Apparently the season finale is Monday. I’m not going to watch it until Tuesday at the latest, because I only watch HIMYM on the web. I’ve been marginally involved this season. Everything has felt really tired. The only episode that didn’t feel like warmed-over Season 5 was the “Time Travel” episode, and even only impressed at the end.

Buzzfeed has a speculative post with spoilers at the end, which I did not read. I’ll leave that up to you.

It includes a couple of disturbing fan theories:

• The Mother is Dead When Ted Starts Telling the Story. That would explain why he’s spending so much time telling the kids all about her. Except it doesn’t, because he’s been telling them about his single life before he met her. And it doesn’t explain why the kids have been sitting there, respectfully patient, but clearly bored out of their skulls. If these were children of a dead mother, they would want to know everything about her.

• The Mother is Tyler Durden. Which is to say, there is no mother: she is a figment of Ted’s imagination. So are the kids. He’s sitting there, miserable, rambling to no one in particular. Of all the possible resolutions, this one would irritate the most, because it would make everything we’ve watched utterly irrelevant. Sure, Newhart did this, but no one really cared about Newhart, least of all Bob Newhart. 

The scenario I consider far more likely:

•  We Almost See the Mother, But Don’t Quite. We spend the whole episode at Barney and Robin’s wedding. Cliffhanger at the train station. She sits next to him, he looks up. Fade out. The throwaway scene has Barney, Marshall, Lilly, and Robin. Closing credits, possibly including the words “HA HA SUCKERS!” or “TROLOLOLOLOLOLOL” or some such.