Latest 'HIMYM' Finale News Will Tick You Off

I'm gonna open up a can of warms soon and we've all gotta duck for cover, okay? Here goes: The How I Met Your Mother finale could have been saved if only they didn't cut one scene. Did you duck? You gotta duck, there are a lot of opinions flying around; you could put out an eye. But that's what happens when Alyson Hannigan reveals a scene was cut from How I Met Your Mother 's finale that maybe-kinda-sorta coulda helped out that terrible ending.

Hannigan has awakened the sleeping bear of the How I Met Your Mother fan community, who is alternately still raging, cheering, or just sighing over Tracy dying, Barney and Robin ending up divorced, and Ted and Robin ending up back together. Hannigan spoke to TVLine about the version of the script that was read at the final table read — a.k.a. the version that resulted in these sobby pictures.

Apparently that version of the script — which ran about 18 minutes longer than the version we saw — wasn't quite as clumsily hasty in the death (and subsequent mourning) of Tracy/The Mother. In fact, it even had a funeral.

Honestly, if you saw [that] cut, it would be even more heart-wrenching than what the finale was. 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!’

[The moment might] 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.

So there you have it. Maybe if things had happened that way people wouldn't have been tempted to retitle How I Met Your Mother as How I Pined For the Love Of My Life And Settled For Your Mother. The five steps of grieving, man, it's important.

And let this be a lesson that we must always hear what the former Willow Rosenberg has to say. Because when she cries, we all cry.

Images: CBS, Rational Skepticism