Laurence Fishburne is joining The Witcher

“Casting news” has not been a source of much joy for Netflix’s TV adaptation of The Witcher over the last few years—and, specifically, since news broke in October 2022 that the show was parting ways with star Henry Cavill, who will be replaced as Geralt of Rivia in the series’ upcoming fourth season by the incoming Liam Hemsworth. (Joining existing cast Anya Chalotra, Freya Allan, and Joey Batey.) Now, though, the series has gotten what we can only describe as a bit of unambiguous good news on the “people standing around in a very dirty world of high fantasy” front: Laurence Fishburne is joining The Witcher in a fan-favorite part for its fourth season.

Specifically, Fishburne will be playing Regis, a character first introduced in Andrzej Sapkowski’s third Witcher novel, Baptism By Fire, in 1996. The character description for Fishburne’s casting describes the character as “a world-wise Barber-surgeon with a mysterious past,” which, anyone who’s familiar with the character from the books (or The Witcher 3 video game, where he was voiced by Mark Noble), will know is leaving out some fairly significant details, which we’ll certainly enjoy seeing the always-great Fishburne sink his teeth into. For a series that has moved from “genuinely interesting” to “seemingly troubled” over the last couple of years, it’s the first really exciting thing we’ve heard about it in a minute.

As for Fishburne himself, he’s still coming off of his multi-year run on Black-ish; credits in 2023 included John Wick: Chapter 4 and a voice role on Disney+’s Moon Girl And Devil Dinosaur. As reported by The Hollywood Reporter, there’s no word yet on when the fourth season of The Witcher is expected to arrive on the streaming airwaves, although the answer probably isn’t “any time in 2024.”