Josh Radnor Doesn't Think Fans Were As Disappointed With The 'HIMYM' Finale As It Seemed

The 2014 series finale of "How I Met Your Mother" stirred up the rage of many viewers who weren't satisfied with where the show left its characters after nine years, but star Josh Radnor thinks the perception of dissatisfaction may be worse than the reality. 

These days, the actor who was once Ted Mosby is busy with his new PBS series "Mercy Street," which is set at a hospital during the Civil War, but he weighed in on the strong "HIMYM" reactions during a Tuesday conversation with HuffPost Live. 

"A lot of [the reaction] was great. I think the narrative the media got ahold of was that everyone was outraged. I don't think that was true," Radnor said.

Radnor said he often speaks at colleges, where he takes an informal poll of attendees to find out who liked the finale and who didn't. "Sometimes it's 50/50," he said. "It seems to be about 60/40 -- 60 [percent] disappointed, 40 [percent who liked it]. So I think it's been overstated, people's disappointment with it."

Considering the intense pressure on a series finale to wrap up the show perfectly, Radnor said viewers would have likely had the same reaction to a different ending. He explained:

If Ted and Tracy walked off into the sunset together, I think people would have called it a soft or sentimental ending, or that it was a fairy tale. But something about "How I Met Your Mother" was it always upended your expectations, it always made you cry, it always was not what you thought it was. So I think it was in keeping with the DNA for the show. And my suspicion is that it will age pretty well, so let's talk in 10 years and see what people think.

Watch the full HuffPost Live conversation with Josh Radnor here.

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