While How I Met Your Mother was a show about obsessive “Nice Guy” Ted searching for women to traumatize- I mean… fall in love with. It also, at least initially, was refreshing in the way that it showed Robin as an aspirational version of the quintessential career woman, who puts ambition before love, doesn’t want kids and is okay with being single.
“I don’t know where I’m going to be in five years, and I don’t want to know. I want my life to be an adventure.”
But then, after seasons of development, the show just threw all of that away in the final stretch to make her a stock love interest and allow Ted to have his happy ending. This aligns with a larger trend in pop culture of shows and movies paying lip service to the idea that women can be fulfilled without needing a traditional partner and family, and then at the very end be like, “just kidding!”
A more fun, consistent, and interesting version of Robin could have stuck to her guns and found genuine professional happiness without needing Ted. Because if you’re paying attention, this is who she’s really been all along—an independent woman who’s doing just fine and never actually wanted to be rescued by a fairytale.