‘How I Met Your Mother’: Ninth season will be its last

Credit: CBS

Though it remains one of TV’s highest-rated comedies, raking in over 10 million viewers in its current season, CBS has announced that next season will be the last for How I Met Your Mother, bringing the highly-serialized comedy to an end after nine seasons.

The show’s key players came to an agreement several months back to return for one more season. That includes creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, and also the show’s cast, from Josh Radnor to Neil Patrick Harris, and long-time holdout Jason Segel, who was rumored to be looking to leave the series to pursue his burgeoning film career.

It’s kind of crazy to think the show has lasted this long, given the central premise of a father telling his children how he met their mother, but instead detouring from that story to regale his kids with tales of all the women he and their Uncle Barney have slept with. As if in preparation for the inevitability of the show going on in perpetuity, the producers took the precaution, several years ago, of shooting the final scene with David Henrie and Lyndsy Fonseca, who portray Ted Mosby’s children in the flashforwards, in order to avoid the obvious discontinuity between the characters’ age and the actors’, what with nine years having passed, and all.

No casting news on the actual Mother just yet, but we’ll definitely get the answer to the series’ big question (it’s right there in the title!) next season.

Full story: New York Times