‘Mayor of Kingstown’ Stars Jeremy Renner, Edie Falco & Hugh Dillon on Season 4 Premiere’s Most Shocking Moments

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers for Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 Episode 1, “Coming ‘Round the Mountain.”]

If you were wondering whether Mayor of Kingstown could still keep ramping up the shock factor of the series in its fourth season, well, the opening moments of the premiere answer that question with an absolute exclamation mark.

Here, we meet Frank Moses (Lennie James), a soft-spoken man who’s extolling the virtues of the copper penny before casually placing one on a train track. We then see that’s not the only thing he’s put there; behind him, there are also a bunch of bound and gagged men waking up just in time to be decapitated by the oncoming engine. What a character introduction.

From there, we see Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) and Kyle (Taylor Handley) learning that the latter will need to serve six months for the attempted murder of Robert (Hamish Allan-Headley) in the bridge shootout. Kyle pulled the trigger to protect an unarmed civilian who was caught up in the melee, but that doesn’t mean he won’t serve time. Kyle, for one, is OK with facing the consequences of making that choice “for the right reasons.” Mike, however, isn’t happy that his brother will have to walk the “gauntlet” and thus become a target on the inside.

Ian (Hugh Dillon) is the first to respond to the bodies on the tracks. He discovers they are Russian gangsters, which means someone has finished what Mike started with Milo (Aidan Gillen). Mike laments that whoever killed them is “the devil we don’t know.”

From there, Mike meets with Bunny (Tobi Bamtefa) to warn him that there’s a gangster-slayer on the loose, and they might be after him next. He also wants Bunny to assure him that Raphael (D Smoke) and his team on the inside will look after Kyle. Even after everything they’ve been through together, Bunny’s casual agreement that his gang will protect a police officer is still rather jarring.

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“They’re as close to family as you can have and as close to trusting as you can have,” Renner told TV Insider of the bond between Mike and Bunny this season. “Anything is on the table for somebody to be betrayed or something to go wrong, but I think it doesn’t start off like that with them in great conflict… [Although] most of Mike’s dealings are angsty anyway.” Still, even though Mike trusts Bunny with his brother’s life, he keeps his head on a swivel with him. “It’s like family, but they operate in a way that’s, ‘I trust you. I’m really giving you a lot of trust rope, but you screw me, I’ll want to bury you.'” 

Tracy (Nishi Munshi) is despondent over Kyle heading to prison, but he comforts her with the promise that they will leave Kingstown with their new baby once and for all after he gets out.

Things get intense in the yard when Raphael learns that the Colombians they’ve been “back to back” with so far want a change. Meanwhile, Mike pays a visit to the Aryan Brotherhood to ensure they aren’t the ones stirring up trouble by taking out the Russians, and they assure him that the dark days of Merle Callahan (Richard Brake) as shot caller are well and truly over.

At Anchor Bay, Carney (Lane Garrison) has to train a newcomer, Cindy (Laura Benanti), about the joys of ad seg, and he instructs her that Kyle is someone they both need to protect at all costs as he’s a policeman, too.

Then, when Ian learns the truth about what happened to Iris (Emma Laird), he demands that Mike never finds out about it, even offering to pay for her funeral expenses out of his own pocket to do so.

About his character’s decision to conceal this upsetting truth from Mike, Hugh Dillon explained, “Well, we just thought at the time he was overwhelmed with Kyle and with all the rest of his work, and I think that he had so little to hold on to… The thing is, with Ian, as he looks at Mike, he always thinks he knows better. He thinks he’s protecting Mike from his blind spots. And, I mean, Ian is not some emotional calculating genius, but in his world, he feels that it’s best if Mike doesn’t know. All Ian’s ever doing is trying to help.”

Dennis P. Mong Jr. / Paramount+

Ian also has his own problems to contend with, as Evelyn Foley (Necar Zadegan) warns him that he can either give up Robert or face potential consequences himself for what happened to Ben Morrissey. He does not seem inclined to oblige that demand, for better or for worse.

Mike also has his hands full as he meets Nina Hobbs (Edie Falco), the new warden at Anchor Bay, who’s already been putting people like Carney in their place. She won’t tolerate any lingering loyalty to Kareem (Michael Beach) … or, it seems, Mike. Though she says she’s “honored” to meet the “mayor,” she doesn’t accept his usual overtures.

“I’m not Kareem. There’s no more free passes. This is my castle now, and only I can lower the drawbridge,” she warns. When he points out that all he wants right now is the safety of his brother, who is now in her care, she promises to keep him alive like everyone else. She won’t, however, assign Carney to his sector to guarantee his protection, and she won’t even tell Mike who’s in that unit, despite his assurance that he has “sway in these walls” and there’ll be consequences for her if anything happens to Kyle.

Edie Falco described the moment of Nina’s first encounter with Mike by saying, “I think she maybe is too convinced of herself. It never occurs to her that anything will really challenge her sense of authority over that place. So she might, if anything, be over-confident when she walks in.”

Meanwhile, Renner said Mike is undeterred, even in the face of this unexpected bit of power resistance. “Mike always has to deal with headwind. I mean, on other wardens and other gangs and other sets, he’s always just dealt with headwind. He’s just sort of the power broker. And he’s not trying to have the power himself. He’s just trying to protect his brother in this situation, right? So he’s used to the headwind. He tries to make nice, and then sets to work…. What do we got to do just to get the thing done, right? He’s a no-nonsense guy. He tries to get it done. And there’s something admirable, I think, about him not needing anything for himself. But, for this situation, he’s just trying to protect his brother, trying to do the right thing. And he has his biggest adversary to date.”

Dennis P. Mong Jr. / Paramount+

If there were any questions about Mike’s inherent goodness after this thinly-veiled threat to Hobbs, it’s immediately assuaged when he rolls up to an unresponsive woman in the middle of the street and stops to care for her. After that, he laments to his assistant, Rebecca (Nichole Galicia), that there are so few people worth saving in the city, present company included, before he has to deal with Evelyn again. After giving her a drubbing over her decision to put Kyle in prison, even with the lightest sentence possible, he tells her she’s dead to him. With that, their situationship is officially over.

As Bunny greenlights Raphael’s need to “squabble” over the new terms with the Colombians inside, with promises that he’s protecting his people outside, Mike takes Kyle for hero’s welcome-slash-goodbye at the bar, confirming with Carney that the new girl in ad seg knows he’s “precious cargo.” Afterward, Mike implores Kyle to sober up before he reports for his sentence and gives him a very tough talk about what he’s about to truly face inside, as only someone who’s been in can really know.

Mike’s then drawn back to (un)usual business when Bunny gets shot at, and Ian calls while on the attacker’s tail. So, as Kyle is processed in humiliating fashion and beaten up in what is clearly a planned attack, Mike is powerless to protect him. Who is there, though, is Callahan himself, who advises Kyle to avoid the sick bay at all costs.

About this eventful opener, Dillon explained, “My goal, and Taylor Sheridan‘s, our whole thing has always been unpredictability, because anything else is boring, and it’s got to be your own vibe, your own imagination, your own voice. And then we got the perfect storm of getting Laura and Edie to join the team. It’s just profoundly satisfying, artistically and personally and professionally, this year.”

Indeed, with all the brutality we’ve become accustomed to in Mayor of Kingstown and these instantaneous shifts of the power balances at play, we are clearly off to the races for an unforgettable new season.

Mayor of Kingstown, Sundays, Paramount+