Fans Are Still Divided Over 'How I Met Your Mother' Finale a Decade Later

The end of a fan-favorite sitcom never comes easy for anyone. In the case of How I Met Your Mother, fans were truly divided about the finale. After nine seasons, who could blame them for being a bit over the top?

Beware. There are bound to be spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution if you haven't gotten to this part of the show yet. Do you really want to know who wins that bet between Lily and Marshall before the payout happens?

After such a long tale, the death of Ted's wife rubbed many fans the wrong way. Despite being a central part of the show, she actually ended up fading into the background and even got lost in the plot when she died. It felt like a huge hopeless romantic wind-up to absolutely nothing. A fan on Reddit wrote, "I don't like how they down-played her death so much. Should have been more emotional. But I like how they had a nice flashback to what started it all."

"Seriously, this is supposed to be the love of Ted's life and she gets less than a minute of Ted talking about her death," someone else pointed out. However, some fans tried to defend Ted's casual conversation about her death. They pointed out that it was a part of an overarching story he was telling and that story was about how they met... not how she died.

"Yeah, but he is telling the story to his kids. They had to live through it just like he did. They know the pain the family went through," one pointed it out. Her death is nothing new to the family, necessarily, but their love story was something they were just learning for the first time.

"It's six years after she had died," a fan said. "I think that him telling his kids this story was the closure he needed to move on with his life." Moving on is just what Ted did, too.

After telling that long, elaborate story, the kids pointed out that Ted was totally still crushing on their Aunt Robin. Any fan that watched the show knows that Ted focuses heavily on his on-again-off-again romance with Robin who actually ends up with Barney at one point.

The dynamic and spark between Ted and Robin didn't go unrecognized by his children, so they encourage him to pursue her. "How I got permission from my kids to date Aunt Robin," a fan mocked. While many fans felt happy to see their ship finally completed, a lot felt that it undermined the show overall and was just fan servicing and pandering.

Other fans supported the writers' move because they enjoyed seeing their protagonist have a happy ending even after his wife died. A fan wrote, "He ends up with Robin, yes. But not like in a dumb way. The episode was rushed, sure. However, he was with the Mother. For 10 years and he was super happy. You could tell how happy he was. I loved the fact that after the story ended it was the kids that called Ted out. Very humorous as well 'That was really just a story about how you have the hots for Robin.' I died."

This long elaborate story was going to come to a close eventually, but what fans took issue with was the pace of the storytelling. "2005-2014 in 8.9 seasons. 2014-2020 in 44 minutes," pointed out a fan. Another added: "And 72 hours in 21 episodes."

"Seriously the entire wedding should have been two episodes and the rest of the season was post meeting. ESPECIALLY seeing as how what actually happened. When I thought meeting the mother would be the end for Ted I was unsure how you could continue the story, but looking backwards it was most definitely could have been extended," wrote a fan.

Some fans did try to argue that this expedited ending was a poetic choice from the writers. "This how life happens. Every minute, every hour, every day seems to last forever when you are young, as you grow older everything flashes by," they said.