How I Met Your Mother: Everything We Know So Far

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For the past few seasons, each finale has ended with a massive reveal, slowly telling us more about the day of the meeting. But when the 8th season ended last night, I’ll bet many fan’s weren’t sure what to expect. We learnt from an eager Ted midway through the year that the day the entire show has been leading up to is May 25th 2013. Unfortunately, the Season 8 finale came two weeks before that, leaving most of the audience unsure what we’d get to see.

Well now the dust has settled, it’s fair to say we shouldn’t have been worried. For the ending of what was going to be the last season (until the show was unexpectedly picked up for a ninth year), we got the answer to one of the biggest questions in the shows history; the identity of the mother.

Throwing my opinion in the ring, I think it’s a perfect choice. Cristin Milioti is an absolute unknown and is a perfect fit for the woman Ted Mosby has been waiting eight years for. But while whetting out appetite for a final series that according the producers promises to be completely different to what came before, it’s just one more piece of information in the growing mosaic of Ted’s other half.

We’ve already learnt a lot about the now less-illusive mother; heck, we even know the major beats of the meeting between her and Ted. So to get you prepared for Season 9 in September and give you an opportunity to go over what has been a brilliant US sitcom, here’s all the major information we know about the mother. I’ll do it in three sections; what we know about the mother, how her and Ted meet and their relationship into the future.

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Well first off, as you can tell from the picture above, she’s pretty. I’d go as far as saying she’s the embodiment of what I feel we all expected the mother to look like. But seeing her face is only the first in a long line of information on her.

Facts on the mother were thin on the ground for the first couple of seasons. We did get to know Ted’s impossibly high standards, but that was it in the first two years. The first proper piece of information we learnt was that she attended the St Patrick’s Day party where Ted got beaten up for his Barney-esque ways (incidentally my favourite episode of the series, No Tomorrow), but aside from the yellow umbrella, little was gained.

It wasn’t until Season 5 we got some concrete facts. We learn she was studying economics at college in the season opener. Following on from the ending of the previous season finale, Ted ends up lecturing to the wrong class; economics third year over architecture first year. Embarrassing, but not only did it give the mother the first glimpse of him, it led into one of the most informative episodes of all. In the 100th episode, Girls Vs Suits, we finally got some big development on her character. Ted dates college girl Cindy, an endeavour that fails because he clearly has more in common with her roommate, the mother. Her and Ted share similar interests and most importantly (for later on) she plays bass; it’s clear from then on that his soul mate fits the overly specific description he’s been trumpeting for years.

Once Barney and Robin’s wedding became the focus (more on that on the next page), information on the mother was scarce, but a few weeks ago we got a glimpse of her life immediately before Ted. In oh-so depressing episode The Time Travellers, set just 45 days before they meet, Future Ted tells us she was dating finance guy Louis. From his violent reaction to Ted’s imaginary profession of love, it looks like the mothers had as lucky escape as Ted had from Jeanette.

It was only in the Season 3 premier that we actually made some progress on how Ted would actually meet the mother. The “short story” of their meeting, involving the now iconic the yellow umbrella, we’ve almost entirely pieced together from seasons 3-5. In No Tomorrow, the significance of the mother’s presence at the party becomes clear in the final moments; Ted picks up her yellow umbrella and continues to use it for a year or so. It’s used for a couple of key, but red herring, moments and finally gets returned to its rightful owner in Girls Vs Suits when Cindy kicks Ted out. From the framing of the show, we’re to assume this is the basis of the short version, but the bigger story is more complicated.

Once the yellow umbrella saga was finished, the show began to move towards the end game, slowly teasing at the wedding ‘a little ways down the road’ where Ted meets his future wife. It took two seasons, but we eventually learnt it was the wedding of Ted’s best bro Barney and former love of his life Robin. Once the Season 6 mystery of the groom and Season 7’s multiple romances of Barney were resolved and the wedding drew nearer, the story once again went back to the mother. At the start of the latest series we saw where Ted would meet the mother – Farhampton train station on the way back from the wedding – and halfway through we found out why she was there in the first place; she was bass player in the wedding band Ted himself helped pick.

From that point on, it was a simple case of waiting and watching Ted make the last few steps to becoming the man he needed to be. We haven’t reached the date of the wedding yet, and it’s uncertain when in Season 9 it’ll appear, but knowing the broader strokes only builds anticipation.

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For a couple that have shared no screen time and are in fact completely unaware of the other’s existence, we as an audience know an awful lot about where their relationship is heading.

Meeting the mother has a massive impact on Ted’s life. He is immediately enamoured with her, calling her straight after getting her number, quits smoking two weeks into dating her and says a (this time) truly felt, if still early, ‘I love you’. In less than two years the couple are married and have had a baby girl, the same one seen in the 2030 segments of the show.

These soon to occur moments come from various side comments and the show’s relatively common flashforwards flesh out the future even more. We see well into the early 2020’s the couple are still incredibly happy, as is, thankfully, the group of friends. Lily’s hinting at the mother’s boot size in the latest episode is less a throwaway line, more a foreshadowing that the group unity will continue well beyond the shows end.

Questions still remain as to what the mother will be like, not to mention Marshall and Lily’s potential move to Rome and the success of Barney and Robin’s marriage, but as the show gets ready to enter it’s final season, we can be happy that everything is coming together well.

Read more at http://whatculture.com/tv/how-i-met-...md6EoJJO5lq.99

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What does it mean to finally meet the mother on HIMYM?

Honestly, not too freakin’ much.

Ok, I may be bitter after staying with the show for eight (eight!) yes, eight, can I say eight any more times (eight eight eight eight eight eiiiigght) seasons (eight). Nonetheless, I can say without a doubt that even the most hardcore HIMYM fan has become tired, cheerless, going through the motions, wanting to see other people for quite some time now but God it’s just so much work to commit to something else after so much time….and maybe, there’s still something good left, right?

Maybe there’s a spark. Maybe stick with it just a little bit longer, through this season into the ninth and just see things through.

Right? Right?