SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Mayor of Kingstown Season 4, Episode 8. It also contains mention of suicide.

Of all the bad things that have happened in Mayor of Kingstown, Tracy McLusky’s death is the worst—and it’s not even close. There have been more violent moments, and there have been bigger shocks. But Tracy’s murder by Merle Callahan in Season 4, Episode 8, “Belleville” is asking a lot of the audience, because of what Tracy meant on and off-screen to the Paramount+ series.

Fans have more than enough grounds to criticize the decision to kill Tracy. It’s fair to point out that she is the third major female character to die in three seasons. Her mother-in-law Mariam McLusky was accidentally shot in Season 2, while Iris died by suicide at the end of Season 3, and now Tracy has been murdered. The only female main character to survive all four seasons (so far) is Evelyn Foley, and she could have been killed by Ian Ferguson a few episodes ago.

On top of that, there’s an argument to be made that Mayor of Kingstown is racking up too many character deaths in too little time. Yes, it’s always been true that no one is safe in Kingstown—but more major characters have died in the last nine episodes than most other shows kill in years. The Season 3 finale saw Iris, Kareem Moore and Milo Sunter all depart, while Season 4 has said goodbye to Doug Carney and Tracy. And it’s looking like they won’t be the only ones. (At least, if Callahan doesn’t meet his end after this, it would be a massive failure on someone’s part.) Audiences can take a lot of pain, but there’s still a limit to how many times they’re willing to get punched in the gut.

But mostly, the problem with killing Tracy comes out of the fact that she and her husband Kyle were the goodness in Mayor of Kingstown. When Mike McLusky described Kyle as the “one good man” in the city, he was not exaggerating. Kyle and Tracy represented hope and happiness for the audience in a show that often doesn’t have a lot of either one. That contrast was critically important to keep viewers engaged, and not have them think that nothing Mike or anyone else did mattered. There was always a reason to keep trying, because Mike wasn’t just doing his job for himself and his allies. He was doing it for regular people like Kyle and Tracy, who just wanted to raise their son.

To take Tracy off the board is to kill that hope, literally. And it’s a double whammy because of what her death does to Kyle. Taylor Handley has his best scene of the entire series when Kyle realizes what’s happening and that there isn’t a damn thing he can do about it. There’s a visceral anguish that the audience feels with him. Every ounce of his emotion gets spilled out and it’s so incredibly powerful. Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 has already broken Kyle McLusky before this. Killing Tracy does feel like kicking him when he’s down. So not only do viewers have to mourn Tracy, they have to mourn Kyle, too.

But for all of that, there are also ways to understand Tracy’s death, as depressing as it is. While it looks at first blush like yet another example of a TV show using a main character’s loved one as cannon fodder, it’s actually more than that. As mentioned above, Tracy’s death is the thing that permanently cements the chilling character arc Kyle has been on all season long. Mayor of Kingstown has been digging so much deeper into Kyle’s character, and this makes it very clear that Kyle has crossed a line (albeit not by choice).

Tracy’s death serves an important function; it’s not simply happening for dramatic effect. It has a huge purpose in deconstructing Kyle and, to a lesser extent, Mike as well. What happens to Tracy isn’t just part of the big picture; it’s creating the big picture. Nothing less than her death would fit with the almost anarchic way the show is approaching this season. It’s not just “no one is safe in Kingstown.” There’s a seismic shift happening in the storytelling, and Tracy’s death is another one of those massive leaps.

Furthermore, the way in which Tracy passes is incredibly important. As Nishi Munshi pointed out in our interview, “Tracy went out as Tracy.” She was not a passive victim. If she had just been held hostage or hurt by Callahan, she would have felt like a passive victim. She would have been traumatized, and she already went through that in Season 3. Her death is in her control. She had the power in that situation, because she chose to sacrifice herself in order to protect baby Mitch from Callahan. And the script allows that to happen off-screen; there’s no gratuitous scene of her suffering or her actual death. That’s what makes her demise different from so many others: she’s given the power, and she’s given her dignity. The fact that Mayor of Kingstown let Tracy go out on her own terms, and that the writers crafted an arc in which her loss is going to be so important to the whole series, gives both the character and Nishi as a performer the respect they deserve. One can tell from how “Belleville” unfolded that the creative team cared about every aspect of this decision.

And that’s the way it should always be. Too often, the family members and loved ones of main characters get injured or killed to create some short-term emotional drama, because it’s an easy and clear way to raise the stakes. Particularly in Mayor of Kingstown, one might get the impression that death doesn’t matter so much because it happens so often. After all, the catalyst for the entire series was the murder of Kyle and Mike’s brother Mitch McLusky, after whom baby Mitch was named. But every death tells its own story. Some are more effective than others, and the body count is getting a bit high, but every death is its own mini-character arc in that moment or moments.

Tracy McLusky was never just Kyle’s wife, baby Mitch’s mom, or Mike’s sister-in-law. The other thing about Mayor of Kingstown‘s female characters is that they’ve all been given their own identities, separate from their relationships with the men. Audiences saw that with Tracy’s Season 3 arc involving Will Breen. Tracy went through her own struggles in many respects, whether it was that story or having Merle Callahan show up in her home. But she was also a woman who could fight those battles, and that’s what she did until the very last moment. Her death was emblematic of her strength and of the love that she brought not only to her relationship with Kyle, but to the entire show and the people watching it. Her passing creates a void of which viewers now have every reason to be terrified. It cements that Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 is on a whole other level, because nothing can fill that space. Even if Kyle and Mike do stop Callahan, the show will never be the same without Tracy, because the audience will never be able to get that feeling of hope she gave them back. The viewers just lost their last safety net.

So Mayor of Kingstown fans absolutely should be upset about Tracy’s death. They are well within reason if this makes them angry, if it feels like too much, even if it makes them want to stop watching. There are valid reasons to feel that way, and it’s not a flawless decision. For all the depth that the female characters have, it’s almost counterintuitive that they keep ending up dead. But this isn’t just a death, and it’s certainly not a ploy for viewers’ attention. It has a point, and it’s handled as well as it could possibly be. That doesn’t make losing Tracy any less devastating—but it helps to know that she’s going to leave her mark on Kingstown forever.

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.