SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Mayor of Kingstown Season 4, Episode 6.

The show may be called Mayor of Kingstown, but it needs Deverin “Bunny” Washington. Season 4, Episode 6 of the Paramount+ drama shocked viewers when Bunny was shot in an ambush—revealed to have been orchestrated by his new partner Frank Moses. Audiences are now waiting to see if he survives his injuries, and for the series’ sake, Bunny had better live.

In fairness to the creative team, shooting Bunny in the first place was a bold move—the kind of no-holds-barred storytelling that fans expect from Mayor of Kingstown, and that most other TV shows would be too scared to do. This is a series that just murdered another key character four episodes ago, completely out of the blue. And two episodes before that, in the Season 3 finale, it axed three main characters. One would think that the writers had finished cleaning house, but apparently not yet. The difference is that Bunny is not in the same league as Carney, Kareem Moore, Iris or Milo Sunter; he’s on his own level.

The friendship between Bunny and Mike McLusky is the heart of Mayor of Kingstown, and emblematic of everything the show stands for. The titular conceit of the show is that everything and everyone revolves around Mike—he’s the one that has to put out all the fires, regardless of who started them, for the greater good of the town. Because of that, it’s easy to see the other characters primarily through whatever their connection is to Mike. But Mayor of Kingstown doesn’t get enough credit for how it quietly reinforces that everyone other than Mike is their own person, and Bunny is the chief example of that. Bunny could be the hero of his own series. In some ways, Bunny is a hero within Kingstown.

Mike, for everything that he can do, would be the first person to admit that he is not an island. Audiences have seen, particularly in Season 3, what happens when he can’t carry the weight. They have seen him go off book and off the reservation. He needs someone to help him build those bridges, and he wants that friendship, too. Because what exists between Mike and Bunny isn’t just a collaboration; it’s a real and honest friendship. That friendship is what makes the collaboration possible. Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 has done an exceptional job of highlighting their differences, particularly through the person of Frank Moses. Yet by seeing them a little bit more separately, fans are getting a reminder of how they ought to stick together.

On the most basic level, Mike and Bunny’s friendship is the “good guy” and the “bad guy,” the psuedo-bureaucrat breaking bread with the gang leader. But anyone who watches Mayor of Kingstown for any length of time knows how reductive that is. Bunny and Mike do each represent a separate part of what makes up Kingstown, and how they operate can be wildly different, but they share a similar set of values. Both of them are deeply committed to their families. Both of them live in the grey, because they innately understand that this town brings out the worst in people. (Remember Mike’s comment earlier this season about Kyle being the “one good man” in Kingstown?) But yet, that doesn’t stop both of them from wanting the best for the town and the people in it.

Bunny and Mike represent hope… for Kingstown, for each other, and for the viewers. They collaborate rather than try to control. Audiences have seen them fight with each other, but also learn from each other. Bunny is someone Mike can confide in, in a way that he can’t with Kyle or Iris or anyone else, because Bunny has likewise seen and done enough bad things to have his own baggage (which he frankly handles better). Bunny sees MIke in a better light than Mike sees himself. And for Bunny, Mike is someone who is able to hear him and see him in a way nobody else does. Yes, he wields a lot of power in Kingstown, yet Mike gives him respect not only for his place in the city’s ecosystem—but for who he is as a person.

And for the fans, Mike and Bunny’s relationship is the last positive thing in the sea of pain and betrayal that Mayor of Kingstown navigates every week. Kyle and Tracy McLusky were the other one, but separating them by prison walls and now state lines has spoiled that. And Kyle and Tracy’s Season 4 storyline is an example of how heavy the series can be. A lot of people die, others get hurt, families get torn apart—but Mike and Bunny are opposite to that. Here are two people coming together. Here are two people actively trying to make things better. As long as Bunny and Mike can work as a team, and as long as they’re out there trying to fix problems, then there’s a chance for the rest of Kingstown. In fact, their conversations on the rooftop (which often serve as plot touchstones for viewers) can be thoughtful, funny and charming, the value of which can’t be overstated on a series that has never pulled its punches.

If Bunny doesn’t wake up in his hospital bed, if he ultimately dies, that hope goes away. And that would be a death knell for Mayor of Kingstown. The show needs that hope. It needs something for viewers to believe in. It needs some relationship to show that all the work Mike does means something, not only for the city but for the further growth of Mike’s character. He’s not a very good “mayor” if everything always has the bad ending, and that in turn would make him feel like even less of a person. He already has a self-loathing complex. Plus, the series needs someone other than Mike to be on the “hero” side. Mike cannot do everything by himself, nor should he. Mayor of Kingstown has to have somebody within the community also fighting the good fight, or why would the audience care about a city that doesn’t want to save itself?

