‘How I Met Your Mother’ Season 9 Spoilers: What Happened In Episode 1, ‘The Locket’? [RECAP]

The “How I Met Your Mother” season 9 premiere is finally here. Episode 1, “The Locket,” aired on CBS on Monday at 8 p.m. EDT. Read on to find out what happened during the episode.

“The Locket” kicks off on Friday at 11 a.m. … 55 hours before Robin and Barney’s wedding. The gang is heading to Farhampton, but in usual “How I Met Your Mother” fashion, the journey there is anything but easy.

Lily And Ted

With Marshall flying back from Minnesota, Lily hitches a ride to the wedding with Ted. But what Lily doesn’t realize is that Ted has a game plan for their ride --- “Manhattan To Farhampton: Lil & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”

Handing over a binder that includes road stops to places like the world’s largest butter churn and the house of the belt buckle, Lily ends up bailing on Ted and taking a train … where she meets “The Mother” (Cristin Milioti).

Barney And Robin

Barney and Robin are getting chauffeured to Farhampton by their loyal limo driver, Ranjit. But their ride gets a little rocky when they realize that they have a lot of wild cards coming to their wedding, like: a possible ring bear (yes, the animal), Uncle Vic the casual racist and Uncle Jaques, who brings his own accordion.

So, who’s going to ruin the wedding? Possibly Cousin Mitch … whom Robin and Barney learn they share as a relative. Desperate to find out if he’s blood-related to them, they begin calling family members to find out the direct connection.

Fortunately one of Robin’s relatives is able to divulge that Mitch isn’t a blood relative, but was instead adopted by one of Robin’s family members after his real parents were eaten alive by sled dogs.

Now able to breathe a sigh of relief, Barney says the most touching line of the episode:

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

“No ‘wait-for-it?’” she asks.

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

Marshall

Marshall ends up getting kicked off his flight after refusing to turn off his cell phone (he was trying to walk his mom through deleting an incriminating photo of him) and getting into a fight with a passenger named Daphne (guest star Sherri Shepherd).

Scared that Lily will find out that he accepted the position as a judge, Marshall desperately tries to delete the photo but can’t figure out how. Fortunately Marvin seems to have the magic touch, and a simple tap on the keyboard deletes the incriminating photo.

Now that that's out of the way, Marshall has a bigger problem. There is only one flight to New York left and that flight only has one seat. While that doesn’t seem like an issue for Marshall and Marvin, it becomes one when Daphne becomes bent on taking that seat before him.

Lily and the Mother

On the train, Lily becomes upset when she realizes that she’s all alone and misses Marvin. Fortunately it’s Cristin Milioti’s “Mother” to the rescue. “Hey, are you okay?” she asks Lily. “You look stressed.”

Offering her up some cookies (called "some b*tches"), the two bond on the train. But their quick friendship takes a sharp turn when the Mother runs out of cookies. Fortunately it ends in them apologizing to each other. Lily apologizes for trying to bite the Mother, and she apologizes for swatting Lily on the nose with a rolled-up magazine.

It’s while they’re talking that viewers see some clues as to why Ted and the Mother are perfect for each other:

- Ted and the Mother both own driving gloves.

- Ted and the Mother both love roadside attractions.

The Locket

Lily realizes that there may have been a reason why Ted was acting so obnoxious in the car … he wanted Lily to leave.

A flashback to season 8 recapped the whole “locket” drama. Robin wanted to get married in her childhood locket, but when she returned to the park to dig it up she discovered that it was gone. Lily revealed that Robin dug it up one night in a drunken stupor and hid it in a box in Ted’s apartment. But when Ted went to go search for it, the locket was gone. Believing Stella, his ex-fiancé, might have it, Ted emails her, but she tells him if she does have it, it’s probably buried somewhere in a storage unit in L.A.

Ted promised Lily that he wouldn’t go get the locket. But another flashback showed that just four days before driving to Farhampton he did fly to L.A. to search for it.

When they all finally arrive at the hotel in Farhampton, Ted’s about to give Robin a box … but Lily tackles him first. Ted still hands it over to Robin, though, and it’s not the locket inside, but instead a picture of the whole gang.

What did you think of the "How I Met Your Mother" season 9 premiere? Let us know in the comments section.