It looks like Marvel's Disney+ series Hawkeye has added some British acting royalty to its cast in the form of The Witcher and Outlander's Simon Callow in a "key part early on in the series." According to a new report from Cosmic Circus, Callow will be playing a role that is linked to Marvel villain Jack Duquesne, aka Swordsman, who is played by Tony Dalton. Swordsman, a former mentor of Hawkeye himself, Clint Barton, is one of the several assassin characters that have been confirmed for the upcoming series, which thanks to Black Widow we know - stop if you don't want small spoilers - will also feature Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova gunning for Barton after being given the mission to hunt down the Hawk by the MCU's shadowy Valentina Allegra de Fontaine in the movie's post credit scene.

However, back to Simon Callow and his involvement in the series. As you would expect, little concrete information is available on his appointment and who he could be playing, but if it is related to Swordsman, then the most likely possibility is that if he is not playing some supporting character in Swordsman's story then he could be playing another villain with a connection to Jack Duquesne's character such as Ringmaster. Based on Callow's previous work, there is no way of knowing because this guy has played everything imaginable on film and TV.

Simon Callow, whose name is often mistaken for American Idol creator Simon Cowell, will have 140 acting screen credits to his name if Hawkeye is added to the list. As far as character actors go, Callow has appeared in everything from 1994's Four Weddings and A Funeral, to British Drama Inspector Morse and the Netflix series The Witcher. A Shakespearean actor by profession, with numerous stage credits behind him, Callow has also played Charles Dickens in dozens of productions, including twice in Doctor Who. Where this places him in Hawkeye is anyone's guess, but as Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart proved in the X-Men franchise, having a thespian on board a superhero story can work out pretty well.

Much like anything linked to the MCU, story details are pretty thin on the ground, but we do know quite a bit about the cast of Hawkeye, and thanks to Black Widow, we possibly know a little more about the plot of the series, which seems to now have two different angles. From previous details, we know that the Clint Barton-centric story will fill in a few of the gaps between Infinity War and Endgame, exploring Barton's time as Ronin, as well as seeing him training up Hailee Steinfield's Kate Bishop as the new Hawkeye. However, from Black Widow' s post credit scene it is likely that we are also going to see him trying to avoid being taken out by a number of assassins in the process. All in all, like Marvel's first Disney+ offerings, there is a lot going on to expand on the characters that maybe couldn't be given quite the time they deserved in their cinematic outings.

With Hawkeye arriving at the end of the year, there is not long now before we should see some kind of footage from the series, and now that the Black Widow connection is finally out, that could be coming sooner rather than later.

This news comes to us from ComicBook