We spent nine seasons waiting for The Yellow Umbrella, and How I Met Your Mother gave us the Blue French Horn instead

Just as Ted’s kids were impatiently hearing the story of how Ted met their mother, the fans were equally restless to know it too. Two of the great symbolic significances in the show were The Yellow Umbrella and a Blue French Horn. For fans, the umbrella and the horn carried years of emotional weight, yet the finale twisted their meaning, leaving audiences questioning everything the show had built up. Ted, being a hopeless romantic from the start, was in search of ‘’the one,’’ and somehow the showrunners convinced the viewers that ‘The Yellow Umbrella’ is the link between Ted and the mother (Tracy) whom he is desperately looking for. 

Throughout the nine seasons, fans were given hints about ‘The Mother,’ the woman Ted will eventually marry, but nobody saw what was coming. The finale episode of season 8 finally saw the mother holding a yellow umbrella and a bass guitar in the last few seconds of the episode. But the moment that viewers had been waiting for since the very first episode was not a part of the finale anymore. That’s when the Blue French Horn’s part steps in! 

How I Met Your Mother was all about The Blue French Horn?

Viewers throughout the seasons were rooting for Ted to meet the love of his life, and somehow, few guessed who she was. But the showrunners flipped every expectation and the hints they threw towards the viewers. The show was never really about finding the Mother; it was always about Ted’s love for Robin, with subtle hints scattered across many episodes through the blue French horn.

The blue coloured instrument first appeared in the pilot episode, where Ted steals it from a restaurant named Charmichaels for Robin, when she tells him about how much she is obsessed with it on their first date. Since then, it has become a symbol of their relationship. As they got split in the finale of season 2, Ted returned the instrument to the restaurant from where he initially stole it. 

The horn then reappeared in Season 5, when Ted tried to get back with Robin, and in Season 7, it was shown chained to a wall in the same restaurant where they first met. And in the final episode of Season 9, Ted himself said that the Blue French Horn would be his token of love if he ever tried to get back together with Robin, and that’s exactly what the end was! 

Robin was the only one from the start in How I Met Your Mother

The yellow umbrella that belonged to Tracy (mother and Ted’s future wife) and through a series of coincidences, it ended up with Ted, showing how their paths kept crossing even before they officially met, leading to a symbol of destiny in the show. 

While speaking with Barney about Marshall proposing to Lily, Ted once mentioned that he should also have been in the same position that they are in their relationship right now. And as soon as he turns back, he sees Robin for the first time, and that’s what the first ever hint was revealed in the first few seconds of the episode, but later was ruled out when he said, ‘’because that, kids, is the true story of how I met your Aunt Robin.” 

Ted and Robin’s on-and-off relationship never made viewers believe she was the Mother (which she wasn’t), or that she would be the one Ted ended up with (which turned out to be true). Most fans assumed the Mother would be his only true love, whom he must have married.

However, in the finale episode, when Ted completed the story by saying, “And that, kids, is how I met your mother,'' the kids were not satisfied with it, as the story sounded more like it was all about his love for Aunt Robin. Fans were shocked as it was revealed that the Mother had died six years earlier, and the kids actually encouraged Ted to go after Robin.

In the final moments, Ted shows up at Robin’s apartment holding the Blue French horn, leaving everyone surprised.