TMC
04-01-2019, 01:29 AM
https://screenrant.com/how-met-mother-ending-perfect-controversial-finale-underrated/2/?utm_source=quora&utm_medium=referral
And so we get to the heart of the How I Met Your Mother ending: Ted actually meeting Tracy. This was the moment that had been teased since the very first episode, and taken in pure isolation delivers better than anybody could have imagined. A lot of legwork has been done through season 9 thanks to the showstopping casting of Cristin Milioti as the perfect wife for the dorky, driven Ted Mosby, but it's a lot more than just the actors.
Everything that had been established as core backstory to the Mother and how she met Ted is incorporated: the Yellow Umbrella's importance teased throughout seasons 3-5, the Econ 305 mishap from season 5's premiere, Ted's brief time dating roommate Cindy in 100th episode "Girls vs. Suits", and the other side shown in "How Your Mother Met Me" are not just namechecked but integrated into that fateful conversation. It's TV writing at its best, with big picture storytelling and effortless dialogue giving fans the short version of the story as always imagined (and scoring it to Everything But The Girl's "Downtown Train" cover adds the right level of wistful melancholy).
But, of course, the moment isn't just the meeting. Mere seconds before, How I Met Your Mother dropped its biggest twist: that the Mother has been dead this entire time. Tracy died in 2024 as a result of some undefined illness. If you'd been paying attention, then this shouldn't have been too much of a surprise; the end of "The Time Travellers", where Ted imagines going to the Mother and getting "those extra 45 days", is tinged with assumed loss, and when telling how Robin's mother turning up at the wedding in season 9's "Vesuvius", Ted cries at Tracy's insinuation "what mother will miss her daughter's wedding?" This was a popular fan theory, one Milioti had to go as far as deny.
The point of this discussion is to highlight just how unshakably complete How I Met Your Mother's mother meeting actually was. It had been foreshadowed so much yet from casting to the moment itself to a final twist was so carefully threaded into the ending. Although if we're talking the careful build-up of a series redefining twist, it's less the Mother's death that's the biggie than it is what she represents.
And so we get to the heart of the How I Met Your Mother ending: Ted actually meeting Tracy. This was the moment that had been teased since the very first episode, and taken in pure isolation delivers better than anybody could have imagined. A lot of legwork has been done through season 9 thanks to the showstopping casting of Cristin Milioti as the perfect wife for the dorky, driven Ted Mosby, but it's a lot more than just the actors.
Everything that had been established as core backstory to the Mother and how she met Ted is incorporated: the Yellow Umbrella's importance teased throughout seasons 3-5, the Econ 305 mishap from season 5's premiere, Ted's brief time dating roommate Cindy in 100th episode "Girls vs. Suits", and the other side shown in "How Your Mother Met Me" are not just namechecked but integrated into that fateful conversation. It's TV writing at its best, with big picture storytelling and effortless dialogue giving fans the short version of the story as always imagined (and scoring it to Everything But The Girl's "Downtown Train" cover adds the right level of wistful melancholy).
But, of course, the moment isn't just the meeting. Mere seconds before, How I Met Your Mother dropped its biggest twist: that the Mother has been dead this entire time. Tracy died in 2024 as a result of some undefined illness. If you'd been paying attention, then this shouldn't have been too much of a surprise; the end of "The Time Travellers", where Ted imagines going to the Mother and getting "those extra 45 days", is tinged with assumed loss, and when telling how Robin's mother turning up at the wedding in season 9's "Vesuvius", Ted cries at Tracy's insinuation "what mother will miss her daughter's wedding?" This was a popular fan theory, one Milioti had to go as far as deny.
The point of this discussion is to highlight just how unshakably complete How I Met Your Mother's mother meeting actually was. It had been foreshadowed so much yet from casting to the moment itself to a final twist was so carefully threaded into the ending. Although if we're talking the careful build-up of a series redefining twist, it's less the Mother's death that's the biggie than it is what she represents.