I remember watching “How I Met Your Mother” (“HIMYM”) with a friend of mine back in 2008, during season three when Ted and Robin’s relationship was fresh in our minds and our hearts.  We lamented the fact that the creators of the series, beloved Wes alums Carter Bays ’97 and Craig Thomas ’97, did not have the foresight to make Robin the titular mother.  We whined about what a perfect couple Ted and Robin made and how them dancing into the sunset would be the only ending to the series that would make sense. Oh, how foolish and naive we were. I guess this is a simple case of “be careful what you wish for,” because we could not have anticipated the shitstorm that was waiting for us at the end of the road in March 2014.

A couple of weeks ago, the final episode of “HIMYM” aired, and the Internet exploded with rants and comments on every blog and message board fans could find. Spoiler alert (although I’d honestly be surprised if you haven’t heard by now): Ted does finally meet The Mother, but within the next hour of screentime, she dies, Barney and Robin get divorced, and Ted presents that iconic blue horn one more time as he and Robin rekindle their love. My 2008 self would have loved this ending and cried tears of joy watching this generation’s Ross and Rachel finally get together. Yet my 2014 self, like the rest of hyper-invested TV fans, was upset by the finale, and rightfully so.

My friend and I were hoping for a happy Ted-and-Robin ending six years ago. Think about how different things were in 2008. Bush was still president. Michael Jackson was still alive. We were all still making “Slumdog Millionaire” references.  Over time, people change, relationships grow, and television series evolve. Ted and Robin may have made perfect sense together earlier in the series, but we have since watched nine years of developing storylines that led us away from our early dreams of their happy ending.

Bays and Thomas have acknowledged that they decided exactly how the series would end back in 2006, and have used this foresight as a bragging point. Maybe they could brag about that if they had carefully planned and organized each detail of the series around this predetermined finale, but alas, they did not. By the final seasons, the series went in a totally different direction (as television series are wont to do), so the Ted-and-Robin ending felt like the creators were stubbornly shoving their formerly workable idea down viewers’ throats.

We spent the entire final season at Barney and Robin’s wedding. Please allow me to rephrase this for emphasis: we spent 24 episodes—12 hours of television—at the wedding of a couple that the creators convinced us to root for. And then, in the scene after their first dance as a married couple, they got divorced.

During those final 12 hours of television, we also spent time getting to know and falling in love with The Mother. The creators presented us with a very specific picture of these characters, one that was pointing toward a story about Ted and The Mother as one couple and Barney and Robin as another. And yet the finale completely flipped that on its head, acting as if the last nine years of development never happened. That’s just cruel to do to an audience that had so earnestly gone along for the ride.

I speak a lot about Bays and Thomas and the mysterious “they” who control the series because it’s important to remember that “How I Met Your Mother” was constructed by unseen hands. What they presented to us was very specifically selected, and what they showed us in this final season strayed away from the Ted-and-Robin romance. We watched Ted and Robin grow up and grow apart; we saw how their relationship with each other led them to relationships that ultimately seemed best for each of them. If they knew that they wanted to end with a reunion of Ted and Robin, perhaps this last season should have built up to that moment as opposed to cramming it all into the final episode. We should have gotten some more time with The Mother, been able to grieve for her, and seen Ted and Robin’s love rekindle for more than just 20 or so minutes if we were expected to like the ending we finally got.

“How I Met Your Mother” was an exhausting journey, and we fans trailed along as gamely as possible for every step of it.  We hung off of every saccharine romantic moment and dizzying flashback and inside joke we had with the gang.  No matter what, it was always fun to hang out with them each week; unfortunately, the creators’ vision just got too muddled by the end of the series, and they refused to adapt the ending they began with to the show they actually had.  Let’s just hope they heed the viewers’ advice and give us something more satisfying in “How I Met Your Dad.”