Mayor of Kingstown is ending on a high. Paramount+ announced on Monday that it had renewed the series—but that Season 5 will be its last. Not only that, but the final season will be two episodes shorter than usual. It’s bittersweet, because Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 established that not only is this Taylor Sheridan’s best show, but it’s one of the best shows on TV.

What makes it special is that’s a distinction Mayor of Kingstown has steadily been working toward. Audiences have been able to watch it get better, season over season, as the writers have constantly refined the narrative and the cast have added further nuances to their characters. Every TV show is supposed to improve, but this one kept pushing itself forward with an unflinching determination. It all came together in Season 4, which was the culmination of individual arcs and major plot points from the first three seasons. The end of Season 4 was the start of a whole new chapter for Kingstown, and now unfortunately that’ll be a very short chapter.

First things first: Mayor of Kingstown deserves to continue past Season 5. Sheridan reportedly has a seven-season plan for the show, but that’s less important than how much of a world he and Hugh Dillon have created. This series has an incredible authenticity and sense of place; it rings as honest as all of Dillon’s acting performances. The idea for the show came out of Dillon’s own history, and one can feel that reality in the finished product. Almost nothing about Mayor of Kingstown comes across as “because TV.” The storytelling can only be described as ballsy. And Season 4 really opened up the world in new and exciting and even terrifying ways.

There are new dimensions to Kingstown that didn’t exist before. The first is the deconstruction (and now hopefully rebuilding) of Kyle McLusky, who went through hell in Season 4 in pursuit of the right thing. There’s what the entire show looks like without Kyle’s wife Tracy, who was a lot more than just his wife—she was the unspoken hope that so many people were clinging to. In Kyle and Tracy’s place might be new arrival Cindy Stephens, so wonderfully played by Laura Benanti, whose own selflessness was repaid in blood. Bunny Washington had his own awakening of sorts in dealing with Frank Moses, who technically could come back into the picture. (He really should.) And Paramount+ has confirmed that award winner Edie Falco will be back for a second go-around as Anchor Bay warden Nina Hobbs, who started out as a villain but by season’s end was revealed to be vulnerable and broken.

Every single character left standing has incredible directions they can go in, and not just in the short term. What happened to Kyle, and by extension what’s happened to Mike, can be played out over the next several seasons because it’s life-changing material. Mayor of Kingstown is akin to the Showtime series Brotherhood, which was not afraid to explore the long-term effects of crime and of trauma. A whole season was spent on Jason Isaacs’ character having suffered a major injury. And Kyle is never going to be the same person again, and Mike is clearly in the middle of a crisis of conscience, if not an identity crisis. Season 4 has paid off everything this show ever set up and then some.

Perhaps because it laid waste to so much of what had come before—three main characters died in Season 4, the same number that left in Season 3—Paramount felt that the series was reaching a natural conclusion. The last shot of Season 4, with Mike embracing Kyle on the railroad tracks, is the kind of image that ends a movie. And because of where everyone stands, there is a way to wind the story down authentically. That’s why fans can take comfort in the fact that Mayor of Kingstown Season 5 should be a great conclusion. There’s been so much work done to get to this point. There are clear paths for all the characters, and that final scene also presents one very good idea of how the series could emotionally end. Trying to get it done in eight episodes instead of ten is almost the bigger disappointment, because of how deliberate the show’s pacing is and how many layers there are to the stories; chopping two episodes off of the order means that something is going to get sacrificed. That may come back to haunt everyone.

But Season 5 can answer the impossible question: is there a way out of Kingstown? That has always been the question, and the answer every single time has been not unless it’s in a body bag. The brilliant idea to bring back Matthew Del Negro as Will Breen is the best proof of this. He knew there was no way out and he just wanted to take as many people as he could down with him. Breen was the personification of everything that people, no matter what side they’re on, struggle with in Kingstown. Yet what has kept the show going is this hope that there will somehow be something better—that’s what Mike works for, that’s what Cindy now represents, because Tracy isn’t here to be that anymore. It would be the perfect ending if someone was able to escape this prison and find happiness. Is it Kyle and baby Mitch? Does Mike go with his family, and hang up the mantle of mayor? Or is he resigned to his fate? Is it Bunny, who’s started to think about life outside Kingstown? But after all the struggle, for someone to gain their freedom would be beautiful and show that all the loss wasn’t in vain.

And because Sheridan, Dillon and the creative team know that Season 5 is the final season, they can play with that idea more than they ever have before. They can let their characters make those more absolute choices. This is one of the most difficult shows on TV to watch, but it’s for a worthwhile reason. The tragedy and the struggle are also the basis for this unlikely community. That picture greater than any one individual is what has put it head and shoulders over even Sheridan’s other work. There is a depth to it that isn’t in Tulsa King, which is more of an escape, and isn’t in the second season of Landman, which seems to be finding itself. Mayor of Kingstown is taking a hard but worthwhile look at what it means to be human. It’s ending too soon, but it’s going to have something to say when it gets there. Fans should absolutely be upset that Mayor of Kingstown is ending, but at least they know that there’s a hell of a ride left to take.

Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 is now streaming on Paramount+. A Season 5 premiere date has not yet been announced. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Paramount+.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 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.