Summary
The ending of Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 leaves a lot to be desired, with many plot points completely unresolved. It does, however, get rid of one Big Bad and make significant progress in a few other areas.
Seemingly conceived as an answer to the question “How much torture can be included in an hour of television?”, the finale of Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 leaves a little to be desired. It does do away with one of the lingering Big Bads in a relatively satisfying way, but it leaves pretty much everything else unresolved. There are major developments in each thread, no doubt, but it’s very much not an ending, and if Season 5 doesn’t get greenlit, which admittedly seems unlikely, then Episode 10 will have amounted to a deeply unsatisfying conclusion.
But let’s look on the bright side. Some stuff here is pretty good, and the potential for what might follow down the line is better still. And I, for one, am happy to finally see the back of Merle, since he was wearing out his welcome last season. There is, however, something a bit weird about how all that plays out, which we’ll get to. Let’s break it all down.
The Aryans Make Their Move
Picking up from where we left off, Kyle, Mike, Ian, and Stevie hunker down in the diner and manage to take out the three goons in full tactical gear who had decided to besiege the place. There was some mystery about who these guys might be, with people in the comments here speculating it might even be Robert, but the most predictable answer turns out to be the correct one — it was the Aryan Brotherhood.
To make this clear, it’s confirmed twice. We see Merle listening in on a police scanner, making a passing comment about the poor third attacker who wasn’t shot to death outside, which is the main giveaway. But the poor third guy, who becomes the first torture victim of the finale, doesn’t make it a secret that he’s Merle’s man.
Not that he’ll give much else away, though. He refuses to give up any information about Merle’s current whereabouts, other than accidentally revealing that he’s still in Kingstown. He’s mostly just a useful sack of meat for Kyle to wail on, since “Belly of the Beast” is very much about Kyle’s wavering mental state as he tries to get revenge for Tracy’s death.
Side note: Mike wearing gloves and an apron implies he’s not exactly new to the torture business. Kyle doesn’t even bother to scrub up. I know he’s in emotional turmoil, but does he need to be so unsanitary?
All Out War
Things finally boil over between the Crips and the Colombians here, both inside Anchor Bay and on the streets. Bundled up in this is poor Kevin, who is informed early on that today is his last day working in the prison. And we all know what that means.
Anyway, Nina is instructed by Cortez — who also confirms that Torres is dead — to lift the lockdown and allow the prisoners to get at each other. They all tool up with homemade shanks and magazine body armour, and as soon as they’re allowed back onto the wings, they charge at each other. It’s a bit like the scene with the Punisher in Season 2 of Daredevil, only nobody knows how to fight, and everybody gets stabbed. Raph gets stabbed quite a bit, and his fate is left uncertain by the end of the episode.
One person whose fate isn’t uncertain is Kevin’s. He just so happens to be walking past one of the injured Colombians in the aftermath of the brawl, and the guy lunges up and stabs him in the neck. He bleeds to death in Cindy’s arms. As far as weeks at work go, she’s having probably the worst anyone has ever had.
The Great Escape
Outside Anchor Bay, Bunny seems to have taken over Frank’s business — wouldn’t Detroit be a little suspicious of the circumstances surrounding this? — and has decided to solidify his position by having his men take out all of the Colombians, including Cortez. They do a better job of this than Frank’s flamethrower goons did, and even manage to capture Cortez. This is torture scene #2, if you’re keeping count.
But Cortez is utterly unfazed by being tortured. He unflinchingly takes his licks while dragging his hand through the handcuffs, peeling back all the flesh like a banana. This guy’s pain threshold is on another level. He’s a legitimately terrifying villain, so it’s a real shame that he never really got the chance to interact with the main cast much. Bunny leaves him alone for five minutes, and then he’s suddenly gone. Maybe next season.
Merle’s Fate
On the subject of the next season, Merle Callahan won’t be in it. Bizarrely, he surrenders himself to the police. Presumably, he can feel the net tightening around him and reckons he will be protected enough by the legal system that Mike won’t be able to get at him. But this is dumb on multiple levels. He must surely know both how corrupt the police are and how much influence Mike has in the prison. This was never going to work.
It almost works in the short-term, though. Ian’s efforts to slip him out of the back door and deliver him to Mike and Kyle are thwarted by Captain Walter, who wants to follow due process for all of about five minutes until he stares at Merle through some two-way glass for a while, realises he’s pure evil, and then pretends he never saw him. Kind of renders the whole thing pointless if you think about it.
Free to do whatever he wants with Merle, Ian drags him to the railyard on Mike’s instructions. There, Kyle arrives to mete out his fate, which is a bullet in the balls and several in the head. I’m not sure it makes Kyle feel much better, but it definitely allows him to engage with his emotions a bit better. Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 ends with him sobbing in his brother’s arms.
