HIMYM Star Calls Death Rumors 'Crazy' But Doesn't Actually Deny Them

There are a lot of fan theories surrounding the final season of How I Met Your Mother (that you can spot a munchkin hanging in the background of McClaren’s, that Ted is the Zodiac Killer, etc.), but the one that’s picked up the most steam and spilled the most ink is the theory that the mother has ACTUALLY BEEN DEAD THE WHOLE TIME. As my colleague Erin wrote last week:

During the show’s scenes that allegedly occur in the year 2030, the mother has never, not a once, been mentioned in the present tense. She also never appears in flash forwards of the gang of friends around which the show rotates; not even from the back. It seems like The Mother is simply not present in the future beyond the year 2024. And there’s the fact that after the show’s final table read, Alyson Hannigan Tweeted a picture of her script surrounded by used Kleenexes. Naturally, after almost 9 years, people get attached to jobs, to characters. But would a schmaltzy This Whole Thing Was About A Nice Lady Who Died Tragically turn have made the cryfests worse?

Actress Cristin Milioti — who plays the titular mother/possible dead lady in How I Met Your Mother — recently addressed the death rumors during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Her take on them? They’re PREPOSTEROUS.

She told THR:

“That’s insane. No, I know. There are some crazy conspiracy theories, which really makes me love the fans more because I’m like, ‘Wow. You guys are getting to the bottom of, like, something.’ I don’t know, there’s such passion there. That’s SO crazy.”

So consider the death theory debunked! Or not. Really, all she’s saying is that it’s ‘insane,’ not that there isn’t any truth to it. That being said, wouldn’t it be kind of fucked up for a dad to sit his kids down and, rather than tell them about the mother they never knew, waste years going on and on about his goofball friends who are all probably sitting in the next room playing Jenga or something? Total Mosby move.