If you were on social media on the night of March 31st, 2014, you probably witnessed a massive backlash among fans of How I Met Your Mother, as the extremely controversial final episode aired.

Within a week of the finale, creator Carter Bays confirmed the existence of an alternate ending to the show, to be included on the Season 9 DVD, as we previously reported.

Now, that ending has apparently leaked and has been posted on Reddit, though the original YouTube copy was taken down by Fox.

The new ending does not actually feature any new footage, but instead is a recut of footage already in the finale, with the exception of a new voice over from Bob Saget.

How I Met Your Mother - Alternate Ending (official) from Thaís Muniz on Vimeo.

In the original ending, (spoiler alert!) after a montage of their life together, Ted reveals that the mother, Tracy, died six years ago, and that he has actually been telling this nine season long story as a way of proving to his kids how much their mother meant to him before he moves on to date their Aunt Robin.

In the alternate ending, Bob Saget the voice-over of Ted (as opposed to Josh Radnor in the finale) delivers a monologue summing up the series of events from Season 1 that lead to the moment he met Tracy on the train platform.

Missing from the alternate ending are the two key elements that made fans dislike the original end of the show. This time, Tracy doesn't die, and the story doesn't end with Ted pursuing Robin, a relationship many fans felt never really worked, as we've previously written about.

What's not quite clear is whether this version would have effected anything in the finale that came before, or if it would have just been tacked on to the end as is. For example, as pointed out by Hollywood Take, it's not clear if Robin and Barney are together in this version. Previous scenes of the finale show them divorcing, with Robin still having feelings for Ted, but Ted noting that "things fall apart, things get put back together", while the camera focuses on Robin and Barney, implies that they might be back together in this version.

As we reported in April, creator Carter Bay tweeted after the finale that he, along with co-creator Craig Thomas, sat in the edit room 16 days before the finale aired, trying to decide between this alternate ending and the ending that aired on television.

Only one script was shot, Bay said, but through editing they were able to come up with this alternate one, though the existence of a completely new voice over from Bob Saget suggests they did actually write additional material.

While reaction to the real finale was extremely negative, reaction to this alternate ending has been overwhelmingly positive, with fans commenting on how much better this version is and wondering why Carter Bays and Craig Thomas would have scrapped it.

Many fans have argued that creators Bays and Thomas stuck to their original ending, partially because it was what they had written and shot at the very beginning of the show, according to People, even though it might not have still been fitting nine years later.

How I Met Your Mother Season 9 will be released on DVD on September 23rd.