How I Met Your Mother
A highlight from the "HIMYM" premiere was when Lily met Ted's future wife on the train to the wedding. CBS/How I Met Your Mother/Screenshot

“How I Met Your Mother” returned for its ninth and final season on Monday, Sept. 23. Airing a special hourlong premiere, fans of the CBS comedy finally got to learn a little bit more about the mother … and see her interact with Ted. Check out our picks for the top 10 moments from the series premieres, “The Locket” and “Coming Back.”

Florian Van Oderloo

Lily was the first one to meet Cristin Milioti’s “Mother” character, and “How I Met Your Mother” fans quickly saw how perfect she is for Ted. Besides owning her own driving gloves and loving roadside attractions, Milioti had viewers laughing when she name-dropped Florian Van Oderloo, a belt inventor whose house Ted was bent on stopping at on the way up to Farhampton.

Lily And The Mother

Lily and the Mother already tested their friendship in the first episode, when a batch of cookies keeping Lily sane ran out. The result? Lily’s eyes turning red and a brief fight involving her trying to bite the Mother, and Milioti swatting her on the nose with a rolled-up magazine. If they can survive that within the first couple hours of meeting, then we think they can have a lifelong friendship.

Kill Ranjit

Marshall Manesh reprised his role as limo chauffeur Ranjit to transport Robin and Barney to Farhampton for their wedding. When the pair tried to push aside their worries about possibly being related, Ranjit told them that he knows the truth. The result was a hilarious telepathic conversation between Robin and Barney in which they debated about “taking care” of their driver. Fortunately they found out that they’re not related by blood and didn’t have to kill Ranjit.

Barney’s “Aww” Moments

“How I Met Your Mother” viewers know that Barney is a player. Even though he’s head over heels for Robin, it’s still hard to picture him changing his ways and being monogamous. But Barney stuffed all our worries in a sack during “The Locket” when he had this “aww”-inducing moment with Robin on the way to Farhampton.

“Our wedding is going to be legendary,” Barney tells Robin.

“No ‘wait for it?’” she asks.

“I’ve got you,” he tells her. “I don’t have to wait for it anymore.”

What’s In The Box?

A storyline in season 8 was that Robin wanted to get married with a locket she'd buried in the park when she was younger. But when she went to dig it up before her wedding, it was gone. The mystery of where it went was finally solved in “The Locket.”

According to Lily, Robin dug it up in a drunken stupor one night and placed it in a box in Ted’s apartment. The only problem was that she forgot she did that. When Ted went to check out the box, the locket wasn’t inside. In the premiere we learn that he contacted his ex-fiancé, Stella, believing that she may have taken it while they were living together. Stella told them that if she did have the locket, it would be buried in a storage locker somewhere in L.A. and that he’d have to look for it himself … which he did four days before driving up to Farhampton.

Finally arriving at the hotel for the wedding, Lily tackled Ted when she saw that he was going to hand Robin a box. But the locket wasn’t inside. Instead the box contained a photo of the five friends taken eight years ago.

Hello Curtis

“Desperate Housewives” star Roger Bart guest-starred as hotel clerk Curtis … and he was absolutely hilarious. Besides making Ted feel terrible about being at a romantic hotel by himself, Curtis had one of the funniest lines of this episode: “Countless babies have been conceived within these walls. And one grisly murder.”

Marshall’s Battle With Daphne

Marshall was forced to reveal his travel struggles to a very unhappy Lily and Barney. When Barney learned that there was only one seat left on the last flight to New York, he told Marshall to act like a New Yorker and throw Daphne’s (guest star Sherri Shepherd) carry-on luggage into a restricted area. Marshall refused, saying he’s from Minnesota and that’s not the way of life there. So what happened? Daphne threw HIS carry-on luggage!

Did Marshall learn his lesson about acting nice in desperate times? Nope! After learning that the car rental place was out of car seats, Daphne offered to take the last car, buy a car seat for baby Marvin, and then come back and pick them up. Marshall was so grateful that he handed her $100 and watched her drive off.

Although it initially looked like Daphne wasn't returning for them after all, she eventually did and restored Marshall’s faith in humanity.

The Stinson Curse

Barney revealed that his brother James and his husband, Tom, made him believe in true love when they got married. He then relayed a hilarious story about how the Stinson family was cursed with getting “hornier and hornier” in Moscow in 1807, when brothers accidentally struck an old gypsy woman with their wagon.

James revealed that he’s actually getting a divorce from Tom because he cheated on him “repeatedly.” But that didn’t change Barney’s views on true love. In a sweet moment, Barney told a nervous Robin, “I don’t need them to make me believe in true love anymore.”

Lily and Linus

John Belushi’s nephew, Robert Belushi, was another hilarious guest star in “Coming Back.” Playing a bartender named Linus, he became Lily’s go-to guy one day at the hotel when she learned that Marshall and Marvin might not make it back in time.

When she accidentally dropped James’ divorce bomb in front of Barney, Ted tried to cut her off from drinking. But Linus was right there with a continuous drink, no matter how many times Ted took it out of her hands (“Thank you, Linus”).

Ted And The Mother

Lily was the first one of the group to meet the Mother, and the others will be meeting her one by one. However, “Coming Back” did show Ted interacting with Cristin Milioti’s character … in a flash-forward. A year after Barney and Robin’s wedding, Ted took the Mother back to that same Farhampton hotel.

“One year ago, I made a promise to myself at this table,” he told her. “I’m coming back and I’m bringing you.”

Milioti tells him that he didn’t know her yet, but Ted tells her that he knew he would meet her. “How I Met Your Mother” airs on CBS on Monday nights at 8 p.m. What did you think of the season 9 premiere? Let us know your favorite moments in the comments section.

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