Has 'How I Met Your Mother' Lulled Us Into a False Sense of Security?

Say it isn't so! We have a horrible sense of foreboding that all may not end well in long running sitcom How I Met Your Mother. The show, which has been running for nine years now, is the story of Ted Mosby which he narrates to his two children. Each episode sees Ted talk of the grueling process that he went through to finally find and fall in love with their mother, who he had long been waiting to meet.

Cristin Milioti played the long awaited 'mother'

We watched and waited until finally, at the end of the previous season, the mother was introduced into the sitcom. We weren't disappointed either, Cristin Milioti was just the right amount of quirk and seemed the ideal match for the architect.  The current season has focused on love blossoming between Ted and the mother, which we hoped would nicely wrap up the show in the way that fans had always expected it to, and hoped that it would. There have been some really touching moments between the pair, particularly when Ted listened in to the mother's rendition of Edith Piaf's 'La Vie En Rose', which would have melted the heart of even the hardest cynic.  However, Monday night’s episode has thrown a serious spanner in the works.

More: have the 'How I Met Your Mother' writers written themselves into a hole?

The episode, which is entitled ‘Vesuvius’ takes place 10 years in the future and sees Ted and the mother happily married. As the episode ends Ted recounts the time that his friend and old love interest Robin’s mother had shown up to her wedding unexpectedly. The mother replies “Come on, of course she showed up. What mother is going to miss her daughter’s wedding?”, which provokes a stroke emotional reaction from Ted, who has to fight back tears. While the mother tries to comfort him, she too then appears to become emotional. Their emotional reaction talking about a mother missing her daughter’s wedding seems to imply that the mother won’t make her own daughter’s wedding. Now we’ve started thinking about it, it would make the whole series make sense that the mother had died and this is why Ted is telling his children the story about her. Although, it doesn’t mean that we’ll be any less heartbroken if it turns out to be true!

Josh Radnor, the star of 'How I Met Your Mother'

How I Met Your Mother has played plenty of mind games on it’s fans in the past, throwing in lots of red herrings to put viewers off the scent of what might happen, we can only hope that this is another one which we can add to the rotten fish pile.

What would you think if it does turn out that the mother has been dead all along? Do you think this is what the writers had in mind all along? 

Watch the stars of 'How I Met Your Mother' arriving for Letterman: