Just when you thought we were out, they pull us back in. Hours after the How I Met Your Mother series finale, the show runners announced that the original five cast members will be the main characters in How I Met Your Dad this fall.

“We knew nine seasons wasn’t enough,” Carter Bays tweeted in the wee hours of this morning, April 1, “so we’re happy to announce that ‘HIMYD’ will be a continuation of Ted, Barney, Robin, Lily and Marshall’s stories!”

This is somewhat surprising news considering CBS had to fight to ensure all cast members stay contractually obligated to HIMYM through season 9 which just concluded last night. As we are learning today, the change of heart is all thanks to Neil Patrick Harris.

“When I was watching the finale last night, something suddenly struck me,” Harris said in a statement. “Why would I give this up? This is super popular. I’d be silly to stop doing this. I called the rest of the cast, invited them over for a drink, and the next thing we knew we were all signing contracts for another nine seasons!”

Production will be on hiatus until the beginning of August, giving cast members of the show such as Harris time to pursue other projects that they haven’t had the freedom to do in nearly a decade.

There is one looming problem: When Harris signed on to Dad late last night, he forgot that he just kicked off his new role in the Broadway show Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Since both shows are produced in New York, Harris came up with a solution: “Now that we know Barney’s job, we decided he would want to go into the entertainment industry, so I’ll be on Dad in full Hedwig costumes and make-up.” Maybe there will be a cross-over episode with Robin Sparkles?

After last night’s emotional finale, which you can read our recap of here, the show didn’t leave any questions to be answered in this new series, but we’re confident they’ll be able to think of some hijinks to throw our gang in. It’ll be interesting to see how they deal with Ted settling down with the Mother. Will we see their wedding? We bet they’ll set the time frame of the season across large swaths of time, to make up for setting the entirety of season 9 within one weekend.

We at Hypable are very excited to see the real version of ‘HIMYD’ on CBS this fall – if it gets picked up. The pilot is shot and Craig Thomas tweeted over the weekend that he’s moving from Los Angeles to New York City where they’ll be filming the show.