Monday night, CBS concluded How I Met Your Mother’s legendary nine-season streak with a finale that shook viewers off their feet.

Season nine built up audiences to believe that the always unpredictable sitcom was going to finish with an expected ending, which was far from the case. It was one the most tear-inducing conclusions, given it is a comedy.

Fans of former womanizer Barney Stinson and globe-trotting reporter Robin Scherbatsky were delighted in the previous episode when they were married, but did not expect the couple would divorce after just three short years.

What further outraged viewers was the theory of the mother dying confirmed after nine seasons of waiting for lovelorn Ted Mosby to finally meet her, marry her and live happily ever after. However, nothing was out of the blue if one were to notice all the hints planted throughout the seasons.

The pilot episode began by portraying Robin in an almost-angelic light even though Ted started off by telling his kids that he was going to tell them how he met their mother. Since episode one, there has been more emphasis on Ted’s obsession over Robin as opposed to the mother.

Later in the seasons, model couple Lily Aldrin and Marshall Eriksen made lifelong bets on whether or not Ted would end up with Robin. Lily kept asking if Marshall had given up on the chances of Ted and Robin, to which he kept insisting to wait longer, even when Robin and Barney were engaged.

Ted always mentioned Tracy McConnell in past, never present tense, especially in the episode where she sang Louis Armstrong’s “La Vie en Rose”. I don’t think it ever occured to anyone also that the scene with his kids in season 9 was filmed since the beginning, meaning everything was planned since episode one.

Although the show is called How I Met Your Mother, it was obvious that writers, Craig Bays and Carter Thomas, used the promise of Ted meeting the mother as a tactic to make audiences believe the ending is all smiles and giggles. Otherwise, it would have been called How I Met and Lived Happily Forever With Your Mom.

As the sitcom displayed time and time again, the writers were not afraid to travel a darker path, like Robin’s infertility or when Marshall’s father died right when the episode promised to end in a cheerful tone. This made the show always feel unpredictable, because you would never know if an episode is going to keep you consistently laughing or leave wide- eyed and jaw open.

Barney’s return to his promiscuous nature proved not everyone’s true love is necessarily a partner. It was refreshing to have the man who slept with hundreds of women find out the one girl he would give anything and everything to was his newborn daughter Ellie, a scene worth rewatching over and over again.

There was a point in the show where Robin and Ted both said they would marry each other if they were 40 and still single. Barney and Robin divorced after just three years and the mother lost her battle with her sickness, leaving a door of opportunity for their agreement, which is more than just coincidence.

Ted’s in depth detail with the story as justification for asking Robin out at first seemed like a wild card, until realizing Ted put a lot of emphasis towards Robin in his story, even when he was dating other people. This could not have been a bigger red flag that Tracy was meant to die with Robin consistently a priority for Ted in every season.

The finale felt more realistic than other cheesy sitcom endings because it used the death of Ted’s wife as a parallel to the death of Tracy’s boyfriend.

How I Met Your Mother is palpable proof that life is a journey, not a destination. A happy finale would have meant closure, which is never what the show was about.