Grade: C

And while the end of the show may have upset many viewers, it had to happen that way.

Viewers got to see how Ted met The Mother and what happened to the MacLaren’s gang after Barney and Robin’s wedding. The episode is told in a series of flashbacks and flash forwards, starting with a conversation from 2005 when Robin officially became a member of the group.

The show jumped all over, from The Mother telling Ted she’s having a baby, to Barney and Robin shocking the group by saying they got a divorce while in Argentina, to Barney, our bachelor for life, saying that while trying to achieve the “perfect month” [sleeping with a different girl each night of the month], he got one of them pregnant.

The gang, with the exception of Robin who started slipping away from the group, wait in the hospital, where Barney holds his daughter, Ellie, and says he has found what he was waiting for most in life and is a changed man. Later, Ted talks about how The Mother is sick and dies.

It’s 2030, and future Ted is finally done telling his children how he met their mother. They respond with wanting to know when he’s going to date Aunt Robin, causing him to steal a blue French horn, much like season one, and stand outside Robin’s apartment.

Overall, the finale is not what many fans expected and left them enraged. Why spend a season building up for a wedding that is ultimately going to end in divorce? Why tell fans a story for nine years about how much Ted loves the mother [named Tracy McConnell], only to have her die after they get married? Why do Ted’s children tell him to finally ask out “Aunt Robin?”

While it seems like a slap in the face to viewers, it makes complete sense. Life isn’t a fairy tale. Even to the seemingly best couples, divorce is always a possibility. Two people can love each other with all their hearts but sickness and death can still happen. Ted wanted to find love and he found it with two people from two different points in his life. He found love with Tracy, who he had children with, something he always wanted, and found love with Robin, who wanted to travel the world before settling down, which she did.

The hints that this would happen were dropped all throughout the show, and it ultimately unfolded in the final episode. This is how life really is.