Still sore about How I Met Your Mother’s ending? Josh Radnor weighs in

There’s a shortlist of sitcom endings that properly stuck in the public’s craw, and How I Met Your Mother isn’t just on it, it’s staring out from the top. Seinfeld? Sure, but HIMYM and its "Last Forever" finale reached a level of fan outrage that’s barely faded, even now in 2026. Most of that comes down to the show selling itself as one thing for nine years—then, in the space of twenty minutes, yanking the rug and revealing that was never the plan at all.

How I Met Your Mother’s alternate ending only appeared on the home video release after a wave of backlash hit the original finale in 2014.

Now, Josh Radnor—the unlucky actor forced to narrate his own show’s legacy—has been reliving it all over again for a year on How We Made Your Mother, the recap podcast he co-hosts with Craig Thomas. And, just to add to the punishment, Radnor’s also back in the headlines after popping up on the Half the Picture podcast, confirming the cast is “not even a little bit” close anymore. Pleasant, that.

“It’s a show about love and death”

So, Radnor’s been reflecting on the series’ divisive goodbye. He joked—fully aware of what he was walking into—that the internet would leap on anything he said about the finale. But in all seriousness, it’s possible he’s never given a clearer justification for how everything played out. For those dusty on the details: over two parts, "Last Forever" reveals the titular mother, Tracy, had been dead for years by the time Ted started spinning his yarn. The story hadn’t really been about “meeting the mother” at all. Instead, after nine seasons, it turns out to be a convoluted preamble to Ted asking his kids for permission to make another go of it with Robin. Meanwhile, after spending all of Season 9 on Barney and Robin’s wedding, the show torpedoes their marriage in an instant—because why not?

It’s become the stuff of sitcom legend: angry fans, storylines retconned for shock, an alternate ending rushed out on DVD. HIMYM never quite made the leap into comfort rewatch territory—unlike The Office or Friends—partly because this ending seems stuck to it like a bad smell.

But Radnor shared on the podcast that one particular listener—who’d recently been widowed and was raising her young child alone—sent a voice note about the finale that changed the way he thought about it. And his wife, clinical psychologist Jordana Jacobs, helped nudge him further in that direction, since her own PhD thesis focused on how knowing death is out there only deepens our relationships. Radnor’s conclusion? Here’s how he actually summed it up during that appearance:

“I think all great works of art are about love and death.”

He also repeated a point from Alek Lev, the original podcast producer: fans lashed out because death—proper, permanent loss—smashed its way into a sitcom world they’d been counting on for escapism. He adds, almost bluntly, that the finale is “aging well”—in other words, as the show’s original twenty- and thirtysomething fans get older, the sting doesn’t feel quite as raw. Or at least, having actually lost loved ones since, they approach the story differently. As Radnor put it, the finale will just keep looking different as people grow up.

Execution vs. Intent

Of course, the fairest complaint has always been about execution. The writing spent all but a year cementing Barney and Robin—then has them split up with all the subtlety of a brick through a window. Not helping matters: the ending itself was preordained, with those infamous “kids on the couch” scenes shot in Series 2 so the actors didn’t age—and from that point onwards, the puzzle couldn’t be solved any differently. Radnor’s interpretation dances neatly around whether that was smart storytelling or a disaster, but after a decade of fresh context, his analysis carries a bit more weight than it once did.

The podcast rewatch has gone properly honest too—March even saw Neil Patrick Harris admit he sometimes thought Radnor was actually annoyed with him on set; Radnor, for his part, blamed Barney more than the actor.

Oh, and for any gluttons for punishment: How I Met Your Father, the Hulu spin-off, got canned in 2023 without ever revealing its own surprise parent. That leaves HIMYM’s ending as the only one in town—and whatever you think of it, it looks like it’s final.

The Cast

• Josh Radnor played Ted Mosby, the sentimental architect and unreliable narrator.
• Jason Segel as Marshall Eriksen, Ted’s best mate and arguably the heart of the group.
• Alyson Hannigan played Lily Aldrin, Marshall’s wife and the group’s pseudo-mother.
• Neil Patrick Harris starred as Barney Stinson, both a cartoon and, somehow, the show’s breakout.
• Colbie Smulders as Robin Scherbatsky, career-driven and repeatedly the actual centre of Ted’s universe.