What's next for the girls (and guys) of 'Girls'?

Before the tumultuous third season of Girls even started, it was announced during the now-infamous Television Critics Association panel (you remember the one, when a reporter asked why Lena Dunham gets naked so much on the show and everyone rightly got pissed off) that the award-winning HBO comedy would be back for a fourth season. The Season 3 finale of Girls airs at 10 p.m. on HBO on March 23, but a return date for Season 4 — which will be filmed this spring — has not yet been announced. (This year, the season kicked off on January 12 and Season 2 began on January 13, 2013, so it's safe to assume Season 4 of Girls will be back on our screens come the middle of January in 2015.) But though we'll all have to hang in the balance to find out what will happen to Hannah, Adam, Shoshanna, Jessa, Marnie, Ray, and the rest of the Girls crew (except for maybe Soojin, because Soojin is the worst) after the finale, what Season 4 spoilers do we now know?

Luckily, we do know a few things about what's in store for Season 4. Most importantly, we know that Andrew Rannells will be a series regular. Rannells, who plays the hilarious and necessary Elijah (seriously, when Rannells showed back up in the episode "Beach House," the season took a turn for the better, which is no coincidence) confirmed that he was joining the cast full-time and was "very excited" about it. Join the club.

Unless any member of the cast decides a pull a Christopher Abbott and leave the show for good (unlikely, although with Adam Driver's increasingly busy movie schedule, we might see a little bit less of him, particularly if Adam and Hannah call it quits for good), you can pretty much expect all of them to return as well. This would be great, considering there are new dynamics to be explored in Season 4. The four friends (if we can still call them that) spent the majority of Season 3 apart, so perhaps Season 4 could bring them back together. Or, at the very least, switch things up and pair Shoshanna with Marnie, and Jessa with Hannah, and watch those sparks fly.

The girls of Girls are still young, relatively speaking, but it would be a refreshing change of pace to see one of the characters (if not all) hit a maturity spike in Season 4. Just so long as there's nothing like the fucked-up "Dead Inside" on the horizon for Season 4, we'll start counting down the days until they're back.

Image: HBO