The Shield and American Horror Story: Freak Show star will be taking over the GCPD when he joins Gotham for season two. He'll play Captain Nathaniel Barnes—a no nonsense guy who isn't afraid of making enemies out of the good or bad guys, and who becomes a mentor and friend to Jim Gordon...at least for now. Combined with news that Shameless' Cameron Monaghan will be playing the Joker, this just makes us even more sure that we won't want to miss Gotham's season two!
Meet the Flash! Or, the original Flash. Teddy Sears, who was recently seen on Masters of Sex, will appear in season two of The Flash as Jay Garrick, or the Flash before Barry Allen was the Flash. He'll show up in the alternate universe that was created in the season one finale, when Barry went back in time and Central City was nearly swallowed by a wormhole. Let's be honest here: We would be thrilled to find this guy in any alternate universe we happened to stumble into, so this is going to be fun!
Lost's beloved Penny is joining Shonda Rhimes' newest show as Zoe, who was played by One Tree Hill's Bethany Joy Lenz in the pilot. Zoe is married to Peter Krause's Kieran, and he's created a pretty sweet life for the two of them through years of expert conning, which is about to come tumbling down thanks to Mireille Enos' fraud investigation. We are here for this, with or without Shonda's name attached.
Nate Fisher/Adam Braverman on a Shonda Rhimes show?! Dreams are coming true, people. The Parenthood and Six Feet Under alum will play a long-time con man named Kieran Booth. He'll be starring opposite Mireille Enos' Alice, a fraud investigator who will stop at nothing to take him down. Nothing about that description doesn't sound fun to us, so you best believe we'll be tuning in when the series premieres midseason.
Tveit's a broadway star and Hough's a Dancing with the Stars pro/judge, but they're a perfect pair to play Danny and Sandy in Fox's upcoming live production of Grease. They're also joined by Vanessa Hudgens as Rizzo and Carlos Pena Vega as Kenickie, which is some truly A+ casting in our opinion. The wait for January 31, 2016 is going to be a tough one.
Ryan Phillippe is out on the ABC mystery series, and Michael Ealy is in! Don't cry too hard for Phillippe, though, since this is how the show was designed. Ealy, who just finished a stint on The Following, will play the new lead, Eric Warner, who has a pretty good life as a newly-married man and the heir to his family's private equity firm. Or at least his life is good until his wife is murdered and season one's Juliette Lewis shows up to investigate. Sucks for him, but not for those of us excited to watch the drama unfold!
Arrow will be getting a little darhker this season, thanks to Neal McDonough bringing a comic book villain to life. The Desperate Housewives and Marvel universe alum will play Damien Darhk, a former member of the League of Assassins and the leader of H.I.V.E. He's also a series regular, which means we're going to be seeing a lot of him!
Jeremy Gilbert is going from losing lives on The Vampire Diaries to saving lives on Chicago Fire McQueen will play Jimmy Borelli, a candidate for Firehouse 51 whose dramatic entrance doesn't quite sit well with Chief Boden.
Empire's season two looks like it's going to be huge in the best way possible. Not only are Chris Rock, Alicia Keys, and Lenny Kravitz all slated to appear, but they're joined by Ludacris, Marisa Tomei, Kelly Rowland, and Adam Rodriguez.
Veronica Mars' Logan Echolls is coming to New Orleans, and we honestly can't wait. He'll be playing Detective Will Kinney, who is described as smart and confident with a very clear sense of right and wrong. Detective Kinney is out to bring the forces of evil to justice, even if he doesn't quite understand what those forces of evil are yet. Season 3 can't come soon enough!
The Punisher is here! Walking Dead alum Jon Bernthal will be an excellent masked addition to the incredible Netflix drama, whether Matt Murdoch (Charlie Cox) will be happy about his arrival or not. Now we just need season two and 2016 to hurry up and get here because we've already watched season one more times than we'd even like to admit.
We never knew how much we needed more Jaden Smith in our lives until he shut down his awe-inspiring Twitter account for a hot second. Luckily, we're going to be seeing a lot more of him, because he'll be starring next year in Baz Luhrmann's 70's-set music drama as a "psychadelically talented" graffiti writer from the South Bronx, and literally everything about that premise intrigues us so you can bet we will be first in line (on our couches) to binge this 13 episode series as soon as it debuts.
