How I Met Your Mother - Episode 6.24 - Challenge Accepted - Recap

Finales are always bittersweet—even if they’re only season finales. Viewers get questions answered, and sometimes things that you have been waiting for—maybe even since the beginning of the series—happen. Tonight’s season six finale of How I Met Your Mother was no exception. The episode was far from average, and things were revealed that viewers had been waiting for since the premiere.

Marshall is still unemployed and spends most of his day around the house. Lily decides to buy him his favorite soup and leave it in the fridge for him to enjoy later—in hopes of cheering him up. She has some of the soup herself, and ends up becoming ill. She had told Robin that this restaurant remained their favorite place for soup even though they had gotten food poisoning three times. She remembers this and runs off to try to stop Marshall from having the soup.

When Lily arrives, Marshall is about to enjoy his third bowl. He then gets a call from his “dream job” and is given an interview for that afternoon—no exceptions. Marshall calculates that he has exactly 3 hours to get it over with before he has to deal with his own consequences of food poisoning. He rushes through the interview and then boldly tells his interviewer about his awaiting stomach problems and runs out. He fears he’s ruined his interview and returned home to lie down for a bit before he has to deal with it. He sleeps the entire night is happy to have conquered the food poisoning. Lily walks in to let him know he has a much better reason to be happy: she’s pregnant.

As all that happened, Barney and Robin are off trying to stop Ted from getting back together with Zoey. They go on a grand adventure trying to find the place Ted and Zoey are going to meet. They ask Lily for help, and thanks to a message Ted left on her machine alongside with Lily’s ability to understand conductor-speak they figure out the location. On the way to intervene with Ted and Zoey’s plan, Barney and Robin begin to bond a little. When they finally get to Ted they convince him that moving on is better, even if it’s the harder choice. As they talk to Ted, they realize they are indirectly talking to each other as well. They all leave without entering the café or talking to Zoey. The only interaction Ted attempts to have with her is giving a woman an orchid and asking her to give it to the blonde inside. The women gives it to another blonde, and the narrator says "and that's how I met your mother, kids." After giving us a few seconds to catch our breath, he lets us know he was joking. Later on in the episode, Barney lets Ted push the button to blow up the Arcadian—which that had been fighting over since the beginning of the episode—because he feels Ted deserves it.

On their way home, Barney and Robin run into Nora. Barney genuinely apologizes to her, and asks her to have a cup of coffee with him sometime. He even tells her she can spend the whole time calling him every name in the book, because he does deserve it. The camera pulls back and shows Robin, and she seems slightly upset at their agreement to have coffee.
They last scene returns to the moment of Ted and Marshall sitting on the bench and Lily coming out asking for the best man. Ted was the best man in question, and it’s Barney’s wedding. But we are given all summer to wonder who his bride is.