HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER Bosses on the Season Premiere Ending, Reuniting Robin and Barney, and More

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 8 premiere of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. If you haven’t seen “Farhampton,” go watch it now and then come back to see what the executive producers have to say about it.]

We’ve had countless near-misses, hints, and teases, but on the eighth season premiere of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER took the titular mystery one giant leap forward: we saw where and when Ted and his mystery woman actually meet.

Well, kind of.

See, fresh off of whatever shenanigans were going on at Robin and Barney’s future wedding, Ted was hanging out a train station…where a certain woman with a yellow umbrella was also headed.

“I feel like it was the beginning of season 6, the narrator said the day I met your mother, it was the day of a wedding,” HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER co-creator Carter Bays told reporters last week. “We specifically at that time made it the day of a wedding and not at a wedding. I think a lot of people were a little misled by that, which I feel a little bad about. It’s not actually the wedding, but it’s at that train station.”

And no, don’t worry, it’s not like the mother will suddenly turn, leave, and never meet Ted the next time the narrative picks up at that time — that’s the moment we’ve been waiting eight seasons for.

“That’s the moment we’re going to meet the mother,” HIMYM co-creator Craig Thomas assured. “I feel like we can honestly say that. That’s where it happens.”

“It was definitely closed doors [for filming],” Bays continued. “That moment was something we’ve been building to for a long time. We’ll see more of that moment as the series goes on whenever that happens.”

But is that actually the actress who will play Ted’s future baby-mama?

“I don’t want to say because, ultimately, when we do cast the actress who’s the mother, it’s going to have to be shrouded in secrecy,” said Thomas. “So if it already happened, if we already did it, I don’t want to say.”

So, perhaps not the real mother, but we’re solidly on the right path…a path they’re going to continue on this season.

“We’ve jumped way into that day now,” Thomas said. “We’ve only seen little glimpses of the beginning of that day and now we’ve jumped deeper into that day because we can’t tell a story in a normal way to save our lives on HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER…we’re still going to [get from] A to B within that day as well as A to B from how Robin and Barney wind up getting married. We love jumping to endings and then telling you the middle. It’s very awkward storytelling if you think about it, but we enjoy it. We’re going to fill in all of the blanks on that day. That day is the biggest day in the history of the group, obviously, and that’s where the series is heading, and we’re getting close.”

The producers declined to expand on whether that pivotal meeting moment is the end of the season, Thomas did allow, “that premiere was the first episode of the final season of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER.” (You can read more on how they’re dealing with the uncertainty of the show’s fate and writing the series as if it’s ending here.)

However, while Ted is currently occupied with Victoria, the producers said his relationship with Robin still isn’t quite over yet.

“Robin will continue to be a big part of it,” Bays said of Ted’s romantic journey. “I don’t know if we really laid the clues in there, but…there’s still stuff there. As we get towards the end of the series, we’re going to explore that a little more.”

As for what’s ahead, Bays called October into November “the break-up month” since we know there are three couples (Barney/Quinn, Robin/Nick, Ted/Victoria) currently together on-screen who won’t end up together when all is said and done.

“Ultimately, the challenge was: can all three of these break-ups be completely different from each other?” teased Thomas. “Can there be a funny one? Can there be a dramatic one? I think we’ve done it.”

Of course, viewers do know that Robin’s romantic path will inevitably lead her back to Barney, and after tonight’s adorableness, can you blame them?

“The chemistry between Neil [Patrick Harris (Barney)] and Cobie [Smulders (Robin)] is so great that she doesn’t even need to be in the scene with him for them to have chemistry,” Thomas marveled. “When I watch that scene [at the end where Barney is in the cab with Quinn], I always think, ‘It’s Robin.’ He has his fiancée asleep on his shoulder, and he’s thinking about another woman. And that twinkle in his eye, that’s how he is with Cobie.”

And if you were worried the reunion between Robin and Barney might take a little while to play out on-screen, it seems like that is unfounded.

“We’ve jumped ahead and seen that Barney is marrying Robin,” Thomas said. “Sweeps will really heat up that progression of Barney and Robin getting back together. And I think we’ve come up a fun, weirdly appropriate way to reunite them that I hope everyone will like.”

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What did you think of the premiere of HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER?

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