fix It?

Okay, so the ending was essentially set in stone from the beginning. Fine. However, the writers had an entire season to carefully and thoughtfully justify their choices to the audience. According to Alyson Hannigan, who played Lily, they did—kind of. She mentioned that key events were cut from the series finale due to time constraints, and when she saw the aired episode, she was shocked by how much had been edited out. The finale just seemed rushed, and some major plot points felt, to slightly paraphrase Hannigan, like a slap in the face.

Given how uneven the pacing was and the number of filler episodes—looking at you, “Knight Vision”—it’s clear there was a lot of valuable material that could’ve been explored more in depth leading up to the inevitable conclusion. For instance, Hannigan shared that there was a funeral scene that ended up on the cutting room floor. The show had been hinting at the mother’s fate for ages, so revealing more about it sooner and exploring Ted’s grieving process could’ve made a big difference. Flash-forwards showing Ted and Tracy’s relationship, marriage, and parenthood would’ve added a lot to the story. We also could’ve used more on Barney and Robin’s marriage to make their split more believable and easier to accept. The series was no stranger to using these narrative devices to give us insights into the gangs’ futures, and they often added to the characters’ development, so why stop now?

While these moments stung, they didn’t compare to Ted ending up with Robin. Sure, we were all rooting for them back in the day, but both characters had changed and moved on. The show spent years hammering home that Ted and Robin weren’t meant to be, that they wanted different things, and yet, here they are together in the end. We’d come to terms with the idea that they wouldn’t end up together, and honestly, the writers should have, too. Robin was living her dream as an international reporter, while Ted had found a love that helped him move on from Robin and fulfill his dream of starting a family. That seemed pretty in line with where these characters were headed. Apparently, there was even a cut scene where Robin confesses to Ted that she still has feelings for him, but he tells her he’s no longer in that place and is happy. From the viewer's perspective, the abrupt shift from Ted being widowed to him deciding to get back with Robin was quite jarring. Again, at the very least, there were plenty of episodes we could have happily swapped out for a deeper exploration of this choice. But honestly, why was this show even called “How I Met Your Mother”?

After the backlash, the creators released an alternative ending that was, in our opinion, far more satisfying. It celebrated Ted and Tracy’s love story without any tragic twists or backtracking. Milioti shared that co-creator Craig Thomas and Ted actor Josh Radnor explained to her the original finale was meant to be realistic, not necessarily happy. But honestly, what’s more realistic than two people falling in love, committing to each other, and raising a family? Deciding that the mother should die because “life comes at you in ways you can never expect” seems pretty extreme.

It all comes down to perhaps the writers’ biggest error in judgment, sealing the ending way too early. For one thing, the writing in the final series wouldn’t have felt so slow and often tedious because they weren’t writing toward one specific conclusion and just buying time until we got there. Maybe Segel was right, and they should’ve called it quits after season 8, that definitely would’ve done Marshall justice!

So much could change in nine years; people grow, their priorities change, and their life goals evolve. This is also true for the audience who is growing up beside these characters. Given the immense popularity of the series, it would’ve been better if the creators had let their fanbase guide them. After all, what is a TV series without its audience? Canceled, that’s what. So, we really did deserve more. Perhaps the audience would’ve supported a partnership the writers only intended to include for a few episodes. Or, perhaps they would’ve come up with theories that would’ve inspired the writing. Really, the options are endless.

In hindsight, sticking to one fixed ending was a risk that didn’t pay off. Why not film a few different endings and choose the best one based on where the story and audience were at the time?

Carter Bays and Craig Thomas seemed to have learned from this with their 2022 spin-off, “How I Met Your Father.” This time, they gave themselves the freedom to see where the story and fans would take them. Unfortunately, the spin-off was canceled after two seasons, so we never officially found out who the father was and honestly, we’re not sure what’s worse.

Season nine of “How I Met Your Mother” often felt like watching someone drive off a cliff in slow motion and knowing there was nothing you could do about it. However, it did give any budding sitcom writers out there a great lesson in what not to do, wouldn’t you agree, Judge Fudge?

Dary! Do you think our version is more Legendary? We’ll take the highest of fives; alternatively, let us know in the comments!