How I Met Your Mother may be a sitcom, but like all the best comedies, it has some truly heartbreaking moments in there to balance out all the humor. From deaths to breakups, these moments were all too real (even in a show where much of the comedy is completely over the top), and they brought viewers to tears. Of course, that's a good thing - and the sadder moments make for incredible character development and real depth in a show that might otherwise be a little too silly.
Of all the moments in Barney, Ted, Robin, Marshall, and Lily's lives, though, which were truly the saddest of them all? Season by season, we are breaking down the big ones, the ones that really hit home, and the ones that were hardest to recover from.
9 Season One: Lily Leaves
The first season of How I Met Your Mother is mostly about introducing the characters and their shenanigans, and it does it well - but hits hard at the end when Lily and Marshall break up. From the first episode, the strength of this relationship is emphasized. They've been together since college, they plan to get married, they are seemingly the perfect couple. But when Lily realizes that she's afraid that getting married will mean giving up her dreams, she leaves Marshall and runs away to San Francisco to try and be an artist. Seeing Marshall sitting in the rain holding the engagement ring would make anyone cry.
8 Season Two: Barney and Robin's Breakup
Season two is, in general, one of the lighter seasons of the show, but that doesn't mean that there are no sad moments. The first comes when Lily returns from San Francisco, and (after faking it for a while) breaks down, admitting that she made a terrible mistake. When she begs Marshall to take her back and he refuses, it is close to the saddest moment in the season... but because they actually do get back together, it doesn't take the number one spot. Instead, it's Robin and Barney, who get together this season only to break up at the end. This one isn't even the saddest because of the breakup itself, but because it's so sweetly sad - as they both keep it a secret to avoid getting in the way of Marshall and Lily's wedding.
7 Season Three: Barney And Ted
Season three is another lighter season, and the big 'breakup' that wins saddest moment here is one between friends. Barney and Ted might not always see eye to eye, but they have an amazing friendship - until Barney sleeps with Robin.
He desperately tries to find a loophole in his own 'bro code' to make it ok, but Ted ends up cutting him out of his life entirely (until they are both in traffic accidents at the end of the season). Their whole falling out is sad - not least because of how dramatic and ridiculous it is, when they both clearly care about the other.
6 Season Four: Stella Jilts Ted
Season four definitely turns up the emotion after a couple of lighter seasons with Ted and Stella. Their relationship was seemingly doomed from the start, as Stella told him that she just didn't have time to date. However, with persistence, they manage to make it work... until Stella wants him to move to New Jersey. And then, even though he agrees to make the move, and then to take over her sister's wedding, she still leaves him at the altar. It's a heartbreaking moment to top off a terrible relationship, and Ted deserved better.
5 Season Five: Don Takes The Job
This season, Robin's relationships take the sad spotlight again, as she gets together with her co-host, Don. After a seriously rocky start, the two actually seem to build a great relationship together, and fans were rooting for them. For Robin, in particular, it was incredible to see her overcome her commitment issues... until it backfired. When she was offered her dream job as a news anchor in another city, she turned it down in order to be with Don - except that he was then offered the same job, and left to take it.
4 Season Six: Marshall's Dad (And Barney's)
Season six is, hands down, the saddest season of the entire series, and two of the most heartbreaking moments in the entire show take place in it. First up, we've got Barney finally meeting his real dad. At first, he is excited, especially when he learns that his father left him and his mother to be a roadie to rock bands - but when he finds out that he is just an average suburban Dad with a new family, fans see Barney break down. He flips out, and leads to the most heartbreaking scene as he asks why, if he was just going to be a boring suburban dad, he couldn't have been that to Barney.
However, that doesn't hold a candle to the saddest episode in the series, when Marshall finds out that his father has died. How I Met Your Mother did an incredible job of approaching the heartbreak of losing a parent suddenly, from the build up to the moment he gets the call, to the funeral itself and finding out his father's last words. Cue the waterworks.
3 Season Seven: The Bride Is Revealed
After the hammer blow of season six, season seven doesn't spend too much time on misery - it even fast forwards through several months because all the characters were just having a happy, easy life. However, the end of the season still manages to break hearts when Barney proposes to Quinn... and then a flash-forward reveals that he is actually marrying Robin. After seeing these two build up an amazing relationship over the season, seeing the proposal and then Robin as the bride is jarring, and incredibly sad.
2 Season Eight: Robin & Her Father
More proposals in this season, but this time it's Barney and Robin. The actual proposal for this one is incredibly sweet, albeit very manipulative (in true Barney style)... but the fallout when it comes to Robin and her Dad isn't. Robin wants Barney to ask her father's permission, and he goes along with it (even dying his hair to try and impress him), but her father is hard to convince... until he reveals that he got married himself, and never even told Robin. She is clearly absolutely heartbroken by her father's callousness, and tells him that he's not even invited to her wedding any more.
1 Season Nine: The Mother's Death
Season nine had its fair share of sad moments, but the saddest is likely at the very end, when the fans finally see Ted's future life with the 'Mother' of the title... and it's cut short, when she dies young. This was heartbreaking for the character itself, of course, but also a sad moment for fans - many of which absolutely hated this decision, and the move by the writers to see Ted get back together with Robin in the final scenes. For a show that was so beloved, the finale was sad simply by virtue of the fact that it was so hated.
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