‘How I Met Your Mother’ Season Premiere Review: “The Locket”

‘How I Met Your Mother’ season 9 premieres its first episode of the final season “The Locket,” as Lily realizes that Ted might sabotage Barney and Robin's wedding, while Marshall gets kicked off a flight back to New York, and Barney and Robin discover a disturbing secret on their way to Farhampton.

Last season’s ‘How I Met Your Mother’ finale “Something New” saw Ted confess his wedding discomfort to Lily, while Marshall receives an offer for a judgeship and Barney and Robin faced off against an obnoxious couple (‘Happy Endings‘ star Casey Wilson and ‘Key & Peele‘s Keegan-Michael Key), before the mother herself appeared, so how does the final season kick off?

Read on for your in-depth recap of everything you need to know about ‘How I Met Your Mother’ season 9 premiere, “The Locket!”

55 hours before the wedding, Ted pesters Lily with useless Long Island trivia on their way to Farhampton, while Barney and Robin worry which one of their wildcard relatives will ultimately ruin the wedding. On his flight from Minnesota, Marshall annoys his neighboring passenger (Sherri Shepherd) with his worries, before finding that his mother posted a photo of he and Marvin online referencing his judgeship. Lily too receives the notification, but ignores it believing it to be more propaganda from Marshall’s mother, while Ted’s continued pestering drives her to seek out the nearest train station.

As Robin and Barney discuss their relatives, they realize they might share a Canadian cousin named Mitch, and pull over to vomit. Meanwhile, Lily arrives on the Farhampton train (the mother seated nearby), and Marshall desperately tries over the phone to navigate his mother through deleting the photo.

Lily stresses about whether or not to view the photo, drawing the attention of the mother, who offers Lily cookies to calm her down. Lily and the mother bond, even as the mother covers up her own similarities to Ted’s interests, while Marshall’s desperate attempts to guide his mother over the phone get both he and the neighboring passenger kicked off the plane altogether. In complaining about Ted , Lily realizes that he intentionally antagonized her into leaving the road trip, having likely recovered Robin’s locket from Stella in Los Angeles, with intent to ruin the wedding.

Awaiting the next available flight, Marshall too finds it impossible to delete the incriminating photo, while the passenger Daphne insults him for his trouble. Out on the road, Barney and Robin learn from relatives that cousin Mitch doesn’t share blood relations between them, and express their relief. Lily finds herself unable to reach Ted over the phone, while all the passengers at Marshall’s airport shout at him methods to delete the photo, ultimately succeeding when Marvin accidentally taps a random key.

At the Farhampton Inn, Lily manages to tackle Ted before he can present Robin with his gift, though the three quickly find that Ted’s gift was a harmless photo of the five of them to remember how far they’d come. Ted and Lily go to check in, while Marshall and Daphne race across the airport for the last available seat on another flight. Ted admits to Lily that he understands why he would think he found the locket, though he insists on having no intent to ruin the wedding.  Little does she know however, that Ted in fact traveled to Los Angeles four days prior to the wedding.

So beginneth the final season of 'How I Met Your Mother!' It's a bit difficult to paint a picture of the season at large solely by "The Locket," but the return installment offered up enough familiar humor and new business to chew on that we barely noticed any shift in dynamic, or absence of the more familiar 'HIMYM' conventions.

On the one hand, the promise of Ted continuing to drag out his delivery of the titular locket won't win over any detractors of the ever-present Ted-Robin romance, though the introduction of the mother herself offered an interesting new wrinkle that runs parallel to the main five. Newcomer Cristin Milioti shared effortless chemistry with Alyson Hannigan, and promises to make her rounds even more memorably before finally landing on Ted, however long into the season that might take.

Somewhat less entertaining were Marshall's travel woes and Barney and Robin's familial scare, each seemingly concocted to provide the core five with something to do over the course of the return. Robin and Barney's issue resolves with a mere phone call, while Marshall and Daphne's plane adventures come in somewhat more noticeably broad than the rest of the episode.

An intriguing start to the final season, though not exactly the prism into the final season format we might have hoped for in gauging how 'HIMYM' sticks the landing in its final year.

What say you? Did ‘How I Met Your Mother’s premiere “The Locket” take you by surprise?  Do you still have any doubts about the final season? Give us your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned for a recap of the ‘How I Met Your Mother' premiere's second half, "Coming Back!"