WARNING SPOILERS BELOW: 

This final season of How I Met Your Mother has been very hit or miss, but I had high hopes for the finale. And unfortunately, my hopes were dashed about ten minutes into the episode.

Although the entire final season took place over the weekend of Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin’s (Cobie Smulders) wedding, the couple announced their divorce not even half an hour into the show.  So all of the character development they had Barney go through to become different than the womanizer he once was went down the drain. They had him become the same guy- if not worse, than he was in season 1. He was rude, he again had little to no respect for women. And every positive personality trait he had gained through his relationship with Robin went away almost as fast as their marriage collapsed.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

With about five minutes to spare in the final episode Future Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) continued on about how much he loved his children’s mother…and how he stayed with her when she got sick.

Wait, what?

He told them about how he met her at the train station after Barney and Robin’s wedding and we were shown the moment we’d been waiting for the entire series.

Now, you’d expect it would fade to black and roll credits there, right?

Unfortunately, you’re wrong.

Instead, we saw an older Ted say the words “And kids, that’s how I met your mother.”

Within the next minute, it was revealed that Ted was telling the kids the story about meeting her because she’s been dead for six years.

So there’s the first slap in the face the audience was given.

The next?

Ted’s kids basically ignored all of the things they had just learned about their deceased mother and told him that they can tell the story was really about how much he loves Robin. This leads to Ted running out the door of their home and the next scene is him holding the blue french horn outside Robin’s apartment window. From there it faded to black and credits rolled for the final time. So after years of the tension between Ted and Robin and despite proving that they just don’t work together, they’re given their happily ever after.

And that is how you ruin nine years of a show.

Maybe I’m being too dramatic, but this was not at all the finale I hoped for. It’s left me extremely disappointed.  And to be honest, it just feels cheap. The audience was basically cheated out of seeing Ted find his soulmate. The title of the show is How I Met Your Mother so why wouldn’t we expect it to end with that beautiful scene at the train station? We’d been waiting for that moment for nine years. And we got it, but at a high cost. The Mother being dead shows that she was nothing more than a plot device to give Ted the kids he wanted (we found out in season 7 that Robin can’t have kids). She was perfect for him in every way, but unfortunately the writers’ decided the Ross and Rachel- esque (will they or won’t they get together) tension between Ted and Robin was a better story.

The finale doesn’t completely ruin all of the amazing moments the series had. But it will forever leave a sour taste in the mouths of its fans.