The ending to this crafty little show is a bit controversial among fans.
At least each character got their own individual sendoff.
Here are the most important How I Met Your Mother character endings, ranked from worst to best.
As How I Met Your Mother's resident lothario, Barney Stinson, who's always clad in a crisp suit
and will stop at nothing to bed every woman in New York, seems like he'll never change his wild ways.
However, as the show progresses, Barney, who seemed the least likely of anyone to settle down,
realizes he's in love with Robin. To Ted's great shame, the feeling is — shockingly — mutual. After
several seasons of tumultuous on-again, off-again relationships, the two finally tie the knot,
and their wedding weekend becomes the sole focus of How I Met Your Mother's ninth and final season.
In the series finale, Barney goes through a ton of difficult changes,
and neither the character nor the audience is really given any time to process them.
After three difficult years of marriage, he and Robin apparently get divorced.
Robin returns to her career, and Barney returns to his old ways, until something
completely unexpected happens: He gets a girl pregnant and becomes the father of a daughter.
"You are the love of my life."
Suddenly, Barney becomes a judgmental horror, yelling at women in bars about
what their fathers might think and leaning into the "overprotective
dad" vibe with the zeal of a convert. Barney turns out to be a layered, complex character,
but his ending is oversimplified at best and flat-out offensive at worst.
After watching Ted spend nearly the entirety of How I Met Your Mother searching for the mother in
the title, expectations were high, and ultimately, they were met in full by Cristin Milioti's sweet,
pitch-perfect portrayal of Tracy McConnell. She meets Ted as they argue over an umbrella
they've both owned on a rainy train platform. Throughout the final season, we get small
glimpses into Ted and Tracy's relationship. We also finally learn about Tracy, a process of
viewer education that culminates in the standout ninth-season episode "How Your Mother Met Me."
After the show laid the groundwork of their relationship for the entire ninth season,
fans were enraged when, during the series finale, Tracy dies of an unnamed illness, and Ted moves
on. The entire series' framing device is revealed to be a guilty Ted telling his teenage children
about their dead mother — yikes. Thanks to the speed of the finale's overstuffed epilogue,
Ted's entire life with Tracy and her untimely death happens in a matter of minutes,
providing a pretty unfair ending to the show's eminently lovable title character.
On the surface, it seems like Robin has one of the best endings in all of How I
Met Your Mother. When you look closer, however, you can see the obvious flaws.
After her divorce from Barney, Robin becomes a famous international journalist,
constantly jet-setting around the world, but missing her friends. She finds it difficult
to be around the old gang again after her ex-husband gets back to his womanizing ways.
She continues her close relationship with Lily, and eventually finds her way back into the fray.
Not only does she go to Ted and Tracy's wedding, but she makes peace with Barney. By 2030,
Robin is anchored in New York once again. In the final scene, Ted shows up at her door to win her
back with the blessing of his talked-out teens. She finally gets everything she ever wanted, yes?
Clumsily shoving Robin and Ted together at the end of the series, which indicates that Robin,
a smart and strong woman, was pining for Ted this entire time, is just insulting to the
amazing character the showrunners built along the way. No matter how tumultuous her life had been,
the Robin that emerges from season 9 would not have settled for Ted.
Throughout the show, two characters hold an incredible amount of importance,
but almost never say a word: Ted's future children, Penny and Luke Mosby.
For what feels like years, Penny and Luke sit patiently and listen to their father's wildly
rambling story, which takes plenty of tangents and detours along the way before he actually gets to
the part about how he met their mother. Penny and Luke get to reveal the show's final twist,
and help their dad move on with his life in the aftermath of their mother's death.
"The point of the story is that-"
"Is that you totally, totally, totally have the hots for Aunt Robin."
Not only was that twist fairly unpopular,
but it was the only time in the show the kids had an actual say in the story.
