Summary
Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 bows out with a masterclass in tension and dramatic payoff, leaving the door open for Season 4 if people – and Paramount+ — want to see it. And they probably will.
And… breathe.
Blimey, that was something, wasn’t it? It seemed unlikely that Episode 10 – the aptly titled “Comeuppance” – would be able to tie all of Mayor of Kingstown Season 3’s disparate plot threads together, but it managed that capably. What’s more, it pulled everything off in a tight build-up of tension and a flurry of grim payoffs, like a long fuse attached to a series of depressing bombs.
It also, perhaps expectedly, left things slightly open for a fourth season. Let’s break it all down.
Mike’s Morality
The Season 3 finale employs a classic framing device, using Mike’s voiceover and a brief flashforward to imply what’s coming. It speaks to a pretty essential question that Mayor of Kingstown has toyed with throughout – namely, is Mike McClusky a good man making tough decisions, or a nutcase no different from the criminals on the other side of the prison walls?
This is something Mike himself ponders. Episode 10 starts with him knocking around Konstantin’s boat, blaring sirens responding to a shootout on a bridge nearby, so it’s obvious everything will kick off. Mike’s place in the carnage remains ambiguous. He has played every criminal faction in Kingstown against each other to his own ends. When he emerged from prison, he thought he shed the skin he had worn in there to survive. But perhaps not.
Keep this in mind as we go.
Split Focus
“Comeuppance” has a couple of key narrative tracts that it divides its attention between, and some other longstanding subplots are sprinkled throughout. It’s a lot going on at once, so let’s lay it out.
On the one hand, you have the bridge shootout, which is the outgrowth of Mike’s manipulation of the Crips, the Russians, and the Aryans. Mike has told Bunny that he’ll leak the route his gang is taking but not their ultimate destination, and that KPD will not shoot the Crips in the ensuing firefight.
Elsewhere, following Milo’s sudden – though expected – return at the end of Episode 9, he confronts Konstantin and Iris on the former’s boat, so Mike has to respond to that first. That leaves SWAT to deal with the bridge scenario, which means it also deals with Kyle’s fate, Sawyer’s ongoing psychopathy, and Evelyn’s determination to take the latter down.
Kareem’s Death
Warden Kareem meets a tragic end in “Comeuppance”
We finally get the end of Kareem’s subplot in this episode, and it’s a tragic one. With his job gone and his professional life having been essentially restarted from scratch, he’s on borrowed time. He uses it to peruse the surveillance footage of the grenade attack in Episode 8, which reveals that Kevin gave a signal to the sniper.
The second-to-last act of Kareem’s life is to warn Kevin that Bunny is not his family and is not worth his loyalty – eventually, he’ll use him and throw him away. His last act is to call his family, none of whom realize they’re speaking to him for the final time.
After that, Kareem commits suicide-by-prisoner. He walks into the yard with no protection and confronts a hulking inmate, who stabs him to death with enthusiastic assistance from the other prisoners. Kareem bleeds to death on the prison floor.
Police Politics
Following Charlie’s death in the penultimate episode, Ian stands to be cleared of the shooting. Nobody is overly interested in determining whether it was justified, except Evelyn, who recognizes she can use it to her advantage.
Evelyn knows Ian employed Charlie’s services seven times, but only six of those were to look for bodies. The seventh was the visit to the dentist, coincidentally on the day that Morrissey was murdered. The implication is pretty clear, and Ian is forced to go to Mike and confess what happened that day.
Evelyn is determined to get to Sawyer, even if she has to go through Ian to do it. Mike knows this, and so does Sawyer, who is willing to take out Evelyn, or even Mike, to keep himself out of prison. He admits as much to Kyle, who realizes, much too late, that Sawyer only allowed him to join SWAT so he’d have some leverage over Mike (Sawyer doesn’t admit this bit, but it’s very obvious.)
Konstantin and Milo Meet Their End
I’m still not entirely sure what Milo’s endgame is, or how he is so knowledgeable about everything that has happened in Kingstown recently, but nevertheless, he has a proposition. If Iris kills Konstantin, he’ll provide her with the new life she had been promised, and allow her to go.
Milo gets Iris to summon Mike to the boat, revealing she has been working with him the entire time, but it’s a bit late for the news to rattle Konstantin, who seems to have come to terms with his fate. He even talks Iris into killing him, goading her by using her real name, Hannah.
Milo stays true to his word and provides Iris with a new identity and a bus ticket for wherever she wants to go. Mike pushes her to leave, against her wishes. When gunfire erupts outside, Mike uses the description to disarm Milo. He tells Ian to take Iris away and then dismisses him and the backup unit he has called. He wants some alone time with Milo.
This is where the thematic chickens come home to roost for Mike, since Milo – who admits to having bombed Mariam’s funeral in Episode 1 and sunk the busload of trafficked women in Episode 7, though we’d already figured that out – claims they’re essentially the same person. They’re both the same creature. Mike confirms it by shooting him in the head.
Kyle’s Arc, Iris’s Death, and A Possible Future
Chaos erupts on the bridge in the Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 finale
The shootout on the bridge goes badly wrong. In the chaos, SWAT start taking out Crips and Russians from both sides, which isn’t exactly what Mike promised Bunny. Sawyer, as usual, gets carried away, shooting a surrendering, unarmed Crip in cold blood, and then rounding on a civilian who is trying to protect his son.
Kyle guns Robert down, however, it’s revealed afterward that he survived. He’s in critical condition thanks to the bullet in his neck, but his vest caught the others. Witnesses confirm that Kyle attacked a fellow officer, so as Mike arrives on the bridge, he’s being taken away in a police car. Evelyn reminds Mike that nobody is immune, even the brother of the so-called Mayor.
And in another tragic turn, Iris boards the bus to her new life… and pops a couple of pills. The driver eventually finds her dead in her seat. It’s unclear whether the overdose was intentional or not, but the outcome is the same either way.
Mike is left wondering who he is, and what he’s capable of, and perhaps wondering what lengths he might be forced to go to in the aftermath of all this. Season 4, anyone?
