So hitting the web today was an alternate ending to CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother. This review will contain some spoilers from the show, so if you first want an opinion on the show itself, you can click here. If you also want to be amused, you can click here for my spoiler-filled thoughts on the show. But here are my brief thoughts on the alternate ending (which can be seen below).

So in this clip, the Mother lives, Bob Saget is narrating and you get the ‘they all live happily ever after theme’. I’m going to compare this ending a lot to the show’s original ending because, you HAVE to.

I think it is pretty obvious that this alternate ending would have been a really good way to end the show (and was probably the way the producers intended to end the show) after Season 8. The main thesis of this post is this: if you don’t want to feel like you were dragged along for a season, just watch this clip after Season 8, and you’re good, you’ve seen How I Met Your Mother. If you do watch Season 9 because you feel like you need to complete the entire show, then you’ll probably prefer the original ending.

I think that the original ending did have more of a ‘How I Met Your Mother’ as a whole vibe to it, whereas this ending had a lot of quirky Season 1 rom-com elements in it instead.

I think that Ted Mosby summarizing the whole story shows how everything was relevant at the end, especially to people unlike myself who don’t think about the show a whole lot and just want to laugh. You guys know I didn’t like Season 6 at all, and the alternate ending even makes fun of that a bit!

I think Bob Saget’s narration had a bigger ‘show-ending’ vibe to it than Josh Radnor’s may have. And I’m wondering if he did the narration for the whole episode on the Season 9 DVD… In the comments of the Youtube video I found this ending at everyone is debating in the comments about how this ending changes the whole focus of the show and I agree. The original ending has a lot more of a ‘friends stick together’ vibe to it, but it seems kind of hard to figure out. The theme of this ending makes it really easy, and the alternate ending’s theme is that sometimes the destination is just as important as the journey, which completely demolishes my spoiler-free review of this show. I just really like how relevant to the show’s beginning this new ending was.

I guess if I had to pick one thing I didn’t like about it, it would be the ending where they do the actors’ ‘bows’ of sorts, or more specifically the music in it. They were playing this happy ukulele music throughout Ted’s wedding sequence and the flashbacks, but I think when the bows came on, it should have immediately switched over to Heaven by The Walkmen, the song that played in the original ending. That way we have the happy feel, but the show-ending emotional is still there showing these friends throughout the years. That’s just my take.

Those things having been  said, I’ve been going back and forth trying to determine which ending I preferred and I do think it should take me more time, but as of right now I’d have to say they tie. I loved the way that Ted ended up with Robin in the Season 9 finale, but as I said this was obviously what they should have played at the end of Season 8. Myself not being a fan of Season 9, I think this new ending completely serves fans who didn’t want the Mother to die, and people who thought the show should have ended after Season 8. It all depends on whether you liked Season 9 or not. I didn’t like Season 9, but still love both endings.

That being said, I’ll Inception you guys and let you decide which I prefer…

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But anyways guys, those are my brief thoughts on the alternate ending to CBS’s How I Met Your Mother. All the seasons are on Netflix now except Season 9 (which arrives September 25, I believe). I do recommend you watch the show if you haven’t, and let me know which ending you prefer! And as always, thanks for reading guys.