One of the main criticisms of the How I Met Your Mother finale is that the writers threw away nine years of character development and great storytelling for an ending that might have made sense in Season 1, but did not account for the way the characters and story had evolved over the course of nine seasons.

This scene compilation attempts to dispel that myth by showing that the ending was on the minds of the writers throughout the series, particularly in the last three seasons. I have also included a few misunderstood scenes (such as the letting go scene in “Sunrise”) that many feel contradicted the ending to show that, in reality, these scenes are actually consistent with the ending.