WARNING: Spoilers for the 2014 finale of How I Met Your Mother ahead, just to be safe
The finale for How I Met Your Mother and its final season as a whole earned some divisive opinions from critics and fans that stuck with the show through nine seasons. The finale aired back in 2014 and has lived on in infamy since then, right alongside Lost, The Sopranos, and other questionable finales from television’s history. There are plenty of conversations to have about the true worth of a finale and how it reflects on an entire series, but we haven’t reached that point for HIMYM yet. We’re still debating the route the finale took, this time thanks to Alyson Hannigan.
While some members of the cast defend the finale and are already fielding questions about a reunion, Hannigan shared disappointment with the way the show ended during an interview in Australia:
“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],” she explained.
“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!’”
“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?!’”
She adds that there was originally a funeral scene that was cut from the finale and more time to digest what was happening. Instead it went directly from meeting the titular mother, her demise, and Ted moving on to get with Robin. Speaking of Robin, the path the finale took wasn’t her only problem with how the series wrapped up:
“I didn’t think Barney should have ever gotten married,” she revealed.
“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.”
Barney’s divorce from Robin also seemed like a rushed decision in the finale, all to get to the point of Ted returning with that blue horn after all those years. You spent the entire final season at this wedding, only to have it negated by the very conclusion of the series. It’s not as bad as killing the mother, but it is just another questionable turn for the finale.
Of course, if you let Barney remain a wild bachelor, the show runs the risk of complaints about the character being one-dimensional. It’s really damned no matter what happens. We might’ve been better off if the show just ended with that rumored deleted ending, right before the mother appears.
(Via News.Com.AU / The AV Club)