He already played one of the best, most heartbreaking dads on TV with Fringe's Walter Bishop, and then he played a pretty heartbreaking son on Sleepy Hollow, and now he's back to finally giving a face to the man who brought Sherlock and Watson together as Sherlock's father on CBS' Elementary. We'd honestly watch Noble play the part of a stationary tree, so it's just a bonus that this role is pretty much perfect for him.
Ryan Murphy promises that we'll see the New Girl star (left) like we've never seen him before, and people started speculating that perhaps he was preparing for his role when he dyed his hair blond. If so, we're excited. If not, we're still excited. Max Greenfield is a gem, and we are ready for whatever horrors Murphy has in store for him.
Not only is The X-Files actually really truly coming back for six episodes on Fox, starring our loves Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny, but it's bringing Community's Joel McHale along with it! We're not worthy of all this happiness, to be quite honest with you. To make everything even better than it already is, McHale is playing the anchor of a conservative online news show who becomes an unexpected ally to Mulder. They may have just started filming this reboot, but like, we want it nooooow.
Treat yo' self to this hilarious Bravo show, especially since Retta will be joining the second season in a recurring role. The show already has a great cast led by Lisa Edelstein, so the Parks and Rec star is just the best possible icing on the cake at this point.
We love nearly anything Aziz Ansari does, so the idea of him writing and starring in a half hour comedy as some version of himself is very pleasing to our brains. It also helps that the rest of the cast is a great little group of awesome comedians including Jon Benjamin (Archer, Bob's Burgers), Lena Waithe, Eric Wareheim, Noel Wells, and Kelvin Yu. We'll definitely be breaking out the apps and zerts for whenever this premieres!
The entire cast for this Ryan Murphy project about the O.J. Simpson trial is insane, including Cuba Gooding Jr., Connie Britton, John Travolta, Sarah Paulson, and Jordana Brewster, among others. But there's just something about the idea of watching Ross Gellar play a Kardashian that has us so weirdly intrigued.
We were total Spuffy fans (with some reservations, but that's a discussion for another time) and any time we get to see Buffy the Vampire Slayer alum James Marsters on our screens in a regular manner is a good time, even if (or perhaps especially if?) he's presumably playing a bad guy on a show about the Salem witch trials. Plus, the cast is huge and includes names like Karen Gillan and Eddie Izzard. Count us in!
We get excited anytime a Wedonverse staple books a role, and Banshee is already a fanstastic show so the addition of Dushku for season 4 is beyond five-by-five. Plus, she's described as a "tough, sexy, and shockingly reckless" FBI profiler, and "tough, sexy, and shockingly reckless" is a perfect description for almost any Dushku character.
We're sad to see her leave The Good Wife but at least we won't have to wait too long to see her on our screens again! The BBC mystery drama is also adding Ciaran Hinds, also known as Game of Thrones' Mance Rayder, for its third season, so clearly it's the place to go to see actors who recently vacated roles on other awesome shows.
This HBO series about a woman who decides to reassess her life and her marriage to make a fresh start is SJP's first major TV role since Sex and the City and we've so missed her. Plus, the show also stars Thomas Haden Church and Molly Shannon, and it's on HBO! What could go wrong?
Everyone's fave wannabe Avenger stars in AMC's miniseries, The Night Manager, as a former British soldier who is recruited by an intelligence operative to navigate the shady alliance between the intelligence community and the secret arms trade. Tom Hiddleston is awesome both in the Thor movies and in general, but he's not the only cast member we're excited about. Olivia Colman breaks our hearts on a weekly basis on Broadchurch, and Hugh Laurie is, you know, Hugh Laurie. If they sold tickets for TV, we would have already bought ours.
In this as-yet untitled pilot, Baldwin plays Joe Byrne, a billionaire real estate developer and philanthropist who unexpectedly becomes mayor of New York City. But if that sounds funny to you, it's not supposed to be – this is an hour long drama that will air on HBO, comparative to the lighter and more entertaining episodes of The Sopranos. This is Baldwin's first real TV role since 30 Rock, and we loved 30 Rock. It'll be good to see him back in an office in New York again, even if this time, he's very serious about it.