The Lost Ending to It's a Wonderful Life

I'm just old enough to remember the earliest years of Saturday Night Live when they first aired, though I didn't quite get to watch them. I absorbed some of it through the zeitgeist, and by the time I was in college a few years later I was watching.

There were long periods when I watched, and then many others when I didn't. There are actors I never saw on the show at all, maybe whole decades. Fifty years is a long time.

I guess 1986 was one of those times when I wasn't watching, because I had no idea until today they created a "lost ending" to It's a Wonderful Life. I only found out about it yesterday because Maggie Koerth mentioned it on BlueSky. She said she watches it every year after watching the film:

I can't imagine the current show creators producing something this radical now. Though it also seems pretty out there for the Reagan years.