TL;DR: Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 Episode 6 is a relentless, emotionally charged hour that digs into betrayal, prison trauma, and shifting loyalties, all while showcasing the full villainy of Frank Moses. It’s one of the season’s strongest entries — brutal, personal, and pointing the story straight toward all-out war.
Mayor of Kingstown Season 4
Every time I think Mayor of Kingstown can’t crank the tension dial any further without snapping it clean off, Taylor Sheridan strolls back into the writer’s room like a chaotic Dungeon Master and says what if literally everything went worse? Episode 6 is the exact manifestation of that energy. It’s a bruiser of an hour that keeps the show’s trademark bleak momentum barreling downhill, but what hooked me this week wasn’t the bullets, betrayals, or prison shank etiquette — it was the creeping realization that Frank Moses, played with that Lennie James brand of calm danger, is not remotely the ally I wanted him to be.
This is the episode where the walls close in on every character who dared to breathe in the last five installments, and as someone who’s been riding with this show since Jeremy Renner first growled his way through Kingstown’s morally radioactive underbelly, I could feel the storm tightening around everyone. The episode’s title might as well have been Trust Issues: Kingstown Edition, because every storyline is orbiting the same question: how long before the one person you rely on puts a knife — or a cartel assassin — in your back?
And if you’ve been waiting for the series to finally address the Frank problem head-on, Episode 6 delivers with the subtlety of a thrown cinder block.
The Bunny storyline this week hit me in the gut, because Bunny has always been more than the quippy kingpin with immaculate hood-philosopher energy. He’s one of the emotional anchors of the show — one of the few people who genuinely cares about Kingstown beyond what it can offer him. So when the episode opens with him being transported by Lamar, only for their tires to get shredded in a trap that feels way too orchestrated to be random, my alarms went off like I was playing Five Nights at Freddy’s in VR.
The ambush is a brutal reminder of what this show does best: violence that feels intimate and ugly, shot without glamour, framed with consequences rather than spectacle. When Bunny gets shredded by gunfire and Lamar bolts into the open like the world’s least tactical player in a battle royale match, I knew we were witnessing a setup. Bunny has taken hits before, but this was different — the attack felt targeted, personal, strategic.
And sure enough, when Mike pieces together that Lamar was working under Frank Moses’ orders, it hits with the weight of a betrayal we should’ve seen coming. Frank has been playing the long game, slowly repositioning himself to inherit Kingstown’s criminal infrastructure like he’s swapping save files in a strategy game. Bunny wasn’t just collateral — he was an obstacle. A king who needed toppling.
Seeing Bunny laid up in a hospital bed, tended to by his sister, was the most sobering image of the episode. Kingstown is on fire, and Bunny — the one guy who understands its ecosystem better than anyone — is bleeding out on the sidelines. It’s the clearest sign yet that the city’s fragile balance has fully collapsed.
Watching Kyle get dropped into Gen Pop felt like the show deliberately throwing a McLusky into the lion pit just to see what shape he comes out in. Up until now, Kyle’s prison stint has been tense but manageable — like he’s been playing the world’s worst stealth game and somehow hasn’t triggered the alarm.
Episode 6 changes that immediately. Anchor Bay reveals its true nature the second Kyle is exposed. The thugs who recognize him from his days in uniform don’t waste a heartbeat. The corrupt guards moving him to an isolated location might as well have had “We are definitely about to betray you” tattooed across their foreheads.
The assault sequence is maybe the most harrowing moment of Kyle’s arc so far — two factions, both more than willing to end him, with Kyle stuck in the middle like a glitching NPC whose survival depends entirely on timing. The Aryan Brotherhood showing up to save him is less an act of kindness and more a protection racket calling in a favor, and Kyle knows it. You can see the transformation happening in real time. His eyes change. His body language shifts. Anchor Bay is eating him alive.
When Mike maneuvers him back into Ad Seg, it feels like pulling someone’s head out of the water after they’ve already inhaled half the lake. Kyle will never be the same — which is exactly how the prison in this series operates. It changes people on a cellular level, and now Kyle’s carrying that trauma like a new organ.
The diner scene is classic Mayor of Kingstown energy: a casual breakfast with lethal subtext simmering under every word. Mike walking into a room with a young cartel sicario who eats scrambled eggs like he’s not actively destabilizing a city is exactly the kind of moral whiplash this show thrives on.
Mike tries intimidation. The kid shrugs it off like he’s being lectured about parking too close to a fire hydrant. And when he clarifies that Bunny isn’t even their target — he’s just a pawn — the temperature of the whole season drops. This isn’t about turf. This is about removing Mike, the one consistently disruptive force in Kingstown.
The cartel is playing chess while Mike’s trying to defuse grenades. That imbalance is by design.
Frank Moses’ unraveling this episode is some of Lennie James’ best work on the show. Mike setting him up, the warden cutting strategic deals, Ian pulling the trigger on a cartel assassin inside the precinct — it’s chaos wrapped in more chaos, and Frank is caught in the middle like someone who bet on the wrong horse and is now out of credit.
This is where the episode title really earns its weight. Frank has spent the season acting like the guy who always has a contingency plan. Episode 6 exposes how paper-thin that confidence really is. He isn’t a mastermind climbing the Kingstown criminal ladder — he’s a parasite who finally got spotted by the immune system.
And now everyone wants him dead.
After the bullets, the betrayals, and the prison politics, the quiet hospital scene between Mike and Bunny may be the best moment of the season. It’s raw, still, emotional — the oasis in the chaos storm.
Mike turning off his phone instead of answering Ian’s call isn’t just character development. It’s a line in the sand. A man choosing loyalty over logistics. Friendship over crisis. Humanity over his endless job of putting out Kingstown’s fires.
The contrast with Mike’s past in prison is the part that floored me. Mike once had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Aryan Brotherhood — the very people who would have hunted a man like Bunny without hesitation. That version of Mike was survival-focused, morally numb, carved into a shape he didn’t want to be.
Now he’s sitting at Bunny’s bedside, refusing to leave.
It’s the closest thing this show ever gives us to hope.
Episode 6 is a powder keg of betrayal, blood, and shifting alliances, carried by standout character moments and the seismic reveal of Frank’s true motives. It’s tense, tightly constructed, and pushes every major storyline toward an explosive endgame.
