How I Met Your Mother: 7 Mistakes Made In Season 9

7. Filming the Ending Early

As How I Met Your Mother went on, it quickly became obvious that Ted's kids in the future (played by Lyndsy Fonseca and David Henrie) would quickly age beyond the scope of believability by the time the show's finale came about. The producers of the show foresaw this, and wisely decided to film an ending scene with the kids during the show's first season. On the one hand, it's good that they had the foresight to shoot the ending in advance as opposed to recasting the kids, or just never showing them again. But on the other hand, it also stuck the writers into a corner, locking them into that ending without any possibility of changing it. Characters have a tendency to take on a life of their own, and they evolve beyond a writer's initial intentions. And for a show as character-based as How I Met Your Mother, eschewing all that development in favor of an ending thought up years ago was an absolute mistake. Although credit should be given to the show's creators for actually having an endgame planned and to stick to it, sometimes the ending you thought you were going to use is not the ending that you should end up with. How I Met Your Mother had changed into a different story worthy of a different ending.