'How I Met Your Mother' Finale Removed Funeral Scene

The controversy over the How I Met Your Mother series finale has only slightly calmed down since it first aired on March 31st. Since then, we've had a lot of talk on what worked and what didn't, we've had a pretty sweet fan edit, and the promise of an alternate ending for the DVD. We also continue to get casting news on the spin-off, How I Met Your Dad, including Meg Ryan as the Bob Saget for the comedy, which fans are likely too burned by HIMYM to bother watching this fall.

But apparently, there was even MORE heartbreak on the How I Met Your Mother finale. According to Lily herself, Alyson Hannigan, there was a funeral scene in the finale that was subsequently removed for being just too heartbreaking.

Credit: CBS

Apparently, the scene in question was a “one-second” montage of the funeral for Tracy, the titular Mother played by Cristin Milioti.

“Honestly, if you saw [that] cut, it would be even more heart-wrenching than what the finale was,” Hannigan stated. “They were like, ‘No. It’s just too gut-wrenching.’ And I was like, ‘That’s what I want. I want my heart ripped out and slammed on the floor and, like, stomped on!’”

Hannigan goes on to claim that the scene “would have been better for the audience, so that then they can process, ‘Oh, [Ted] mourned. He got closure’ — and then they’d be happy that [he and Robin] got together. Rather than be like, ‘Oh, wait. She died? What? They’re together, huh?’ And credits. That’s what I think was too fast.”

While she has a point, I think the finale still would have gone over poorly since 1) a vocal majority of the audience didn't want The Mother to end up dead, and 2) an even larger portion of the audience seemed to be vehemently against Ted ending up with Robin in the end, given that the series had spent the better part of three seasons trying to get both characters to move on from each other. But hopefully, the DVD will provide us with some better idea of how this scene would have worked, along with the aforementioned alternate ending. There's no guarantee it'll topple the fan edit for being note perfect, but I'd definitely like to see what Carter Bays and Craig Thomas' mulligan will look like.

Via: TVLine