Monty Brinton/CBS
SPOILER ALERT: Before you read this post, down a shot of wheatgrass juice and watch last night’s How I Met Your Mother.
So. That didn’t happen.
Alan Sepinwall already has a post up arguing that the breakup is just as well, because ultimately we don’t really care how and when Ted meets the mother. I can ditto that at least partly: for my part, I mainly just didn’t care whether Stella was the mother. Unlike Ted’s relationship with Robin, the show invested more energy in having them fall in love than in being a credible couple together: generally, either she was out of the picture or they were fighting, so it’s hard to feel a great deal of loss if this is the end of things.
On the other hand, with Stella out of the picture, Barney having rediscovered his feelings for Robin (which conveniently receded the last couple episodes) and Robin back stateside expressing ambiguous feelings about Ted, it presents the possibility of a Ross-Joey-Rachel situation.
Still, I’m sad to see Robin back. I want to see more of that crazy Japanese newscast with the marshmallow-throwing monkey and the winking bunny logo.