Neil Patrick Harris is reprising his role as Barney Stinson for How I Met Your Father

Calling all fans of How I Met Your Mother... and Father!

It looks like Neil Patrick Harris is reviving his role as womaniser Barney Stinson for the second series of the sitcom spin-off.

In the recent premiere for the second season of the spin-off How I Met Your Father, Harris delighted fans as he made a comeback as Barney - his much-loved character from How I Met Your Mother.

The episode, which dropped on Hulu on 24 January, wrapped up with main character Sophie Tompkins (played by Hilary Duff) opening up to her best friend Valentina (played by Francia Raisa) about how she had 'hit rock bottom' in her love life after blowing it with 'three guys in 48 hours'.

Sophie's future self - played by Kim Cattrall - then appeared and said: “I was wrong. Rock bottom wouldn’t come until later that year.”

Present-day Sophie was then seen driving and crashing into another vehicle... And just guess who was in that vehicle?

Yep, you guessed it - none other than Barney Stinson himself.

Harris' character only had a brief cameo as the episode came to a close, with him simply saying: "Dude!"

Hulu

But fans needn't worry as it seems as if Harris is here to stay - well, at least according to co-creators Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger - who confirmed he'd be making an appearance in more of this 20 episode season.

Speaking to TVLine, Aptaker said: "Whenever we talk about bringing back a member of the original crew, you want it to serve two purposes...

"You want to give some tidbits about what is going on in their lives, where they've landed and where they're at, but it's also about how they impact the How I Met Your Father story, and how they send one of our characters in a new, unexpected direction."

Aptaker added: "Similar to Robin last year, we'll learn some more about where Barney's at, but it'll also have a major impact on the trajectory, and main narrative, of our season."

Barney's character in the original sitcom, which wrapped up in 2014, was known for being a serious womaniser and often displayed some rather inappropriate behaviour.

Collection Christophel / Alamy Stock Photo

This was, of course, discussed with Harris via Zoom upon his return to the sitcom, with Berger revealing: "We wanted to bring him back, and we wanted him to be true to his character and to the fans that loved Barney so much.

"But we also wanted him to exist on our show, in our time, in a way that made sense, so all of that Zoom was spent talking about how we could blend all those things and service him and the show in the best way possible.

"We are very excited for people to see the way that turned out."