'How I Met Your Mother' One-Hour Series Finale Will Air on March 31

How I Met Your Mother will air its one-hour series finale on Monday, March 31, 2014. The news was announced by show co-creator Carter Bays through his Twitter account on Thursday, with Bays tweeting the date and "Last #HIMYM forever."

Wow. Typing those words just caused the fact that HIMYM is ending to hit me. Sure, I've known that this is the final season, but now there's actually a date to say good-bye. It's so much sooner than I thought. Shows don't end in March — they end in May. We only have a little over three months left to spend with HIMYM? Say what you want about the quality of this season (and I definitely have), but I'm going to really miss this show. It's been a weekly part of my Mondays for almost a decade. That's a long time.

An hour after announcing HIMYM's end date, Bays returned to Twitter to say, "BTW, the March 31st finale is a very good thing for #HIMYM. More momentum, fewer reruns. Thank you CBS." Maybe we'll never know what prompted a March end date, whether it was the HIMYM crew's request or CBS's idea, but at least Bays is at peace with it.