Note: Major spoilers ahead. 
Within about five minutes of the How I Met Your Mother series finale, I was already tearing up. Ted Mosby, who we’ve followed for nine years through multiple failed relationships on his way to meeting his future wife, stood outside with his five best friends. It was the night before he was moving to Chicago, and the gang was saying goodbye. After nine years with these characters, the end was finally here.
It’s been a rocky road to meeting the mother (whose name was revealed to be Tracy tonight) for Ted. He’s dated countless women over the course of the series, and been in love with his best friend and on-again-off-again girlfriend Robin Scherbatsky the whole time. However, the show implied, his true love was still out there.
Like Ted’s road to romance, there have been similarly rocky patches for HIMYM. Critical reception of the show has declined steadily in recent years, and the show has begun to rely more on its fans’ nostalgia to make its jokes land and its emotional moments stick.
So when the finale began, I was excited to see that in many ways the final episode was a return to form for the show. The acting felt genuine and moving (in part a result of the close bond the actors have developed over the nine years working together). The jokes stuck. And though at times disorienting, the pacing was engaging and interesting, jumping throughout the years to significant points in the gang’s future.
In many ways, the finale was a love letter to HIMYM’s loyal viewers. We got to witness events that had been teased to us for years — Marshall becoming a judge, Barney finally cleaning up his act in an unexpected way and, of course, the iconic moment that Ted and the mother meet. After loving these characters for nine seasons, seeing them reach their potential and finish their story lines was moving and bittersweet.
However, as the hour-long finale continued, I began to feel that I was being cheated. After spending an entire season on Barney and Robin’s wedding (and countless more episodes establishing them as a couple), the pair was broken up within 15 minutes of the finale.
Though I had mixed feelings about some aspects of the episode, seeing Ted finally being with Tracy was enough to make the finale worthwhile for me. After watching cycles of Ted declaring his love for Robin only to be rejected for nine seasons, finally seeing him with the right girl felt, well, right.
Then, HIMYM revealed that Tracy had died six years before Ted started telling the story of how he met her to his kids. The real reason he was telling the story, as Ted’s kids joyfully declared, was to tell them that he loved Robin.
As a viewer, it was hard not to feel like I had been conned by the writers. After nine seasons of building up to how Ted met his wife, to have him end up with Robin felt like all of it had been for nothing. As Lily said during Ted’s wedding, the road had been long, but he finally got there. The same can be said for HIMYM. However, sometimes the end isn’t always worth the wait.