‘Empire’ season 3 spoilers: Xzibit promoted to series regular

It looks like Xzibit is going from “Pimp My Ride” to putting his shine on “Empire” in the long-term moving into the third season.

As first reported by TVLine, the rapper / performer, who plays the role of Lucious Lyon’s music rival Shyne Johnson, is going to be promoted to series regular for the upcoming third season. You first saw this character late in season 2, and this seems to be very much a case of the show setting up something / someone who they plan to pay off later the season after. It’s far too early to really figure out how this is going to work, but we do love the fact that there is a significant Lucious Lyon rival in the business sense. The more that you bring in these characters, clearly the bigger and better performances you’re going to get from Terrence Howard.

Unfortunately, season 3 will not be starting up until September, but when it does you should get an answer as to who died between Rhonda and Anika. from there, we’ll also get a sense as to the next move for another key character in Cookie, given that her world unraveled to a great deal courtesy of what Lucious and Anika did. Jamal has his own musical quest to continue, which could be even more complicated due to his desire to stay as far away from violence as possible.

Of course, we’ll have more in the way of “Empire” news and casting updates over the course of the coming days. Stay tuned!

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