Last Forever (How I Met Your Mother)

Last Forever is the final episode of the CBS sitcom mh:besttvshows:How I Met Your Mother. The episode serves as the 23rd and 24th episode of season nine, and the 207th and 208th episode overall; the episode's two parts are classified as two separate episodes. It aired on March 31, 2014.

Why It Didn't Last Forever

 * 1) The Major Problem: The episode kills off the mother character. All the writers did was jump the shark just to have some terrible emotional moment. Her death is also just an excuse from the writers so Ted could date Robin.
 * 2) * Even worse, there is nothing that takes place after the mother's death. No funeral, no Ted mourning, no final moments together, no nothing. All we hear is "Oh, the mother's dead? Sucks, I guess... Hey, how's Robin doing?".
 * 3) *What makes this all the more upsetting is the fact that to whole point of the last two seasons was to show Ted moving on from Robin so that he can finally be happy with the mother.
 * 4) It undid everything that had taken place in the previous three or four seasons just so that Ted could start dating Robin again.
 * 5) This episode is full of horrible melodrama.
 * 6) The character of Ted Mosby is ruined, turning him from a hopeless romantic telling an amazingly beautiful story of how he met the mother of his children into some elaborate ploy to ask his kids' permission to pursue Robin again.
 * 7) Barney is also ruined. He knocked up a random woman (who didn't even appear in the episode) and ended up being the single father of a baby girl. His character development is reversed. Back to his old self again.
 * 8) *What makes that even worse is that we never meet the mother of Barney's kid. It would've been clever if it was a woman we already met in the previous seasons, but no. It's just some random woman that we never get to know.
 * 9) Ted is only telling the story of how he met the mother to his kids only to be with Robin again.
 * 10) Eventually, Barney and Robin divorce, practically making the entirety of season 9 pointless.
 * 11) While the alternate ending is way better, the problem with it is that it makes the final episode worse. Why the producers thought the ending where nearly everybody's character development amounts to nothing is beyond us.
 * 12) Overrall, It effectively destroyed not only the entire ninth season, but the entire show.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) As we previously stated, there's an alternate ending to this episode released on the 9th season DVD, where the mother is still alive and is still with Ted, and it's hinted that Barney and Robin will get back together.
 * 2) We finally get to know the mother's name. Tracy McConnell.
 * 3) At least Marshall and Lily's development throughout the series remains untouched.

Reception
"Last Forever" received a polarizing reaction from fans and critics alike, with the majority opinion being negative. It continues to be singled out as one of the worst series finales of all time. This finale damaged the careers and the reputations of Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, but also caused the spin-off, How I Met Your Dad never be picked up by CBS and other networks, when the script of the pilot was leaked online, was similar to the pilot of How I Met Your Mother.