By now, it has really sort of sunk in that Castle is no longer an ABC series. The show was unceremoniously cancelled near the end of Season 8 after doing some retooling that was hopefully supposed to extend its life on ABC. If a renewal had happened, Castle had shot a different cliffhanger ending that would have led into Season 9. Obviously, we got a pretty happy ending, instead, but there's always the DVD release to check out the alternate ending, right? Well, actually, it looks like that is wrong.
While there are deleted scenes on the Castle: The Complete Eighth Season DVD set, one of those scenes will not be the series finale alternate ending that fans may have been expecting. In fact, showrunner Alexi Hawley says the decision was made consciously because that alternate ending we've been hearing so much about wasn't really much of a different ending, at all:
The only editorial difference between the two [shootout] scenes was the cliffhanger version used some different shots at the very end to highlight the two of them on the floor together, rather than getting us into the tracking shot that took us to the time jump to the happy family.
The showrunner basically explained to TV Line that there were mainly some differences between the tracking shots at the end, which is why they ultimately chose to leave the alternate ending off of the disc. In fact, there probably would have been a bigger difference if the show had gotten renewed and we hadn't gotten the happy ending that we did. Honestly, though, since Stana Katic was being written out of the series, any way the show would have written her out would have been awkward, so I suppose all is well that ends well. Although it obviously would still have been cooler if there was an alternate ending on the DVD set that is out later this month.
If you are wondering exactly where Season 8 would have ended had the show been renewed for Season 9, we thankfully know that answer. A short time ago, we learned that the ending would have occurred after we learned that Caleb was the real baddie. Some of what followed in the actual episode would still have happened. People would have been shot and Caleb would have died. In this alternate version of events, Beckett and Castle would have been left holding one another and waiting for help. We would never have gotten the happy ending we did and we would have had to have waited until at least September to learn whether the wounds inflicted on Beckett and Castle would have been fatal. (Obviously, since Nathan Fillion's contract had been renewed, we had more hope for his character than Stana Katic's.)
You can check out what other deleted scenes are available with the DVD set, which is out on August 23. Check out our full list of upcoming DVD, Digital and Blu-ray releases here.
