'How I Met Your Mother' Season 9 Premiere The Mother with No Name Recap

It's been coming for eight seasons, and it hasn't quite happened yet, but Ted Mosby is at last very close to meeting the mother of his children. The premiere of season 9 of "How I Met Your Mother" brought Ted a giant step closer to meeting the woman he's been waiting for all these years.

The two-part premiere saw the gang converging on Farhampton, the out-of-the-city site of Barney and Robin's wedding. Lily (Alyson Hannigan) and Ted (Josh Radnor) were driving together, as were Barney (Neil Patrick Harris) and Robin (Cobie Smulders), while Marshall (Jason Segel) was trying to get back to New York after spending time with his family in Minnesota.

The fateful introduction of the as-yet-unnamed mother happened when Lily, fed up with Ted's quirky driving habits, bailed out of his car and hopped on a train instead. Missing Marshall and baby Marvin, Lily sought comfort in a fellow traveler (Cristin Milioti)—who just happened to seem a lot like the kind of woman Ted wants to marry.

The premiere episodes set the scene for the season—not just the introduction of the mother, but the chaos of the wedding (Robin desperately hopes that Barney isn't planning to include a "ring bear" in the ceremony), the lingering feelings Ted has for Robin, Marshall's obstacle-filled journey back to New York and Lily's stress at being separated from her family. A flash-forward at the end of the episode, however, assures us that, everything else aside, this season Ted will finally find who he's looking for.