Summary
As if Mike didn’t have enough to deal with, his closest allies seem determined to put themselves in the firing line.
As if it wasn’t hard enough being Mike McLusky, the few people he does care about seem very eager to get themselves killed. Episode 5 of Mayor of Kingstown Season 3, “Iris”, opens with a SWAT training exercise that is the final step for Kyle McLusky’s career change. He tells Tracy it’s ironically the safer choice later in the hour, which is hard to believe.
But it isn’t just Kyle putting himself in harm’s way. Iris finally makes her presence felt in her namesake episode by volunteering her services to Konstantin, whom she knows from New York, ostensibly to help Mike. Again, I’m having a hard time believing it. Maybe Iris just likes to party. But either way, Mike now has two more things to worry about outside of the escalating conflict between the Russians, the Aryan Brotherhood, and the Crips.
The Crips Are Going To War With the Russians
You’ll recall, I hope, that someone has been spiking drug deliveries into Kingstown’s prisons, killing several Crips and leaving Mike chasing his tail. In Episode 5, Evelyn informs him of three more overdoses the night before, so the body count is mounting and nobody, least of all Bunny, is best pleased.
Once analyzed, the drugs reveal Russian tampering, which implicates Konstantin. Mike knows if this gets out it’ll cause open war between the Crips and the Russians. Unfortunately, Evelyn has already disseminated the details to the authorities, and Bunny isn’t answering Mike’s calls.
This is because the Crips are arming up with heavy-duty assault weaponry and preparing to make a real statement. This, needless to say, isn’t good news.
Iris Volunteers Her Services
With the Russians in Crip crosshairs, Iris couldn’t have picked a worse time to visit Konstantin. The relationship between these two is still a little vague, but it clearly goes back a long way and there’s a degree of intimacy there. Konstantin gave her the Iris moniker and is still fuming about how Milo treated her.
He claims to be, anyway. As we’ve established thus far, he’s not an especially nice guy.
Iris is in the bar when Mike visits, so he has to downplay his obvious shock and annoyance so that Konstantin doesn’t get wind of their connection. Mike is there to warn Konstantin away from poisoning the Crip’s drugs, and he’s still there when a few of Bunny’s men turn up outside and spray the place with bullets. It’s bad timing, but it puts Mike and Iris in the firing line and is likely to prompt a Russian reaction, which is the last thing Mike wants.
When Mike finally gets hold of Bunny, he points out that ghosting him and going after Konstantin almost killed Mike himself. Bunny is visibly shocked to hear he was there, but one doesn’t imagine he’s interested in a peaceful solution.
Iris Is In The Firing Line
Mike isn’t totally sure about Iris’s rationale that getting close to Konstantin will allow her to help him. He’s more worried about Konstantin killing her when her connection to Mike is inevitably exposed, but he can tell she isn’t willing to stand down, so she agrees to take the role of front-of-house at Cavo to keep an eye on things.
Now, to be fair, Iris proves useful. Konstantin accepts her into his inner circle immediately and gives her front-row seats to a drug deal that Mike and Ian observe from nearby. But the underlying details are still a cause for some concern. Iris is ingesting narcotics like they’re going out of fashion, and Konstantin keeps mentioning that once they’re done here, they’ll be returning to New York – presumably together.
So yeah, sure, Iris is able to unearth a connection between the Aryans and the Russians in a single evening, but at what cost? This still strikes me as an extremely risky arrangement.
Speaking of risk, Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 Episode 5 ends with Ian spotting something in the rear-view mirror, and Mike imploring him to get them out of there posthaste. So, trouble has caught up already. It seems like it’s only a matter of time until Iris and Kyle get caught up in it too.
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