How I Met Your Mother's Alternate Ending Merely Trades One Problem for Another
How I Met Your Mother's series finale cut me deep, but the ninth and final season was released on DVD and Blu-ray this week, and despite the betrayal I felt when Ted and Robin reunited back in March, I still mostly enjoyed Season 9, so I bought it. At the very least, I needed it to complete my collection, because God forbid it remain incomplete.
I still—present tense—very much love the series, and my extreme dislike of "Last Forever" hasn't in any way retroactively tainted my memories of the rest of the show, but that doesn't mean I wasn't incredibly curious to see the alternate ending that Carter Bays and Craig Thomas created but opted not to use.
The clip, which may or may not be the same one that made its way around the internet a couple weeks ago—I don't know because I didn't see it before it was taken down due to copyright infringement—doesn't contain any new footage (which we already knew). However, it's edited so that the series finale jumps straight from Ted and the Mother's wedding to the scene where they meet on the subway platform in Farhampton; it even features a different voiceover by Ted. And then that's where it ends. That's when Ted explains to the kids that that's how he "met your mother" as the train rushes past. There's no explanation whatsoever with regard to why he's even telling them the story.
Does this new, alternate ending change my opinion of the finale? No—while it doesn't anger me as much as Ted ending up with Robin, it's essentially a cop-out that doesn't really commit to anything. Do I like it more than the original? Sure, in theory. But even though it was (presumably) finished before the series finale aired, it comes off as an attempt to appease fans who felt jilted by the ending that Bays and Thomas ultimately chose. I can't fault the folks behind HIMYM for wanting to mend fences, because a lot of fans were very upset by the finale; it potentially "ruined" the series for some people. But I do wonder whether they'd always planned to release this ending, or whether it was included as a DVD extra to soothe the burn.
Regardless, the way it plays out leaves me feeling that Bays and Thomas never intended to end HIMYM in any way other than what we saw on March 31, 2014, and that this was a safer approach designed to avoid pissing off fans and breaking people's hearts. It also presents a problem of sorts, because if "Last Forever" had really skipped from the the wedding to the scene where Ted and the Mother met on the platform, that would mean the Mother never died, and that's where things get confusing.
While this alternate ending is certainly much happier than the "official" one—and for some people, that will be enough—it renders all the foreshadowing of the Mother's death pointless. Bays and Thomas laid the groundwork for her eventual demise in Season 8 (though the internet theories began circulating much earlier), and while that won't mean a thing to some people, to people like me—people who need things to be complete and to align with the story that was previously told—it means the no-dying ending wasn't ever a "real" possibility.
I probably sound petty and morbid, but in my mind, the Mother had to die to fit the canon of the entire series. However, I'm eager to find out how other HIMYM fans feel. What do you think? Should "Last Forever" have included her death, or would you have preferred this much sunnier conclusion?
