Did Anyone Else Notice the ‘Daisy Jones’ and ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Endings Are Basically the Same?
Have you all recovered from the epic emotional highs and lows of the Daisy Jones & the Six finale? Have you dried up your tears? Have you stopped streaming the album on a loop? Because the second I did, two simultaneous thoughts wrinkled my brain. First, that Daisy Jones & the Six and How I Met Your Mother have the same ending. And second, that the Daisy Jones version didn't fill me with anger and betrayal...unlike the HIMYM version in 2014.
We're still debating the HIMYM ending so many years later, and Daisy Jones kind of forced me to confront what I actually didn't like about How I Met Your Mother. It was a little surprising. It was... healing? To recap, here's what the DJ&TS and HIMYM finales have in common:
A father finishes telling a story to his child about his youth.
The child's mother has recently passed.
The child nudges him to get back together with another woman, featured prominently in the story, who "got away" in one way or another.
The father goes to the other woman.
Haaaave you met Billy? On How I Met Your Mother, Ted reunites with Robin after the titular mother, Tracy, dies. On Daisy Jones & Six, Billy reunites with Daisy after his wife Camila dies. Their respective kids are oddly cool with this development. They even encourage it! On How I Met Your Mother, it is literally the two kids' idea. Getting that engaged in your dad's dating life while grieving your mom? Could not be me.
The Daisy Jones book was published several years after HIMYM ended, and it does feel like the story's ending could have been an intentional homage or riff (yes, that is a music pun) on the controversial show's conclusion. They're just too dang similar! But ultimately, Daisy Jones does what HIMYM could not, which is give all the characters within the story a more satisfying ending that respects their individual growth and care for one another.
For one, it is not Billy's daughter Julia who actually comes up with the idea that he and Daisy should reunite (although she does encourage it). It's Camila, in a message she records before her passing. She has agency in this ending. It makes the plot more complicated and the feelings more bittersweet. Even though DJ&TS had about 1/20th the number of episodes as HIMYM, I still feel as though Camila was a complete, whole character, and the show was not implying she needed to get out of the way (aka die) for Daisy and Billy to finally be together. Billy learning to let Camila in to the parts of him he thought he needed to hide is their happy ending. Their love story, though cut short, was a full one.
But How I Met Your Mother did the opposite. The show threw Barney Stinson under the bus in order to get Ted and Robin back together. That's what I really hated—not so much the commitment to Ted ending up with Robin instead of the titular Mother. Sorry, but I was actually invested in Barney and Robin as a couple... especially after spending an entire season on Barney and Robin's wedding! That whiplash hurt, y'all. It's like when Game of Thrones ended and folks were yelling left and right about how the show chucked out Daenerys' "character growth" for her villainess turn. In a show that felt like Shakespearean at the best of times, I wasn't bothered by Dany's tragic ending. But I was really hurt when How I Met Your Mother, a romantic comedy that promised a happy ending, tossed Barney's character growth just so he and Robin could break up and Ted Mosby could mosey in.
But on Daisy Jones & the Six, Daisy's other love interest, Nicky, doesn't have a whole redemption arc discard in the last 30 minutes to make room for Billy. We know why they get married and we know why they break up. Daisy says very clearly that she doesn't regret marrying him. She has also lead a fulfilling life with many loves in the years after Billy walked off stage in Chicago, and it took years before he came knock, knock, knocking on her door. I don't feel as though she has been deprived of a fulfilling fictional life to serve a man's story. I felt that way about Robin.
It has taken many, many years, but I finally have some post-HIMYM peace. Daisy Jones gave me a better version of an ending I hated, and some insight into what specifically offended me in the first place. It gave me the chance to reflect on all my suited-up feelings. Challenge accepted completed.
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