Thomas Middleditch's Silicon Valley character, Richard, may be the lead of the acclaimed HBO comedy, but it turns out the role everyone wanted was that of Erlich, played by T.J. Miller.

During a Comic-Con panel for the series Thursday, creator Mike Judge revealed that Miller's co-stars Zach Woods, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr and Josh Brener all read for the role.

"There's something about Zach's interpretation that we just said, 'Hey, why don't you try this?'" Judge recalled about how Woods was instead cast in the role of Jared.

Although the panel digressed several times, more pointedly on that infamous horse sex scene from early in season three – spoiler alert: horses don't "last very long," according to Middleditch, talk eventually turned to the season three finale.

The finale saw Bachman (Miller) and Big Head (Brener) outbid tech giant Hooli for Pied Piper. However, that also left the team right where they started in the pilot of the HBO comedy: broke and crashing at Erlich's place.

"Its more fun to watch these guys be uncomfortable and fail and humiliated. They're just funny that way," Judge said. "If they suddenly get rich and live happily ever after, its not as much fun to watch."

Showrunner Alec Berg shared that sentiment: "We always feel like the guys are outsiders and as soon as they become the winners, I think the show gets a lot less interesting."

When asked about season four, however, Judge and Berg were far less forthcoming, saying they are only in the early stages of penning the new episodes, due out sometime next year.

"We try and make plans for the whole season but then things fall apart," Berg said. He specifically cited season three, for which the plan was originally to have eight-nine episodes of season three focus heavily on Skunkworks. However, the writers became "stuck" for several weeks because of that specific idea so, "finally we were like, 'To hell with it, let's blow it up,'" Berg recalled. "Much like the guys, we had to pivot."

The few hints that the duo would give about season four is that they have "discussed" Monica (Amanda Crew) playing a bigger role in Pied Piper in season four and, when asked directly by a fan of the series, the two promised that there would be more of Jian Yang (Jimmy O. Yang) to come.

Silicon Valley returns for season four sometime next year. Watch the Comic-Con sizzle reel, below.