New images from ‘John Wick’ prequel ‘The Continental’ reveal beloved franchise favorites… and Mel Gibson

There’s always a case to be made for separating the artist from the art, but in the case of upcoming prequel series The Continental: From the World of John Wick, a lot of minds were made up from the second Mel Gibson was announced as part of the ensemble.

Not just any old role, either, but the principal antagonist Cormac, a crime boss trying to make life a misery for Colin Woodell’s young Winston Scott, who turns up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the titular New York establishment before eventually morphing into the gruff and grizzled form of Ian McShane.

A batch of brand new images from the three-part event series have been released, and the leading man takes center stage standing against a familiar backdrop, even if it’s hard to imagine he’ll see enough sh*t in the intervening decades to evolve him into the Winston we all know and love.

Ayomide Adegun is also on board as Charon, played by the late Lance Reddick across the first four feature-length installments, so we might be expecting an element of bromance to be formed throughout.

And, of course, there’s Gibson himself, who seems to generate controversy everywhere he goes these days, and will no doubt continue to do the same in The Continental after the producers revealed he was channeling Donald Trump.

Seeing how John Wick fares without John Wick will be interesting to say the least, especially when the key creative players are only involved in a ceremonial capacity, but the Gibson hate train has already ensured a lot of people won’t even give it the time of day.