More than a decade after How I Met Your Mother ended, co-creator Craig Thomas is opening up about how the birth of his son Elliot influenced the show’s polarizing series finale.
As Thomas told PEOPLE at a Saturday, Jan. 11, benefit concert for the Rady Children’s Hospital of San Diego at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom, Elliot’s rare genetic disorder made him feel like he was “living a drama and writing a comedy.”
“Life doesn’t always go the way you think it’s going to go,” Thomas explained. “And I think the show that was already kind of emotional was — it became more so,” he added of Elliot’s birth early in the show’s run.
Related: Cobie Smulders Sings Snippet of ‘HIMYM’ Anthem ‘Let’s Go to the Mall’ on Instagram Live
CBS / courtesy Everett Collection
Josh Radnor and Cristin Milioti in the 2014 series finale of ‘How I Met Your Mother’
How I Met Your Mother, which ran for nine seasons on CBS between 2005 to 2014, centered on the romantic misadventures of Ted Mosby (Josh Radnor) and his group of 30-something friends in present-day New York City as recounted by an older version of Ted (voiced by the late Bob Saget) in 2030. In the two-part series finale, it’s revealed that the show’s titular mother, Tracy McConnell (Cristin Milioti), died in 2024. The episode ends with Ted reconnecting with long-time friend Robin Scherbatsky (Cobie Smulders) in 2030.
That twist ending caused considerable backlash from both critics and fans. But as PEOPLE’s Henry Goldblatt wrote in his 2014 review of the finale, “HIMYM, at its core, was about the unpredictability of love.”
“Love … is difficult; it never comes when and where you expect it,” Goldblatt wrote. “Maybe HIMYM was the love story of Ted and Tracy; maybe it was the love story of Ted and Robin. Or maybe it was the love story of a man who was lucky enough to find two loves of his life.”
Related: Josh Radnor Has Mini ‘HIMYM’ Reunion with Alyson Hannigan: ‘Love This Gal Forever’
Brent N. Clarke/FilmMagic
‘How I Met Your Mother’ co-creator Craig Thomas in 2016
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At the Jan. 11 benefit, Thomas, who wrote the series finale with co-creator Carter Bays, echoed that take.
“I look back on it, and I look at the ending as an exploration of the fact that no matter how much Ted Mosby wanted to plan everything in life, it was never going to go according to plan,” he told PEOPLE. “But if you go through life with an open heart, you can find a new plan in the end. And you can find love and be supported and lifted up at your lowest moments, even if things didn’t go according to your plan that you made when you were young. And that there are other chapters that you can’t see until you were in it, that’s what that means to me.”
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