Wizard World Portland 2019 brought together a major cast reunion from the hit series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Among them was Alyson Hannigan, who portrayed Willow on Buffy but is also notable for her role as Lily Aldrin in the hit CBS sitcom, How I Met Your Mother. During the reunion panel, fans were able to ask the stars any question they desired, with one in particular regarding Hannigan’s former show.
Near the beginning of the panel, one fan asked Alyson what were her thoughts regarding the show’s finale and how did she feel about the backlash. As we know, the final episode, Last Forever, received numerous complaints and criticisms from both fans and critics. The backlash even went so far to spawn a petition asking for a full reshoot and rewrite of the episode. Many’s distaste for the ending was clear, yet so was that from the actors.
At the convention, Hannigan stated how different the final episode was during the initial table read. When it was being read among the cast, the episode was roughly an hour and a half to two hours long. In her eyes, Last Forever jumped around a bit too much and it felt faster than it should have. The former HIMYM star knew the fans were passionate about the show and that if they could have seen what the cast was shown at first, things would have been different.
Series creators of How I Met Your Mother, Carter Bays and Craig Thomas, had known from the start of the show that the ending was going to happen the way that it did. In fact, the two kids that were used throughout the show filmed their final lines of dialogue for the finale in Season Two. Hannigan went on to say that regarding this, the creators disagreed over it for a bit due to where they were in their lives but ended up filming it anyways.