The ninth and final season of “How I Met Your Mother” premiered with the hour-long episode, “The Locket,” which starts 55 hours before the wedding. The audience already knows that Ted and The Mother will meet at Barney and Robin’s wedding, where she is the bass player. In last season’s finale, the mother (Cristin Milioti) was finally revealed as she boards a train, headed for the wedding.
The premiere opens with Ted and Lily in on their way to Farhampton with a binder he has put together for the trip, entitled “Lily and Ted’s great adventure,” filled with “exciting” sights to stop at along the way. Ted also puts on some really creepy driving gloves that make him more comfortable when driving faster…
Robin and Barney are in a limo with Ranjit, discussing all the family members who could be the “wild card” at their wedding (my personal favorite is the casually racist uncle). When going through cousins, they figure out that they both have a kooky, Canadian cousin Mitch, who only has six fingers. They frantically call their families to figure out if they could possibly be related.
Marshall is on a plane from Minnesota to NYC when he sees a Facebook post from his mother announcing his judgeship. He finds it because his iPhone apparently sends him and Lily what looks like a text every time his mom puts up a picture. HIMYM is getting a little ahead of Mark Zuckerberg with that one, but I chose to forgive them for that weird plot-helper. In last season’s finale, Marshall was offered and then accepted his dream job, which directly conflicts with Lily’s plan to move to Italy to be an art consultant. He has yet to tell her.
Lily ditches Ted and the crazy car ride, and takes the train to Farhampton instead: the same train that The Mother is on! The women find themselves bonding over The Mother’s “Sumbitch” cookies, making Lily the first character to meet The Mother. And the best part of the entire episode is that The Mother has a personality, like, she’s actually funny. While she’s listening to Lily complain about Ted’s craziness, she secretly thinks it’s cute because she’s weirdly nerdy about obscure sightseeing too. And she can actually keep up with Lily (even when she tries to bite her).
Robin and Barney conclude that they share no DNA. This was obviously gonna happen, and part of me kind of wanted to see what it would’ve been like if they had stuck with it. (Well, what would’ve happened is it would’ve just gotten gross or dark humor-y or very reminiscent of “Brothers and Sisters.”)
Marshall fights with the woman sitting next to him on the plane, getting them both kicked off. After some more fighting, end up sharing a rental car that is really not eco-friendly (super stressful for Marshall, the environmental lawyer— I mean—the judge)
When the gang (minus Marshall) arrives at the Farhampton Inn, Ted gives Robin an old photo, not the locket, as her wedding gift. Although the locket is not in the red box (an image from season eight), the episode implies that Ted does have the locket, which he tracked down his ex-fiancée Stella in LA to retrieve (probably a mistake, really no reason to mess with your ex-fiancée for your ex-girlfriend).
The receptionist at the hotel is quite taken aback by the fact that Ted is single, and continuously makes inappropriate comments about it, which were my favorite lines of the episode. Barney tells his friends about a “hornier” curse put on his family in 1807, which made all Stinson men doomed to sleep with many partners. Barney claims the first descendant to break the curse was his brother James when he married Tom, however the pair recently decided to get divorced. Even with his brother and brother-in-law spliting, Barney is still able to believe in marriage and true love since he’s found Robin.
The final dramatic scene features Ted, alone, with a drink and a crossword puzzle, but, in the same frame, the audience can see Ted and The Mother, together at the Farhampton Inn, one year later. This scene was sorta “aww, so cute” but also weirdly fantastical. It almost makes me think that all the crazy conspiracy-theory bloggers who say The Mother is dead in the end could be right.
The episode ends with the erotic cake Barney bought for James and Tom ending up in Ted’s room. In next week’s episode, all the old people coming to the wedding arrive.
To recap the recap: • We (aka Lily) finally meet The Mother and she’s kinda awesome and bakes cookies that seem super yum. • Lily takes baked goods from a stranger on the train. They don’t really emphasize enough how weird that is. • Ted is supposed to feel sad and alone but its almost like he knows that The Mother is gonna be there soon. • Episodes now follow an hour of the plot, but its cool because who doesn’t love a good countdown! • There is a lot of foreshadowing that someone’s gonna ruin the wedding, and it might be a bear. • Robin and Barney make jokes about eating James’ ding-dong off the erotic cake (secretly, they were super turned on by the whole incest-scare and needed to keep it going).
