RECAP: 'How I Met Your Mother' Prepared For Final Season

Monday night's season eight premiere episode of CBS' How I Met Your Mother, starring the ensemble cast of Josh Rednor (Ted Mosby), Jason Segel (Marshall Eriksen), Cobie Smulders (Robin Scherbatsky), Neil Patrick Harris (Barney Stinson) and Alyson Hannigan (Lily Aldrin), kicked off by addressing the overarching themes and relationships of the entire series — the growing family of Lily and Marshall, the tension in the when-will-they-get-back-together relationship of Barney and Robin and of course the overarching question of: will Ted ever meet the love of his life, the "mother" of his eternally patient kids (who must be in their 20s by now, having listened to their dad's story for the past seven years).

"We sort of come in every day and go, 'This is the last season of How I Met Your Mother until we hear different,'" said co-creator Craig Thomas, reports Entertainment Weekly. "We really feel like this launches the last season," he said, hence the need to reveal the identity of Ted's wife-to-be, which was teased in last night's episode, when the woman with the yellow umbrella and high-heeled legs appeared again.

But is the actress who waits at the "Farhampton" train stop (also the name of the episode) a few feet away from Ted the real mother-to-be? "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, so if it already happened, we already did it, we don't want to say."

Thomas also revealed that the Farhampton train station is, in fact, where the two will finally be destined to meet. Given the flexible timeline of the show, however, there's no telling when that scene will actually occur.

As for the infinitely more interesting relationship between Robin and Barney, "the chemistry between Neil and Cobie is so great that she doesn't even need to be in a scene with him for them to have chemistry," Thomas said, as one of the final scenes, when Barney is driving home with his new fiancee's head on his shoulder, thinking about Robin, who is, in turn, reminiscing about him at the same time.

In other spoilers, creator Thomas reveals that the How I Met Your Mother cast is a package deal, saying that they would "never, ever, ever" renew the show with only some of the cast members, a la The Office. "It's a family, and we're finishing this thing together," he said.

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