Plus, it can’t be overlooked that Mike and Bunny are a great example of positive representation. Inside Anchor Bay, everything is divided, from the Aryan Brotherhood to the Black inmates and the Colombians. Yet on the outside, they stand in direct contrast to that. And in the real world, the racial, political and economic divisions feel greater than ever. To see a white protagonist and a Black protagonist treating one another as true equals—and the show’s writers treating them equally as well—is something that resonates. Fans will notice that Mayor of Kingstown doesn’t try to make any big statements about race with Bunny and Mike’s interactions. They’re just two individuals who aren’t defined by their race, or even their choices of career. They always feel like people who happen to have ethically questionable jobs.

Which is one thing that’s made Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 so interesting, as the pressure being put on both Bunny and Mike has added a greater context to their relationship. Even though they’ve never been further apart, the viewers are getting a renewed sense of why their partnership works… and why the show can’t survive if only one of them is left.

The way that Frank Moses treats Bunny, and the things he offers him, are diametrically opposed to Bunny’s interactions with Mike. (It helps that the legendary actor Lennie James is possibly the best antagonist in Mayor of Kingstown‘s history, but that’s a discussion for another time.) Frank is smooth, calm, sophisticated, often soft-spoken and always strategic. He insists on referring to Bunny by his actual first name, Deverin… even though Bunny points out how few people call him that. Frank talks about the world beyond Kingstown, and the idea of bigger and better. He inspires Bunny to dream.

Mike is rough around the edges, prone to getting snappish or raising his voice, not afraid to be brash. He calls Bunny what he prefers to be called. Mike is only concerned with Kingstown and the right now and protecting what they already have. He is reality, and reality in Kingstown is harsh and largely unchanging. So it’s totally understandable that Bunny would be moved by Frank Moses, because Frank is offering something that is its own kind of hope. Lane Garrison said it best: “Somehow, all these guys are in prison.” Everyone in Kingstown is in prison, and the thought of life outside is the impossible dream.

But because Mike is so grounded, he’s also true. Bunny knows that he doesn’t change. That even when their relationship has been frayed, Mike has always been there. Audiences have that reinforced when Mike goes to tell Bunny’s sister about the shooting, and particularly when Mike is at Bunny’s bedside at the end of Episode 6. Mike’s phone, that thing that is always going and is responsible for half the dialogue in the show, gets set aside. All he wants in that moment is to be with his friend. It is a terrible and infuriating thing that Frank betrays Bunny, but it also proves how much Mike means to him. Mike would never do anything that Frank did. And Mike is right there, waiting and hoping.

Frank’s storyline is finite. The writing is already on the wall for him. But Bunny will always have a story, and Mayor of Kingstown would be doing him and Mike an injustice if he doesn’t make it back. Season 4 has been great at stripping Mike’s character back to basics and challenging his own perception of himself. The threat of losing Bunny is powerful enough to further that point; going through with it doesn’t add anything to the story. In fact, it would just make the whole show worse—in both the short and long term. It would all basically be from Mike’s point of view, so the series would feel less three-dimensional. As awesome as Jeremy Renner is, a show of Mike running around like a lone savior would be a mess, character-wise and plot-wise. There would be logistical issues with the plot not only in Season 4 but going forward, because the next person in line would be Raphael… who’s still inside Anchor Bay.

There would also be the detriment of losing the wonderful acting talent of Tobi Bamtefa; Mayor of Kingstown‘s biggest strength is the ensemble that makes the struggle worth it, and Bamtefa is a huge part of that. And then there’s just the bitter pill the audience would have to swallow, given all the other recent deaths. There comes a point where the shock wears off. The last thing that Mayor of Kingstown wants is for fans to believe that it’s just going to kill off all the main characters, so why bother caring about any of them?

No one knows yet if there will be Mayor of Kingstown Season 5, but it wouldn’t be worth doing without Bunny and without the friendship he’s built with Mike. If the rug gets pulled out from under them, then what message is the show sending other than it’s not worth trying? And if viewers don’t have them to navigate through the chaos, then this would start to be just like any other crime drama. And that’s not what this is—it’s one of the best shows on television.

Mayor of Kingstown streams Sundays on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Paramount+.

Article content is (c)2020-2025 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.