For nine seasons and 208 episodes (all of which are now streaming on Netflix), How I Met Your Mother left us wondering one thing: How in the world did hopeless romantic Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) meet the mother of his children? If you put the premise of your show right there in the title, there better be a big payoff at some point. When How I Met Your Mother wrapped up its tale of love, friendship, and legen — wait for it — dary long-running jokes in New York City, series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas left very few questions unanswered (including that one about the titular mother).
While that mystery certainly loomed large over the series, How I Met Your Mother became much more about the enduring friendships between five people during formative times in their lives. In the end, we wanted to know what would happen not just to Ted and the Mother, but to the rest of the gang, too. The two-part series finale, which aired on March 31, 2014, covers it all: It hops through time to show us not only the highly-anticipated meeting, but what happens after, and what’s in store for Marshall Eriksen (Jason Segel), Lily Aldrin (Alyson Hannigan), Barney Stinson (Neil Patrick Harris), and Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) until we wind up in 2030 where Ted (now voiced by Bob Saget) is telling this very story to his two teenage children. So, do we find out all the details as to how and when Ted meets the mother? You bet your yellow umbrella we do — but we also find out so much more, including how several flash-forwards we’ve already seen tie together. Let’s revisit “Last Forever: Part One” and “Last Forever: Part Two” to find out exactly how this story –– nine years in the making –– came to a conclusion.
HIMYM fans may recall that the entire final season of the show took place over Barney and Robin’s wedding weekend in 2013. Technically, the Mother’s identity is officially revealed in the Season 8 finale, when we watch a woman (Cristin Milioti) carrying the yellow umbrella we’ve known since Season 3 belongs to the Mother, buying a train ticket to head up to Farhampton the same weekend the gang is headed there for the wedding. Over the course of Season 9, we see glimpses of her and Ted’s future together, and in the present, the Mother meets several of the other characters — she winds up being the bass player in the wedding band.
But How I Met Your Mother saves their first meeting until the very end of the finale.
Ted sees her at the reception and is instantly drawn to her — Barney even tries to introduce the two of them, knowing they’d be perfect for one another — but it’s not to be. Ted has to head to the train station to get back to New York; he’s moving to Chicago the next day. That’s Ted’s plan anyway — the universe has a different one. After waiting 45 minutes for this train in the rain, who should appear on the platform but that very same bass player, standing under her yellow umbrella. He works up the courage to say hello and they hit it off, realizing all the ways they have been connected to each other for years, little clues we’ve been privy to along the way. You can see in their faces immediately that this is something special. Suffice to say, Ted does not move to Chicago the next day because, as he tells a surprised Lily and Marshall, he met a girl. She’s not just any girl, of course, she’s Tracy McConnell, the future mother of his children.
Two years after Ted and Tracy meet, they’re engaged, but in a flash-forward to 2015, we learn they have to postpone the wedding because Tracy’s pregnant. In fact, it takes the two of them seven years and two kids to finally get hitched in 2020. As Ted tells his kids, he’s happy that it was such a long and sometimes difficult road to get to Tracy because it taught him an invaluable lesson that he followed from the moment he met her: “I have to love this woman as much as I can for as long as I can, and I can never stop loving her, not even for a second.” It was invaluable because, as it turns out, Ted and Tracy’s time together is short-lived: In 2024, Tracy dies from an unspecified illness. No amount of clues or signs from the universe could prepare anyone for watching that twist play out.
During the course of Robin and Barney’s wedding, Marshall turns down a judgeship, his dream job, so that Lily can have her dream job as an art consultant in Rome. The gig only lasts a year, and we check in with them again in 2016, back in New York and about to have their third child. That October, they decide to throw one last rager of a Halloween party and move out of the apartment. In 2018, we learn that Marshall will finally become a judge — that’s Judge Fudge, to you — and things go so well that by 2020, he’s running for State Supreme Court. He’ll be taking the name Fudge Supreme now, thank you very much. Of course, we already know he wins that race thanks to a (very drunk) flash-forward in Season 9’s “Rally.”
Surprise! Three years after their wedding, these two get divorced. Robin’s career with World Wide News takes off and she’s sent all over the globe. The two of them are miserable in that situation, and, quite amicably, decide to end things. They promise it won’t change anything, but well, you can guess how well that works out.
Barney returns to his womanizing ways until something quite unexpected happens: One of his hookups during his “perfect month” winds up pregnant and he has a daughter named Ellie in 2020. Tearfully, he holds her in his arms and says to her the thing he swore he’d never say to a woman upon first sight: “You are the love of my life. Everything I have and everything I am is yours forever.”
Robin tries to stay close with the gang, but finds it too difficult to be around not just Barney, but a happily-in-love Ted, who, she tells Lily, is the guy she “probably should’ve ended up with.” She breaks Lily’s heart by cutting herself out of the group. It’s not forever, though: Robin bumps into Ted with his daughter Penny (Cristina N. Rose) on the street one day and then eventually shows up for Ted and Tracy’s wedding. The gang’s back together.
When Ted ends his story with “and that, kids, is how I met your mother,” his kids call bull. That was very much a long and meandering story about how Ted is completely in love with their Aunt Robin — almost as if he wants their permission to finally go for it. It’s been six years since their mom died and Ted is never happier than when Robin is around, of course he needs to go for it, they tell him.
And so Ted does. He runs to Robin’s apartment and in a callback to the pilot episode, Robin opens up her window and finds Ted standing on the street holding that blue French horn from the restaurant where they had their very first date.
