You Can Stay In Denial With The Much Better ‘How I Met Your Mother’ Alternate Ending

Warning: Spoilers. Duh.

All How I Met Your Mother had to do was stick the landing. No matter how bad the show became in its last few years, all it had to do was write the perfect last five minutes and it would have all been worth it. To this day, I still struggle with the merit of the ending. Did Tracy really need to die? And did Ted have to end up with Robin again? No, because it was dumb and pointless. Yes, because life takes weird turns and you sometimes end up where you least expect — a lesson the show often taught.

To say the ending was polarizing is an understatement. More like riot-inducing and the pro-Bays & Thomas minority stayed underground until the whole thing blew over. Probably building a whole self-contained civilization where the rules of old withered into an ethereal memory. Probably. And when it was announced an alternate ending would be released in the upcoming DVD (not blu-ray?) release, it didn’t really calm anybody. In fact, everyone responded with a kind of collective shrug.

But now that ending has leaked and all How I Met Your Mother fans are rejoicing. Because this ending — no matter your opinion on the one chosen — is really good! It’s sweet and sentimental, just like the show always was, and it left enough to the imagination about how Ted and Tracy lived their lives together. And it has NO MENTION of any debilitating, unknown disease that rips her away from Ted forcing Ted to end up with god damn Robin again.

One day in the future when the show is a distant memory I will revisit the entire series with the ending and evaluate the show’s merit. But that’s not today. That’s not for me. You know who that’s for? Future Eric.

Note: The ending is posted in an alternate cut of the final episode below. All of the ending-only videos are being pulled, and this seems a little more stable. Skip to about the last six minutes if the ending’s all you’re interested in.