Every Season Of How I Met Your Mother Ranked Worst To Best

Which season do you think holds up the best?

By Richard Kraus /

For those of us who own the entire series on DVD, ranking the seasons of How I Met Your Mother feels like asking Barney to rank his ties from favourite to least favourite.

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The legen--wait for it--dary sitcom ran from 2005 until 2014, lasting for nine seasons. Each season has some spectacular moments scattered throughout, and the show still remains a fan favourite six years after its ending.

However, like every show ever, there is some slight change in quality with each season, however small. Some seasons have the rare weaker How I Met Your Mother moments, while others line-up all time great episodes back to back.

Here is our ranking of each season of How I Met Your Mother.

9. Season 9

How I Met Your Mother Season 9 is better than you remember. Though the premise of setting the season entirely at Barney and Robin's wedding starts off slow and leads to some storytelling walls, episodes like Platonish, The Rehearsal Dinner, and Bass Player Wanted redeem the season. Towards its end, more sentimental episodes, such as Rally, Gary Blauman, and The End of the Isle remind fans why we love the show and why we miss it.

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Plus, Season 9 gives us the titular Mother. Played by Cristin Milioti, she quickly captures fans' hearts and lives up to unrealistic expectations. Her chemistry with Josh Radnor (Ted) is off the charts. Her solo episode, How Your Mother Met Me, is the best of the season.

However, the real reason Season 9 comes in last is the finale, which undoes Barney and Robin's marriage and Ted's character development, all while killing Milioti's character off screen in a matter of minutes. Creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas wrote the twist ending, where the mother has been dead the entire time and Ted gets back together with Robin, after the first season, when Ted and Robin's relationship being endgame would have made more sense. As the characters grew, they proved to be better suited with the Mother and Barney respectively, and the series finale drags down the ninth season for this mistake.

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