20th Century Fox pulled that fan-made How I Met Your Mother ending everybody liked

last updated 8 January 2015

Yesterday brought a welcome reprieve to the legions of How I Met Your Mother fans who were distressed by the series' polarizing finale: A widely disseminated, fan-made alternate ending that provided that sweet, poignant closure many viewers had hoped for. Unlike the actual ending that aired, the alternate ending pivoted back to the title of the show, as Ted and the titular Mother met for the first time on a train platform. Those who preferred the romance between Ted and Robin could stick with the original ending, and those who wanted Ted to be with the Mother could pretend the fan-made alternate ending was the one that had actually aired.

It was a win-win situation — so of course, the bitter curmudgeons at 20th Century Fox have had the alternate ending pulled from YouTube.

As noted by HitFix's Alan Sepinwall, the fan-made alternate ending "is no longer available due to a copyright claim by 20th Century Fox." Of course, 20th Century Fox hasn't bothered to pull hundreds of other, similarly copyright-violating videos, which makes the whole thing feel a little spiteful. A cursory YouTube search yields plenty of worse offenders, including a full stream of the finale. You can also find the original ending that made fans so angry in the first place. Here it is, if you're need a reminder of of why you hated it so much the first time:

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Scott Meslow is the entertainment editor for TheWeek.com. He has written about film and television at publications including The Atlantic, POLITICO Magazine, and Vulture.