Donnie Yen is teaming up with Keanu for John Wick 4

Photo credits: Left: Donnie Yen (Visual China Group via Getty Images), Right: Keanu Reeves (Yuichi Yamazaki/Getty Images)

In the world of John Wick, there are really only two kinds of people: Those who wish to kill John Wick, thus incurring an automatic death sentence, and those who are John Wick’s old buddies who help him out from time to time (who also don’t have, like, an amazing track record of survival). Now, action star Donnie Yen is set to join the ranks of the latter crew, as Deadline reports that the Ip Man star has signed on to the cast of John Wick: Chapter 4—Latin Subtitle TBD.

Per the logline, Yen will play an old friend of Baba Yaga’s, who’s apparently gone through many of the same things John has endured over the course of the films—presumably the usual major life events that accompany this kind of life, like completing an impossible task to leave the Russian mob, getting married, watching your spouse die, watching your dog die, killing 800 Eastern European dudes, getting your debt called in by a shady former associate, killing a woman in a Roman bathhouse, fighting Common, getting declared excommunicado, trading banter with Anjelica Huston and Halle Berry, killing dudes with a bunch of knives and dogs, getting your finger cut off in a weird show of fealty to a mysterious tent man, fighting a bunch of dudes in body armor in a fancy hotel, and then telling Laurence Fishburne, “Yeah” when he asks if you’re pissed off. You know, normal guy stuff.

Yen’s recent credits include Ip Man 4 and Disney’s live-action Mulan remake; he and Reeves have never worked together in an official capacity before, although both have a long track record with the mutual frequent collaborator, director and fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping. And, really, the only thing that doesn’t sound pretty fantastic about this latest set-up is that it sounds like we might not get to see Reeves and Yen actually duke it out—although given the way loyalties tend to work in the John Wickaverse, that’s also not a guarantee.