'How I Met Your Mother': Five scoops on the rest of the season

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UPDATE: In realted news, How I Met Your Mother has officially been renewed for a ninth season. Read about it here.

EARLIER: Monday’s How I Met Your Mother marks the return of everyone’s favorite Canadian pop star, Robin Sparkles.

And to celebrate what could be the final installment of this iconic series (we’ll expand on that in a bit), Cobie Smulders and executive producer Craig Thomas hopped on a conference call with reporters to tease her return and talk about what else is in store for Robin and the gang this season.

1) This MIGHT not be the end of Robin Sparkles

Even though Monday’s episode, which finds Barney uncovering an unseen Robin Sparkles video — has been highly touted as the final installment of Robin Sparkles, Thomas says, the writers don’t rule out the possibility of bringing her back again should a fantastic idea come to mind. However, he adds, “we’re pretty happy with this as a potential final chapter of Robin Sparkles. I think people will see how this bridges the gap between the Robin we’ve seen before and what came next and what was the end of Robin Sparkles’ career. So if it’s the end, it feels like a fitting ending” One idea that Thomas might pitch? “In the back of my head somewhere I’m thinking how do [we] not get Robin up at her own wedding to perform some medley of Robin Sparkles songs?…But who the hell knows.”

2) Robin’s “obsession” revealed?

In Monday’s episode, the gang has a debate about obsessions and, according to Smulders, “how one becomes obsessed with another person.” In this talk, Robin admits that she was obsessed with someone in the past, which, naturally, launches Barney into a search for that person. “He goes on this mission and at the end of his mission, he finds this video,” says Smulders. But will the identity of Robin’s obsession be revealed? Is it James van der Beek? We’ll find out Monday. Meanwhile, expect to see a darker side of Robin Sparkles and what Thomas calls “the craziest” version of the persona yet. Hint: Both Smulders and Thomas admit that Alanis Morissette was a big influence on this version of Sparkles.

3) There WILL be a Barney-Robin wedding this season.

“We’ve been seeing glimpses of this wedding for, like, three years!” says Thomas. “We have to get there already.” But before they make it to the altar, says Thomas, it’s not entirely clear whether or not Barney and Robin will discuss the possibility of children. (In the past, Barney has entertained the idea, while Robin is aware that she is medically unable to have any.) “Definitely it’s an issue we’re interested to cover…but I don’t want to say we’ve completely ruled out a discussion between them.” Moreover, he said, Barney and Robin are on “an accelerated timeline” so the coming months will see “Robin and Barney realize all the topics they do have to talk about and cover — whether it’s Robin’s dad or all the other things that will come up as they go.”

4) Ted isn’t entirely over Robin.

Even though Ted had some closure on the issue of Robin in recent episodes, Thomas says the door is definitely not closed on that issue. “I don’t want to say how or when, but yeah,” he says, “it’s so built into the DNA of the show and, we’re heading toward this huge finish of this series. Whether sooner or later, there’s a big culminating ending coming in the near future of the show, of course, that dynamic has to be addressed again.”

5) WILL THERE BE A FINAL SLAP?

“I don’t want to say one way or another,” says Thomas. “But I love that people are finding that the slap bet clock still exists.” Additionally, Thomas says they are aware there are two slaps left and “we’re hoping to pay off every loose end before the end of the series.”

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