Ian McShane is coming back for John Wick 4, which is good because Winston needs his ass kicked

It might be a little unnecessary to point out that principal cast members from the John Wick series are going to stick around for the fourth installment, since John Wick is very concerned with its ongoing narratives and the way the lore is expanded in each film, but it’s still nice to know that Ian McShane is officially coming back to play New York Continental manager Winston in John Wick: Chapter 4 (via Deadline). It’s not because Winston is a fun character (he is) or because McShane is a good actor (he is), it’s because Winston’s traitorous ass is in desperate need of a serious goddamn beating at the hands of John Wick and the Bowery King.

For those who don’t recall, Winston was a close ally of Wick’s throughout most of the previous three movies, keeping him safe at his secret assassin hotel in the first one and giving him a chance to escape when he breaks the rules in the second one, but in John Wick: Chapter 3—Parabellum, he sells out Wick to secure his future in the assassin business. The movie ended with a beaten and bloody Wick, having survived being knocked off an inconsistently tall New York skyscraper, getting dragged in front of Laurence Fishburne’s Bowery King and presented with an opportunity to finally fuck up the machiavellian dicks who keep dragging him out of retirement and back into all of this assassin drama. So yeah, Ian McShane was obviously going to come back, but it’s good to know that he’s not too much of a coward to flinch at the judgment he’s going to receive in this next movie. (That being said, it seems very likely that he’ll reveal some deeper scheme in the next movie and turn out to be a good guy, but you could do a lot worse than having Ian McShane playing your movie’s Final Boss.)

John Wick: Chapter 4 will also feature up-and-coming superstar Hiroyuki Sanada, Donnie Yen, Bill Skarsgård, and Rina Sawayama. It’s set to be in theaters in May of 2022.