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

For nine seasons and 208, audiences around the world watched as Ted Mosby sat his kids down and decided to tell them the long and winding story of how he met their mother - and how he grew into the man he had to be before he fell in love with her.

Long, sappy, moving, hilarious and (mostly) well-written, How I Met Your Mother is a fantastic sitcom with a great narrative structure that works effortlessly to set it apart from other shows in the genre. And though it hit come bumps along the way and upset countless fans with its left-field conclusion, the show has so many great things to say about life and love (whilst being funny as all hell), that as a whole it's tough not to love.

The following list is going to take a trip down memory lane, re-evaluating all nine seasons six years after the show came to an end. From the low-points of Ted Mosby's search for The One, to Barney Stinson's most hysterical and heartbreaking exploits, here are all nine seasons of How I Met Your Mother ranked worst to best. Major spoilers throughout.

Though most look to the show's final season as its worst, season eight is actually weaker than the final entry in Ted's epic tale. Leaning into the sombre tone the show had adopted over the last couple seasons, season eight is HIMYM at its most tragic, alienating and redundant. Yes, season nine suffers because they decided to set it over one weekend, but season eight is so much messier and hard to enjoy.

This was the season that brought audiences Barney's convoluted plan to propose to Robin, Ted's realisation that his life hasn't really changed, and Marshall and Lily's parenthood, which should have offered up the show's most touching and emotionally rewarding moments, but instead was left cheapened by a silly and awkward collection of episodes.

On the plus side, fans also got a chance to see Ted and Barney conversing with future versions of themselves, and featured an extra satirical and over-the-top reprise of the Robin Sparkles/Robin Daggers storyline. Also, the Mother finally turns up on screen, which was a welcome addition to the coming final season. There just wasn't enough of these stronger moments to make it as good as what came before.

Best Episodes: The Time Travelers, P.S I Love You