Mayor of Kingstown follows the powerful family in a fictional Michigan town called Kingstown, whose main industry is nine prisons. Renner plays the role of Mike McLusky, the town’s unofficial “mayor” and “fixer.” The third season marks Renner’s remarkable return to action after his near-fatal snowplow accident on New Year’s Day 2023.
“What that guy has done behind the camera and in front of the camera is nothing short of spectacular in every regard,” co-creator Dillon, who also stars in the show as Detective Ian Ferguson, revealed when speaking about Renner after the season three finale, and sharing his hopes for a fourth season. “A big driving force [of doing this show] is to see the satisfaction with Jeremy Renner. He made a giant come back and to see him be artistically satisfied. The scripts are great, the characters great. And that’s what we want to do. We don’t want to leave any stone unturned.”
The third season saw a series of explosions that rocked Kingstown and its residents to their foundations, as a new face of the Russian mafia took up residence in the city and a drug war raged inside and outside the prison walls.
The pressure was on McLusky (Renner) to end the war, but things got complicated when a familiar face from his prison past threatened to undermine the mayor’s efforts to keep the peace between all the factions.
The season ended with the conclusion of most of that storyline, including the accidental death of a major character. “It really follows every pattern of authentic crime, because what that [ending] does, what it always does, is leave a vacuum. And that’s going to be filled, that’s human nature,” Dillon explains of the cyclical nature of prison drama.
