10 TV Shows That Flopped Their Final Season
4. How I Met Your Mother
How I Met Your Mother's best days were long behind it when it finally wrapped up, but nobody could've anticipated quite how aggressively the writers would end up pissing off almost the entire fanbase.
Season nine had a ton of creative missteps, from setting all 24 episodes over a mere three-day period, to the increasingly lazy writing, shallow characterisation, and excess of subplots intended to pad the season out.
But what truly sank the last season was its finale, where we learned that The Mother (Cristin Milioti) was actually dead, in order to contrive a "happy" ending where Ted (Josh Radnor) ends up with Robin (Cobie Smulders), who has since gotten divorced from Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), making most of the season feel like a throwaway afterthought.
The ninth season was indifferently received by fans at large, but that final episode is unquestionably one of the most complained-about finales in TV history. To kill off The Mother for the sake of a shocking twist felt cruel and unnecessary, ensuring this otherwise beloved sitcom spectacularly crashed and burned in its final hour.