For all the debate it sparked,How I Met Your Mother’s finale was never going to please everyone. Even theMother (Cristin Milioti) understands why fans hated it. After nine seasons of teases and Ted Mosby tangents, the show revealed its final card to polarizing reactions. But lost is the fact that this polarizing ending was never set in stone.
The ending ofHow I Met Your Motherdidn’t have to be a gut punch; it just turned out that way. For all the backlash and baffled reactions,what fans didn’t see was the version we could have gotten. A longer, more reflective farewell was within reach. It just never made it past the cutting room floor.
What aired was a speed-run epilogue to a nine-season saga.But behind the scenes, the creators considered a deeper, more spacious finale— one that gave the story time to land. Instead, the show left us with emotional whiplash and a sense that the best goodbye never got told.
How I Met Your Mother’s Final Episode Could Have Been A Lot Longer
A Shortened Finale Compressed A Decade Of Payoff
At just 44 minutes, the final episode ofHow I Met Your Motherhad the impossible task of closing every character arcand resolving a decade of fan speculation. In a 2017 interview withnews.au.com, Lily actress Alyson Hannigan expressed her disappointment with the ending:
I was bummed they didn’t just make it a two-hour season-ender, so they would get to show certain parts [that were cut].
Essentially,the finale should have been the two-hour television event it was meant to be.Instead, very emotional pivot in the finished product — especially the decision to kill off the Mother — lands with the abruptness of a montage, not a moment. Sure, there weremany clues to the Mother’s death inHIMYM, but the foreshadowing didn’t solve the rushed problem.
That’s partly because the finale’s scenes with the children were filmed back in season 2, making theHIMYMending controversy impossible to avoid. Locked into an ending that required a major tonal shift,the writers had to reverse-engineer the path to get there, even if it meant speeding through pivotal character moments in the last 10 minutes.
Barney’s sudden backslide, Robin’s distancing from the group, and Ted’s re-romancing of Robin all happen so quickly that they lose narrative weight. A longer finale might not have fixed every issue, but it could have given the show room to breathe.
How A Two-Hour Finale Would Have Changed How I Met Your Mother’s Ending
Time Would Have Turned Controversy Into Character Closure
A two-hour runtime would’ve created space for the actual ending to land emotionally. More time with Tracy (Cristin Milioti) after the wedding weekend could have grounded her as more than just a narrative device. Her chemistry with Ted worked because of Milioti’s presence, not screen time — and the latter was what she deserved more of. Hannigan appears to agree:
It just seemed too quick. Obviously it was a tear-jerker, but with all the stuff that got cut out it was too fast … like ‘OK, now we’re going to find out the mum’s dead, then suddenly, OK — he’s with Robin now’, and you’re just like, ‘wait, what happened?!’ There was a funeral scene [that got cut], and all this stuff that I think the audience needed. They needed that time to process that information, instead of having it slap them in the face.
Robin’s arc, too, would’ve benefited. Her slow isolation from the group was shown, not developed. Given more room, we might’ve seen her loneliness evolve instead of appearing as a plot necessity. Barney’s fatherhood moment, while touching, felt like a hard reset from his entire character journey. That storyline could have bloomed rather than blindsided.
AnalternateHIMYMendingwas released as a DVD extra. While it acknowledges that Ted and Robin would eventually fall in love, it ends on a more hopeful note, at the moment Ted meets Tracy for the first time.
A longer finale wouldn’t change the bones of the story. But it might have restructured themost heartbreaking and heartwarmingHIMYMmomentsinto something more earned —less like a bait-and-switch, and more like the final chapter of a long, sometimes messy, but deeply human story.
How I Met Your Mother’s Finale Could’ve Definitely Used A Longer Runtime
It’s easy to forget how many beautiful moments were tucked inside that finale.Lily’s tearful goodbye in the empty apartment. Ted’s train station meeting with Tracy. Marshall’s judge reveal. These are core memories for longtime fans, but they’re buried beneath a finale trying to do too much in too little time.
Hannigan revealed there was amuchlonger version written.
The table read for the finale was so good, so right, but it was also like 14 hours long. So when I actually saw the final version of the show, I was like ‘they cut out everything!’
The core problem wasn’t the ending itself; it was the shoddy execution.HIMYMwas always about subverting sitcom structure with emotional depth. But in the end, it became a clip show. The shifts in tone were squeezed into pre-existing constraints rather than earned.
All episodes ofHow I Met Your Motherare streaming on Hulu, Disney+, and Netflix.
In a longer finale, Ted and Tracy could have had real conversations about life, love, and parenthood. Barney could have struggled with the fear of fatherhood rather than embracing it instantly. Robin’s distance could have been emotional, not just logistical. These things don’t need rewrites. They just need time.
The Ending Of How I Met Your Mother Was Always Going To Be Controversial
The Show Spent Nine Seasons Asking The Wrong Question
For all its twists,How I Met Your Motherwas never really about the Mother.HIMYMwas about the harsh realitiesof how people change. Ted, Barney, Robin, Marshall, and Lily weren’t static sitcom archetypes.They were messy, insecure, sometimes selfish adults still learning how to grow up. And the show wasn’t afraid to reflect that — even in its most divisive moments.
Hannigan: I didn’t think Barney should have ever gotten married. I liked Barney and Robin. But in my heart, I always wanted her with Ted. I just feel they [Barney and Robin] shouldn’t have gotten married.
But that’s what made the ending so complicated. The audience spent years waiting for Tracy, only to be told she was never the real ending. For many, that felt like betrayal. In truth, it was a final reminder: stories rarely end the way you expect. Sometimes, love doesn’t last forever. Sometimes, the person you become isn’t the person you thought you’d be.
The finale dared to end not with certainty, but ambiguity. Ted goes back to Robin not because the story needs to, but because time has changed him. And time has changed her.Whether that’s hopeful or tragic depends on who’s watching.
The version of the finale we got wasn’t perfect. But in its flaws, it captured something HIMYM always did better than most: the bittersweetness of moving on.
