Hugh Dillon Talks ‘Mayor of Kingstown’ Season 2 Plot, Season 3 Hopes, and Jeremy Renner’s Injury

Mayor of Kingstown Hugh Dillon Jeremy Renner
Emerson Miller/ViacomCBS

Mayor of Kingstown returned for its second season today, Sunday, January 15, on Paramount+, and star and co-creator Hugh Dillon is weighing in on how the sophomore chapter deals with the fallout of Season 1’s prison riot.

“If anything, everyone is hyper vigilant,” Dillon, who plays Detective Ian Ferguson on the series, told Deadline in a new interview. “It’s more intimate. We’re looking at why these characters do what they do. We’re really steering into what’s triggering these people who are predisposed to their most darkest impulses.”

Dillon, 59, previously told TV Insider that Ian is blind to how the riot impacted him “because he’s been so desensitized.”

“And I’ve known guys like that, [who] have just been in the game so long that you become world-weary, and you’re moving forward putting one foot in front of the other. And it is that desensitization that — there’s an ethical drift with Ian where he can’t help it, he’s just moving to those darker impulses because that is a survival mechanism, and it’s really, how do these people cope?”

Talking to Deadline, Dillon said that he and co-creator Taylor Sheridan, his former acting coach, are already gearing up for a possible third season of Mayor of Kingstown. “Taylor and I have multiple ideas for multiple seasons,” he explained. “If everything went according to plan with Paramount+ and the rest of it, I would think that we’d start [on Season 3] in August, September, maybe pre-production in the summer.”

Of course, the production schedule may depend on the recovery of Jeremy Renner, who plays Mike McClusky on the show. The actor was critically injured in a snowplow accident at his home in Washoe County, Nevada, on January 1.

“I heard about it from one of the other producers,” Dillon told Deadline. “I saw it on the news, and then he sent me a video. [Renner is] very funny. I just think the world of that guy, and I’m happy he’s surrounded by his family. Anything we can do to help, we will. That’s the biggest thing. He’s like family.”

Mayor of Kingstown, Season 2, Now Streaming, Paramount+