The finale of “How I Met Your Mother” ended the cult sitcom after 9 seasons with a plot twist that disappointed many fans. But few know that an alternate ending to the series exists, where we get what we want…
One of the greatest challenges of series is to maintain the tension of the narrative over a multitude of episodes and seasons, while both constantly providing surprises and not disappointing fans’ expectations. This sometimes almost impossible challenge culminates in a series finale, into which we as viewers project all our wishes and hopes, leaving the series creators virtually no chance to get anything right. While some series, contrary to expectations, end with a finale that is largely accepted or even celebrated by the fans, other series are cursed with a final episode that fans would prefer to forget as quickly as possible.
Alongside successful series like “Lost” and “Game of Thrones,” “How I Met Your Mother” is also a representative of the latter category. That’s because the series finale of the cult sitcom left more than a few fans disappointed in 2014 – especially because the series took us a whole nine seasons towards an asserted goal that was shattered within just a few minutes.
Warning, spoilers for the finale of How I Met Your Mother follow.Thus, the final ninth season of the sitcom heads towards the wedding of Robin (Cobie Smulders) and Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), while Ted (Josh Radnor) finally meets his dream girl and the future mother of his children Tracy (Cristin Milioti) after the big celebration – a moment that fans have been waiting for almost ten years and that the series has promised us in over 200 episodes.
From this moment on, however, everything happens insanely fast and the magical meeting of the two is followed by marriage, children, illness and death in fast forward – and at the end of the two-part series finale, Ted is suddenly without his Tracy again. We also learn that the marriage between Barney and Robin didn’t last because the womanizer played by Neil Patrick Harris couldn’t leave his old vices behind.
This also buried a storyline that was built up over the entire last season, making many moments and episodes almost obsolete. Instead, Ted realizes he never got over Robin and ends up stealing the blue horn for her once again, as he did when they first met years earlier. In the end, it is implied that Ted and Robin do reunite as a couple instead of friends.
THE FINALE FANS HAVE SO DESPERATELY WANTED REALLY EXISTS
Most fans instead wished for the series to end with a happy ending for Ted and Tracy, since the entire series is actually about how Ted met the mother of his children – i.e. Tracy. Meanwhile, many were also hoping for a happy ending for Barney and Robin and a bit of character development especially on the side of the pick-up guy who eventually did learn to take responsibility.
What many don’t know, however, is that this very wishful finale exists – and has since 2014, because series creators Carter Bays and Craig Thomas crafted an alternate ending to the cult sitcom, which they released exclusively on the ninth season DVD of “How I Met Your Mother” at the time.
This second finale is a slightly different edited version of the last episode, in which both Ted and Tracy are not separated by death and Barney and Robin stay together. Instead, the series ends after a voice-over from Ted in which he outlines his best moments with Tracy – including their meeting on the platform under the yellow umbrella that has been teased throughout all the seasons.
If you want to take a look at the alternative ending yourself, you can do so on the DVD of the ninth season and in the complete box set of “How I Met Your Mother” – or take a look at YouTube…
