ABC’s ‘Castle’ season 8 spoilers: Adam Baldwin returning as Ethan Slaughter

How about this for some excellent “Castle” casting news? According to Entertainment Weekly, Adam Baldwin is poised to join his former “Firefly” co-star Nathan Fillion for an episode airing early on in season 8 as Ethan Slaughter, the tough-as-nails dirty cop who we first saw in the episode “Headhunters” earlier on in the series’ run.

The exact details surrounding the return of Baldwin are not entirely clear, but it makes sense that we would see a great array of other characters with Beckett serving now as a Captain. While we’re not sure how you make it work just yet, we imagine that you don’t cast Baldwin unless you plan for him and Fillion to spend some time in scenes together.

Baldwin is a busy guy these days, given that he is also a series regular on “The Last Ship,” and before that had another really memorable part as Casey on “Chuck.” We always get excited anytime that a “Firefly” alum comes aboard this show, and we wish it would happen more. Gina Torres has appeared on the show before as a star of a Bravo-esque reality show, and we wish the show would go after some more actors like Summer Glau and Morena Baccarin. It seems like such an easy, fun way to bring in more viewers. If they could hire Alan Tudyk, it could even be some great cross-promotion for “Con Man,” the series that Fillion and Tudyk are working on together that was for the most part crowdfunded.

“Castle” premieres on ABC come Monday, September 21, and we’ll have even more news on the subject of the show in the near future. Stay tuned!

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