In the world of audience reactions to high-profile TV finales, How I Met Your Mother falls somewhere in the Seinfeld tier of generalized disappointment (and just below the level of outright outrage aimed at shows like Battlestar Galactica or Lost). Although some fans were happy enough to accept the finale’s twists—Barney and Robin get married, then divorced, the Mother dies, and Ted ends up with Robin, after finally releasing his children from their years of couch-based bondage—others filled the pages of the internet with their discontent. Now, another voice has added to the murmurs (because some pains linger, even three years after the series ends): co-star Alyson Hannigan.
Hannigan gave a recent interview to news.com.au, allowing her disappointment with the show’s finale to finally bubble to the surface. Although she expressed some ‘shipper’s discontent with the Barney-Robin relationship that took up much of the show’s later seasons, her real displeasure was in the length of the series’ send-off. “It just seemed too quick,” Hannigan said, saying she wishes the show had gotten a full two hours to say goodbye. “Obviously it was a tear-jerker, but with all the stuff that got cut out it was too fast…Like ‘OK, now we’re going to find out the mum’s dead, then suddenly, OK—he’s with Robin now’, and you’re just like, ‘Wait, what happened?!’” The table read for the final episode was apparently massive, and included a scenes at the Mother’s funeral to ease the audience into its final reality. ”There was a funeral scene, and all this stuff that I think the audience needed.” Hannigan said. “They needed that time to process that information, instead of having it slap them in the face.”