Board Thread:Questions and Answers/@comment-1996340-20140630080929/@comment-173.74.16.4-20140722190734

Basically it seems that the original ending was to have him live. The writer/director/person in charge then decided to leave it with an "open to interpretation" end and had the scene cut. I've heard people state that on certain releases (single dvds, season box set, series box set, special editions, limited realeases, etc) there is a typical bonus material section that has the scene included it in. I'd be curious to find someone who has it (which if it was a limited release, only in Japan, might not be too easy) and to find out it it is listed in the bonus section as a deleted scene, or an alternate ending.

Depending on this there are two way to look at it:

1. This is a deleted scene. This implies that it is canon that LeLouche is alive but the scene was cut to fit the agenda of the person in charge. This agenda could be due to time constraints (think cut scenes from long movies like Lord of the Rings that would have been 4+ hours long without the cuts, which noone wants to sit through) or because it was decided that they did not want to flat out state that he was live and leave it as an open ending. A TV show has  set amount of time, generally down to the second, that is is alotted to fit within. Because of the amount of material that normally goes into a final episode, this is also the reason most final episodes do not include an opening sequence; it ends up being an additional 1:20 to 1:40 for story, rather than opening song that has already been shown 23-25 times.

2. This is an alternate ending. This implies that according to canon, LeLouche can neither be confirmed alive or dead according to the aired ending (with the scene cut).