Unpopular Opinion: The ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Finale Was Actually Pretty Great

If you think that everyone agrees on certain things in pop culture, think again! Whether it’s a different side of the love triangle, a hated character that should be loved, or a beloved show that should be hated, we’re taking a no holds barred approach in order to push our very unpopular opinions on you.

UNPOPULAR OPINION: The How I Met Your Mother series finale is actually pretty great.

WHAT PEOPLE USUALLY THINK: The series finale was a cheap way to make Robin and Ted end up together. After nine long seasons of speculating and wondering about who the mysterious — and apparently perfect — mother would be, viewers ended up coming face to face with the mother, Tracy, in the final season of the show.

The glee of meeting the character who stole Ted Mosby’s heart (which isn’t that hard, the dude really wanted to find love) was short lived when she suddenly died in the show’s finale. The final moments of HIMYM are a near duplication of a scene in the pilot when Ted shows up at Robin’s apartment hoping for a chance at love. Viewers tend to hate this, saying that they waited too long to see Ted happy only for him to end up sad and basically in the same place he was in at the end of the pilot episode.

WHY THOSE PEOPLE ARE WRONG: The finale has everything that made fans fall in love with the show in the first place: Barney’s catch phrases, Robin and Lily’s adorable dorkiness, and Ted’s ever present optimism. It also has everything that makes a finale great: growth, closure, and possibilities for the future.

Ted went through the ringer throughout the series trying to find his wife. He eventually finds it in Tracy and the two have kids and appear to make a beautiful life. That is until Tracy gets sick and dies and Ted ends up with his OG love, Robin.

I won’t deny that on first watch of this finale I felt betrayed by the whole thing. How could we meet the titular mother and have her be gone just as fast? Why did I give so many years of my life to this show only to have solving the ever present mystery become a moot point?

But, when I re-watched both the finale and the pilot, I realized that this was an ending that I could’ve never predicted, but that was utterly perfect. In the pilot Ted falls in insta-love with Robin. As much as that can be overdone, annoying, or unrealistic, somehow it just always worked. So much so that, after their first date, he declares, “I have found the future Mrs. Ted Mosby!” He even professes his love to Robin that same night.

This left the audience with the thought that the whole series would be Ted and Robin’s love story. Though that ended up being true, it was in a way no one could have predicted. At the end of the pilot Ted tells his kids, “I never thought I’d see that girl again, but it turns out I was just too close to the puzzle to see the picture that was forming. Because that kids is the true story about how I met your Aunt Robin.”

When the finale finally comes around Ted is heard telling his kids, “Right when I met your mom I knew. I have to love this women as much as I can for as long as I can and I can never stop loving her. Not even for a second.”

That’s exactly what he did. He loved Tracy with his whole heart and for her whole life. There was no part of Ted that was pining for Robin all the years that he was devoted to Tracy. The thought that we only get one true love is utterly depressing. Is there really just one person out of seven billion that we could be happy with? Ted got two true loves and two chances at a cheesy happily ever after.

To anyone that is still not convinced, Ted’s daughter herself realized the real female lead of her dad’s story after hearing his multi-year long tale. “You made us sit down and listen to this story about how you met mom, yet mom’s hardly in the story. No this is a story about how you’re totally in love with Aunt Robin and you’re thinking about asking her out.”

And ask her out he does. In a way that’s pretty near perfect and in a way only Ted Mosby can — with a dopey smile and a blue french horn.

[Where to stream How I Met Your Mother]