The ending of How I Met Your Mother was one of the most controversial endings in recent TV history, and now one of the show's creators is expressing some regret for the way it was handled.
In an interview with appeared on French website Allocine, co-creator Carter Bays was asked if he would do everything the same way today, and he said that he wouldn't.
"Honestly, no," he said. "There's another ending, an alternate ending...I always kinda liked that ending better, but you know, it's not the one that we ultimately went with, and it was a team, so..."
The alternate ending he's referring to was released a few months after the finale aired, as we previously reported. In the alternate ending, the mother doesn't die and Ted doesn't get with Robin, the two main problems everyone had with the original ending. There's also some implication in the alternate ending that Robin and Barney might get back together.
At the time, Carter Bays stood by the ending that aired on television, saying that he and co-creator Craig Thomas sat in the edit room for weeks trying to decide which of the two endings to go with. It sounded back then like the writers were happy with the decision they made, but now Bays is saying that he always liked the alternate ending better but the rest of the team felt differently.
Talking generally about how people reacted to the ending, Bays said he wasn't surprised that the ending was controversial, since it was just as controversial amount the people who made it.