Aside from Robin, one of Ted's girlfriends always loomed large over the series:
Victoria, the impossibly adorable baker Ted meets at a wedding during
the show's first season. Though the two immediately strike up a relationship,
everything is put on pause when Victoria gets the opportunity to move to Germany for work,
and while she's away, Ted cheats on her with Robin, ending the relationship for the first time.
During the seventh season, Victoria reappears, but makes it clear to Ted that his continued
involvement with Robin and Barney, despite the trio's awkward combination of romantic
entanglements, is just too weird. However, at the end of that season, Ted and Victoria reconnect
on the day of her wedding, and she leaves her boyfriend for him, restarting their relationship
once again. In the end, Ted and Victoria aren't meant to be, and Victoria returns to Germany after
she presents Ted with an ultimatum — that he must stop talking to Robin — and he refuses. At least
Victoria got to move abroad and keep living out her culinary dreams. We'll call it a win.
There's no denying that Ted Mosby gets one of the best endings of anybody on the show,
but considering how difficult his character can be to handle at times,
this is ultimately a pretty frustrating outcome. In the end,
Ted gets everything he wanted and then some, despite the fact that he shows himself to
be selfish, self-righteous, and entirely overbearing toward the women in his life.
Nice guys really do finish last, and emotionally manipulative soft boys sometimes notch a win.
After striking up a perfect-yet-doomed relationship with Tracy,
Ted seems entirely settled as a single Dad, and it seems as if he's put his idealistic,
stop-at-nothing romantic attitude in the rearview mirror. However, after his kids encourage him to
resume his quest for Robin, a graying Ted is back to his old tricks, standing outside
of Robin's window and triumphantly holding up the blue French horn he stole for her way back
in the first season. Ted may be the show's main character, but he can also be its most grating,
so to see him get both a perfect marriage and the woman of his dreams feels slightly unearned.
Out of everyone on How I Met Your Mother, few characters deserved a perfect ending as much as
Lily, the kind, sweet glue that holds the entire gang together time and time again. Lily always
looks out for her friends and loves her husband and baby son Marvin, but after spending years
as a kindergarten teacher, she finds herself yearning for greater professional achievement
later in life. Luckily, Lily gets offered the job of her dreams as an art consultant,
but unluckily...it requires moving to Italy, which causes friction between her and Marshall.
When push comes to shove, Lily and Marshall — along with Marvin and their newborn daughter
Daisy — do spend a year in Italy, which doesn't prevent Marshall from pursuing his dreams,
either. Later, they have a second daughter. After years of helping others,
from her students to her friends, Lily finally gets to live her
best life in Italy as a professional art consultant, a dream years in the making.
Far and away the sweetest character on the show,
Marshall Eriksen is defined by three things: his love for Lily, his devotion to his friends,
and his quest to save the world from certain doom as an environmental lawyer.
Marshall's ambitions finally pay off when — during the show's ninth and final season — his
application to become a judge is approved, and he is offered a recently vacated seat on the
bench. This incites a rift between Marshall and Lily, however, as he doesn't immediately tell
her that their move to Italy conflicts with his opportunity to become a New York judge.
In the end, when Marshall finds out Lily is pregnant with Daisy, he immediately agrees to
follow her to Italy, and continues working in corporate law until another seat on the bench
opens up for him. Happily, one does upon their return to New York, and Marshall is ultimately
elected to the New York State Supreme Court in 2020, fulfilling his dreams of helping the world.
The only recurring character on How I Met Your Mother to appear in all of the show's
nine seasons, driver Ranjit Singh is present for nearly every significant moment in each
main character's life. This also means Ranjit is present for a lot of the gang's immature nonsense,
including plenty of fights and squabbles, and even a bizarre subplot where Lily inadvertently reveals
that she had a sex dream about Ranjit, much to Marshall's shock and disgust.
After years of driving what appears to be the same five people around New York City
and the surrounding area, Future Ted reveals in season 9 that Ranjit
ultimately starts an incredibly successful limousine group and gets rich.
That's great, because no one on this show deserves happiness more than Ranjit.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus,
even more Looper videos about your favorite TV shows are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.