How I Met Your Mother mastered the art of a build-up to a particular event that had audiences in its hooks for years — but when they reached that event, it was a disaster, which maybe could have been fixed if the series had ended earlier. How I Met Your Mother was a popular sitcom from 2005 to 2014, chronicling the years leading up to Ted (Josh Radnor) meeting the mother of his children. Additionally, about midway through the series, the narrative gives us another end-point event, which it gradually reveals.

How I Met Your Mother also heavily revolves around the love triangle of Ted, Robin (Cobie Smulders), and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), while their stable, always-in-love friends Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Marshall (Jason Segel) spectate as they move forward in their married and professional lives. The Barney and Robin mess wasn't the show's strength, arguably because of its failure to commit to one and romanticizing of the other. The show would have been better off if it hadn't drawn out one (or both).

I Knew HIMYM Needed To End After Watching "The End Of The Aisle" For The First Time

The Wedding Storyline Dragged On, & The Finale Didn't Pay It Off

At the beginning of How I Met Your Mother season 6, the show first hints at a wedding happening at some point in the future, where Ted is the best man. It also confirms then that Ted will meet the mother at the wedding. In one season finale, it is revealed that Barney is the groom; in the next, we see that Robin is the bride. More details about the event slowly come to light. It was clear that the wedding would play a huge role in how the show eventually ended, but they shouldn't have bet so much on it.

The wedding became a plot device to keep the show going, which turned out to be the whole point of it, something that started to become clear in the episode "At the End of the Aisle." The writers spent years building up to the consecutive events of Robin and Barney tying the knot and Ted meeting the mother. However, the wedding itself is anticlimactic and probably shouldn't have happened at all. Had the actual meeting with the mother been moved up to an earlier season, everything could have worked out much better with a shorter series overall.

Why Barney & Robin's Wedding Was So Disappointing After Years Of Waiting

The Way Barney & Robin's Wedding Plays Out Makes It Clear The Writers Didn't Care About Their Relationship Lasting

Whether Robin should have married Barney at all is the subject of another debate, when his womanizing behavior is the aspect of the show that has aged the worst. Regardless, How I Met Your Mother invested a lot into the build-up to the wedding and the arguments that Ted and Robin weren't meant for each other. Having the weekend wedding for a whole season was a bold choice, but the show wasn’t really in trouble until the episode with the actual ceremony. The plot of this episode ends up being almost entirely about Robin getting cold feet, and she and Barney barely get married.

Then, right after this episode, Barney and Robin get divorced, right before Ted reveals that Tracy ed away a few years before he is telling the story. Ultimately, in "At the End of the Aisle," Robin and Barney’s wedding is treated as another hurdle, rather than a romantic finale. It calls into question what the point of the wedding was at all, which was to extend the series and facilitate the love triangle drama that preludes Ted meeting Tracy. But had they just focused on him meeting Tracy for probably six or seven seasons, Barney and Robin's arcs could have had different conclusions.

This How I Met Your Mother Episode Set Up The Controversial Series Finale

The Wedding Told Us That The Finale Would Be About Robin & Ted

How the wedding is characterized by last-minute doubts goes straight into what this series was actually supposed to be about: that this romance was a mistake, and if Robin were smart, she would have accepted all that Ted was offering. Viewers aren't rewarded for following the wedding storyline for years when the show has done all it can to convince them to care about it. The How I Met Your Mother finale still lives in infamy, and you can break down why this is many times. Ultimately, it is because the show wasted our time in more ways than one.