Current Events > Was HIMYM Always Supposed To Have That Shitty Ending?*Spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

From the getgo, was it always supposed to have that ending?

Or was it a case where writers or directors changed and what was originally supposed to happen, got changed during the final workings of the last season?

Yes. The reactions with the kids were all filmed in like S1.
---

It was recorded in the first season or two when Teds future kids were young. For some reason they kept it despite it not making sense anymore
---

DumbQuestion posted...

From the getgo, was it always supposed to have that ending?

Or was it a case where writers or directors changed and what was originally supposed to happen, got changed during the season finale?

I get the impression that it was always supposed to end that way, but the way they did it was kind of a let down.
---

Yeah, it was.

Honestly, as far back as season 5 or 6? It still could have worked. But with how the show built The Mother's reveal up in the last season, seeing scenes of them together and being perfect for each other, only for this character to be killed off and throw Ted back towards Robin after the show states, time and time again, that they don't work together? It felt like a kick in the teeth for all that build-up to be for nothing, to have Robin and Barney's season-long wedding arc be unravelled in the last two episodes of the show.

You see signs of the Mother dying a couple seasons before, in that episode where Narrator!Ted breaks the narrative and has his past self run to where she lives. He clearly loves her dearly, and you get a sense that she's not around any more because he made the effort to contact her early and spend as much time as possible with her. It was planned - but after one too many Robin/Ted relationship snafus, it felt idiotic to have the end of the show go back to that, after all the maturing they did over season 9. After Barney shapes up and commits to Robin in the last episode of the wedding arc, they break up within the span of an episode and Barney gets another girl pregnant. This dream girl that you've been waiting to see for the entire show, dying right at the end, for Ted to pursue Robin as the final girl? It felt like a kick in the pants.
---

yes, rewatch a lot of the earlier episodes and it makes sense. ted & robin have always been the main focus.

the reason the ending sucks so much is that the show went on way too long and so you kind of lose focus on the original point. there's no way that the writers anticipated their show going on for 9 seasons and viewers ended up loving the mother and all the characters too much
---

I honestly think it still could've worked with even one or two more episodes. Hell, even another 15-20 minutes. It was far, far too much to cram into just the final act of the final episode.

The series does a lot of heavy foreshadowing that the mother may be dead, and that monologue in one of the later seasons where he imagines himself going to her apartment and saying something like "we haven't met yet, but we're going to meet soon and I'm going to love you more than I've ever loved anything, and I always will" makes completely heartbreaking sense with the concept that the whole series is him explaining to his children how much he loved their mother while wrestling with when and if it's okay to move on.

Unfortunately, by jamming that huge plot bomb into such a brief time, it almost made the mother's death a punchline for his obsession with Robin. I 100% believe that was not the intention. If you take a step back and look at the story they clearly wanted to tell, taking the whole series into account, it's actually pretty beautiful. However, there's no excuse for how poor the execution was.

EDIT: And yeah, the part that truly infuriated me was spending the whole season on Robin/Barney's wedding and then they break up like five minutes later with Barney promptly undoing all of his character development. His ending with the baby didn't really help.
---