**Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 Review: The Violence Never Ends**
The violence never ends in *Mayor of Kingstown*. After several intense seasons, Mike McLusky still has a lot on his plate. Jeremy Renner returns as Mike in the 10-episode fourth season of *Mayor of Kingstown*, the Paramount+ crime drama set within the thriving Taylor Sheridan TV universe. Sheridan, along with series co-star Hugh Dillon, serves as creator and executive producer alongside Renner.
Season 3 saw major criminal players like Konstantin (Yorick van Wageningen) taken off the board. Konstantin had led the local Russian faction, and with his absence, a vacuum emerged, creating space in the city’s ever-evolving mayhem machine. Mike McLusky’s role as a mediator was never easy, but it’s becoming increasingly difficult to manage all the bloodshed and still come out unscathed.
Joining the cast this season are Edie Falco, Lennie James, and Laura Benanti—adding fresh dynamics to the tense world of Kingstown.
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### Mayor of Kingstown Season 4: Stream It or Skip It?
**Opening Shot:**
“War’s what always determines value. What you kill for makes it costly.” This line, spoken by a new character early in Season 4, perfectly captures the hardened philosophies fueling the streets of Kingstown.
**The Gist:**
Only a short time has passed since the violent events that closed out Season 3. Kingstown remains a gloomy Michigan town where crime and prisons dominate the economy. While Mike McLusky (Renner) appeared to deal a fatal blow to Russian gangster Milo (Aidan Gillen), tensions flare as gunfights erupt between Russian factions and the Crip soldiers working under local drug dealer Bunny Washington (Tobi Bamtefa).
Kingstown SWAT intervened, but when the aggressive cop Robert Sawyer (Hamish Allan-Headley) aimed at an armed civilian protecting his children, Kyle McLusky (Taylor Handley)—Mike’s brother and a SWAT officer—shot Sawyer instead.
In Kingstown, being the “Mayor” means constantly negotiating between law enforcement, criminals, and prison officials to keep everyone appeased and the flow of drugs, cash, and corruption ongoing. But this season, Kyle’s facing hard time, while DA Evelyn Foley (Necar Zadegan) takes a hard line on Mike’s “go easy” lobbying.
Foley has been targeting Robert Sawyer since Season 1 and is now seeking answers from Kyle, challenging the usual code of silence. As Evelyn warned Mike last season: “No one is immune.” That includes the cop brother of the town’s fixer and Mike’s detective friend Lieutenant Ian Ferguson (Hugh Dillon), who’s also under DA investigation.
Meanwhile, the city’s main jail, Anchor Bay, has new management. Nina Hobbs (Edie Falco) arrives as a state-appointed warden tasked with cleaning up the prison’s endemic problems. But anyone familiar with *Mayor of Kingstown* knows how deep the rot runs. Hobbs’s presence threatens Mike’s influence inside the prison walls.
In their first meeting, Hobbs makes one thing clear: “I run this castle. And my drawbridge only goes down.” The unspoken message: “Fuck you.”
On the streets, Bunny and the Crips are trying to maintain a fragile truce with the Colombian gangs, while the Aryans focus on their own territory. The Russians are regrouping after internal conflicts. As Mike juggles keeping the gangs at peace, supporting his incarcerated brother Kyle and sister-in-law Tracy (Nishi Munshi), managing his cop allies, and dealing with Hobbs at Anchor Bay, he must also watch his own back. In Kingstown, violence is always just one bad deal away.
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### What Shows Will It Remind You Of?
*Mayor of Kingstown* carries a bitter, grim tone, quite distinct from the occasionally cartoonish *Tulsa King*, another Taylor Sheridan creation. Yet both series share the gritty portrayal of criminals, cops, and power brokers constantly getting away with something.
The show also sometimes recalls *Sons of Anarchy* and its spinoff *Mayans M.C.*, where characters, despite their criminal lifestyles, view themselves as noble. This is a struggle Mike McLusky has wrestled with internally since the show’s inception.
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### Our Take
As *Mayor of Kingstown* enters its fourth season, the violence teeters on the edge of the show’s central paradox. Mike McLusky isn’t truly the “mayor”—he holds no official title—and Kingstown itself is less a city and more a hub of graft, with Mike as its key distributor.
The series continues to present multiple perspectives from criminal groups, ethically compromised law enforcement, and the McLusky family at the pivot. However, it still never offers the viewpoint of a typical Kingstown citizen. The city remains a fictional, bleak backdrop—greyed-out landscapes and decaying industry serving as a dark playground for supremacy battles where cops and criminals kill each other for survival.
We’re particularly interested in Nina Hobbs’s arrival and the inevitable confrontations between Edie Falco and Jeremy Renner. Hobbs is introduced as a penology expert, but in Kingstown, nothing works without pushing and pulling to get results. Can Mike and his allies influence Hobbs and maintain their hold inside the prison?
The show often invokes the legacy of Dianne Wiest’s Mariam, matriarch of the McLusky clan. Wiest was terrific in the role, but Mariam died naturally in Season 2 as an innocent victim of gunfire. Despite Mike’s many somber monologues, he’s done little to break free from Kingstown’s nightmare cycle, a broken dream Mariam held for her three sons.
With Season 4 kicking off another wave of trouble, we wonder if the series will finally acknowledge that what was good and true about Mariam cannot be replaced. The characters have no one to blame but themselves for the violence enveloping them in a place where deadly disputes are all that remain. We’ll be watching to see if anyone can escape.
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### Sex and Skin
Any sexual content or nudity in *Mayor of Kingstown* is mostly implied rather than explicit.
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### Parting Shot
“Goddamnit!” Mike, the middle McLusky brother, pounds his fists on the hood of his trusty Lincoln Town Car—the late Mitch’s vehicle—after receiving news about Kyle’s situation in Anchor Bay. In Kingstown, trouble is generational.
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### Sleeper Star
DA Evelyn Foley’s fierce stance against the city’s entrenched corruption makes Necar Zadegan a potential breakout star in Season 4. Meanwhile, D Smoke remains a quiet, compelling presence as Raphael Johnson, Bunny’s eyes and ears inside the prison.
Raphael’s brief escape in Season 3, including a touching piano scene with his son Trey (played by Brandon Faison), keeps us rooting for this complex character.
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### Most Pilot-y Line
“This is the devil we don’t know.” For Mike McLusky and his allies, hits keep coming — though truthfully, they know far too many devils already.
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### Our Call
**Stream It**, but remember to touch grass. Season 4 of *Mayor of Kingstown* keeps up the show’s established high rate of bloodshed. While the character interplay remains engaging, it’s clear that nobody in this grim world has ever known a good mood—and that unfortunate reality does not change with this new season.
https://decider.com/2025/10/26/mayor-of-kingstown-season-4-paramount-plus-review/
