The fourth season of How I Met Your Mother concluded with a couple of whoppers:

• Barney and Robin admitted their feelings for each other;
• And Ted took a job as a professor, where viewers know he'll ultimately meet his wife.

In a new interview with IGN, series creator Carter Bays spoke on the future of these developments. Here's what he had to say:

On the eventual reveal of Ted's wife: The pond just got a little bit smaller. As opposed to saying she's somewhere in the giant city of New York, she's somewhere in this little world that Ted's going to be in. Not every story is going to be in that world next year, but we'll be seeing more and more of it and we'll get tantalizingly closer than ever before.

On future of Barney and Robin: It's not classic happily ever after, to say the least. It's two people that aren't programmed for happily ever after and never would have prioritized that, were it not for the fact that they're crazy about each other. So it's going to be a bumpy road for them. We'll have a lot of good stories. Now that things are out in the open for Barney and Robin, there's a lot of fun to be had.

On the 100th episode, which will be a musical: It's pure whimsy and fantasy. I think everyone at the show has pretty romantic sensibilities and it's going to be classic, old time Hollywood, good old fashioned musical number.

Matt Richenthal is the Editor in Chief of TV Fanatic. Follow him on Twitter and on Google+.