[EpsilonX]

Incoming long post with tons of spoilers. I'm not going to tag any of them so don't read it if you haven't seen the finale. TURN AWAY

Here goes.

To start, i'm glad Barney and Robin divorced. From when they got engaged in season 8, all the way up until the actual wedding, they kept dropping hints that there was a lot of tension in the relationship and that the wedding would not end well. The wedding happened and made you think that they resolved their differences, but they ended up getting divorced. I could never get behind Barney and Robin, so this makes sense to me. Barney then reverted to his old ways, which I know bothers a lot of people, but it makes sense to me. Barney spent most of his life as a player, and when he finally settles down and marries somebody, it doesn't work. I can totally believe that he would lose faith in marriage (and relationships in general) and revert to his old ways. He became broken, and had to fill the void in his life, which was eventually filled by him having a child. Barney and Robin's arc made sense and I liked it. Lilly and marshall I have no real opinion on, since their ending was pretty standard.

Now, the mother. We spend an entire season getting to know her and like her, and then she dies. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with the fact that they just made it happen and moved on. It made it seem like she wasn't really that important in Ted's life, which you could argue that she wasn't, but that sort of cheapens the entire thing to me. It seems like they spent a lot of time setting up how much he loved her and how he would have done anything for her, so why couldn't they at least show a scene of him grieving her? Either him at the funeral, or Marshall trying to cheer him up, or something. It would have made their relationship seem more legitimate and important to the series, and would have made the Robin ending a little bit better too.

As for Ted and Robin, I'm glad that they ended up together. It brings the entire series full circle, and the pilot makes a bit more sense. Lots of people i've talked to seem to think that putting them together de-values Ted's relationship with the mother, which I disagree with. It was clear that he really loved the mother, but she died and he had to move on. Going back to Robin made sense, since he always had feelings for her. I do think this part was a bit rushed, though, and could have been handled better.

I don't see why they tried to cram 17 years into 2 episodes, but spread out 3 days across 22 episodes. Season 9 could have been truly special had they spread everything out better. I don't mind what they did though, because the finale was a crazy good episode.