Time to Meet 'HIMYM's Most Important Character

Eight years of waiting, and she's finally here. Or, she will be in a few week's time, when Season 9 of How I Met Your Mother premieres Sept. 23. That's right: Now that we know what the title character's face looks like, we can start slowly learning The Mother's actual personality. That's what this brand new trailer for How I Met Your Mother 's final season is teasing, anyway.

The Mother — played by Broadway's Once star Cristin Milioti — will apparently spend some time with Lily early in the season. They'll be on a train together, presumably the very same one to Farhampton we saw The Mother buying a ticket for at the end of last season. She'll offer Lily a cookie, Lily will try to bite her (no idea), and The Mother will swat her on the nose with a rolled-up magazine.

It sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. And we're not saying that cheekily — within the world of How I Met Your Mother, it really does.

It's not doubt that one of the most interesting aspects of this upcoming season will be watching how the writers go about introducing the long-elusive Mother to the three most important entities the show has: the core friends, Ted himself, and the audience. There's a lot of pressure to make her worth the wait. Luckily for the showrunners, they seemed to have picked a genuinely charming person for the job.

Maybe we'll eventually even learn The Mother's name.