Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 Premiere Review: Kyle’s Loyalty to Mike Could Be His Undoing

I hit play on Mayor of Kingstown season 4 and immediately felt that familiar gut-clench: this show does not do warm-ups. The premiere detonates right out of the gate, reshuffles the chessboard, and basically tells everyone in Kingstown to duck.

Quick refresher on where we left season 3

• Mike McLusky (Jeremy Renner) avenged his mother by taking out Milo Sunter, and the fallout was ugly.
• Ian tried to get Iris out of town; she overdosed and died, and Mike still doesn’t know.
• Merle Callahan survived an assassination attempt, which is never a good sign for anyone else.
• Kyle, Mike’s younger brother, took the hit for shooting a rogue cop.

The new power player: Frank Moses

The episode opens with a nasty set piece on train tracks that feels like the writers flipping you a warning sign. Enter Frank Moses, who wastes zero time introducing himself as the kind of operator who doesn’t just bend the rules, he grinds them into dust. He’s immediately positioned as a problem for basically everyone: Mike, Bunny, Ian, and even the white-supremacist crew. If you thought Kingstown was stable enough to survive another bully, Moses is here to disabuse you of that thought.

Kyle’s impossible choice

Kyle’s arc is the heart of the hour, and it’s brutal. He’s serving a 2-year bid after Mike’s lawyer knocked it down from a potential 20, which sounds like a win until you remember where he is: Kingstown Penitentiary, where the air itself feels like a threat. He’s in Ad Seg, supposedly safer, and still eating punches. Why? Because he refuses to testify against Robert Sawyer. That silence shields Mike, Ian, and a handful of cops who have done very creative things with the law to keep the city from burning down completely. But it also nukes Kyle’s career and puts a target on his back. He wants out of Kingstown; staying quiet is the only way to protect the people he loves. It’s a clean, painful moral dilemma, and the show lets you feel every inch of it.

Warden Nina Hobbs is not here to make friends

We meet the new warden, Nina Hobbs, and she’s immediately fascinating. Mike comes in asking for help protecting Kyle, and Nina shuts it down with a simple philosophy: rules first, no exceptions. She’s not swayed by Mike’s name or his leverage. She also has a pointed chat with Kevin Jackson that makes it clear she knows exactly where people’s loyalties sit and isn’t afraid to call it out. Translation: she’s going to be a problem for anyone who expects shortcuts.

Street chess: Bunny, Raphael, and the Spanish crew

Out on the corners, the old handshake deals are fraying. Bunny and Raphael Johnson’s arrangement with the Spanish gang is wobbling, and the Spanish seem to have a mystery backer who’s emboldening them. The final beat with a car attack on Bunny is a loud reminder that Kingstown runs on power vacuums, and the vacuum is widening.

Endgame: Callahan’s shadow and a tight-lipped warden

In the closing stretch, Kyle gets jumped in Ad Seg. Given the timing and the history, it looks a lot like Callahan pulling strings from the shadows. Meanwhile, Nina chooses not to loop Mike in on certain pieces of information, which is either savvy caution or something darker. Either way, the fuse is lit. Mike’s next move matters, and the show is clearly teeing up a stretch where he goes very, very hard to keep his brother breathing and haul back control.

Is the premiere worth your time?

Short answer: yes. Co-created by Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon, this season 4 opener is lean, mean, and tense as hell. Kyle’s storyline alone could carry an episode, but the new threat from Moses and the prison politics give it real weight. Performances are sharp, the pacing is nasty in a good way, and it still feels like Kingstown: morally murky, dangerous, and weirdly addictive.

Mayor of Kingstown season 4, episode 1 is streaming now on Paramount+. Drop your thoughts below — I’m very curious where you land on Nina and how far Mike’s about to push this.