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New York, year 2030.
Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) is a 50-something architect and professor, father of two teenagers. He asks his kids to sit on the couch, because he’s gonna tell them an incredible story. The story of how he met their mother. To do it, he needs to flashback to year 2005, starting from the evening his friends Marshall and Lily (Jason Segel and Alyson Hannigan, who also starred as Michelle in the American Pie movie series) got engaged. That very same night, with the help of his friend Barney (actor, magician and showman Neil Patrick Harris), he met Robin (Cobie Smulders), a young journalist who would steal both their hearts.
Watching episode 1 is enough to understand the whole story, but we couldn’t know it back then. At least, I didn’t know it, because I belong to that part of fandom who trusts executive producers blindly and refuses to see all the evidences they throw on our faces. And yes, they did it, let’s be honest. As I was saying, since the end of episode 1.
And that, kids, is the real story of how I met...your aunt Robin, says future Ted, laughing and inviting his kids to relax, because their mother would pop up in the story any time soon.
And she did, eight long years later.
She had been dreamt, waited for, talked about. The Mother was finally introduced at the end of season 8, and became a series regular during season 9. She remained unnamed, though, even when she met Barney, Lily, Marshall and Robin before getting to her future husband, who was ready to leave and start a new life in Chicago.
But she didn’t need a name to gain the hearts of the audience.
We learnt to know this sweet, dorky, nerdy 20-something woman who loves knitting, medieval fairs and making her breakfast sing (One-tasty English muffin-maybe this is what I am-dadadadadadada) and we couldn’t help but being overwhelmed by her irony and sensitivity, which convey strength to Cristin Milioti’s acting.
Carter Bays and Craig Thomas made us love the Mother, but apparently, she didn’t fit their plans.
After showing the way to the wedding bells to the former womanizer Barney, offering Lily dumbitches cookies to cheer her up, saving Marshall from an endless walk at night and preventing Robin’s escape from her own wedding, the future Mrs Mosby didn’t seem to deserve her happy ending.
She died in 2024, after an illness we will never know anything about. A quick hospital scene with a voice over was all they gave the viewers to process such big information.
No death scene, no funeral, no mourning scenes, no closure.
At least, that’s what I thought after watching this bitter sweet finale for the first time.
During the past seven years I have rewatched this last episode a million times, and then the truth finally came to my mind.
There are no mourning scenes, because the whole damn story is nothing but a way of Ted’s to elaborate his loss.
But still, How I met Your Mother’s finale turned out to be a slap on the fandom’s face; a rain of reality, a pain that was harder to elaborate, maybe harder then it was for the Mosby Kids, Penny and Luke, who show no particular attachment to their mother during all of their scenes.
«We don’t buy it» they say «this is not the story of how you met mom. This is the story of how you totally have the hots for aunt Robin» and «come on dad, mom has been gone for six years. it’s time».
But we, the audience, had bought it, because we had waited for Tracy for nine years. She had been gone for, like, thirty seconds, and there Ted was, stealing another blue French horn and going back to the love of his youth, the woman who never wanted kids nor marriage, who never loved him back and who was never able to stop in a city to settle down.
Sometimes that’s how reality goes and well, reality sucks.
The good girl has to die; leaving two young kids and a husband. And that’s why Last forever: part two is the mother of all unhappy endings. This show used to be about hope, emotional endurance and the collateral poetry of love, but there’s nothing of it in Ted going back to Robin in 2030.
There is no magic in gaining your ex back after the death of your soulmate.
This is not predestination, but reheated soup.
And of course, bays and Thomas not having the guts to change a finale they had decided since day one.
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