TL;DR: Mayor of Kingstown season 4, episode 9 is a brutal, masterfully constructed pressure cooker that detonates nearly every storyline at once. Shocking character moments, relentless pacing, and a savage cliffhanger set up a finale that could redefine the series. This is Mayor of Kingstown operating at its absolute peak.
Mayor of Kingstown Season 4
There are episodes of television that feel like chapters. Then there are episodes that feel like pressure valves being yanked clean off the pipe. Mayor of Kingstown season 4, episode 9, Teeth and Tissue, is absolutely the latter. Watching it, I had that familiar pit-in-the-stomach feeling that only the best prestige TV delivers, the one where you know the writers aren’t bluffing anymore. This wasn’t setup. This wasn’t table-setting. This was the sound of the table getting flipped.
I’ve been riding with Mayor of Kingstown since day one, through the bleakness, the moral rot, the moments where it felt like the show was daring the audience to look away. But this episode hit different. This was the series at full confidence, operating with surgical cruelty and emotional precision. It’s the kind of penultimate episode that doesn’t just hype a finale, it threatens to eclipse it.
Let’s start with the immediate aftermath of episode 8’s gut punch. Mike McLusky has officially run out of levers to pull. No more backroom deals. No more half-measures. Callahan has crossed a line that can’t be negotiated away, and Mike knows it. Watching Jeremy Renner play that realization is fascinating, because he doesn’t explode. He calcifies. Mike doesn’t rage. He narrows. The man has always been a chess player in a city that only understands checkers, but here, he’s playing speed chess with a gun on the table.
The move with Lamar is classic McLusky misdirection. On paper, it looks like Mike folding, handing Lamar over to Frank Moses and calling it a day. But if you’ve watched this show with even half an eye open, you know Mike never gives something without taking something far more valuable in return. Frank’s fatal mistake isn’t arrogance. It’s comfort. Decades of slipping through the cracks have convinced him he’s untouchable. In Kingstown, that’s a death wish. Watching that trap snap shut was immensely satisfying, not because it was flashy, but because it was inevitable.
And that inevitability is what makes Kyle’s arc in this episode so devastating. Kyle’s release from Anchor Bay doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like parole from hell. He’s alive, technically, but irreparably altered. The show doesn’t romanticize prison trauma. It weaponizes it. Kyle walking out broken, hollowed, barely present, is one of the most honest depictions of institutional damage I’ve seen on television in years. Evelyn may have gotten him out, but no one won that exchange.
Then there’s Breen. Good lord, Breen. This season has been slowly loading that gun, episode by episode, tightening the psychological vise until something had to give. And when it did, it didn’t just snap, it detonated. The Ad-Seg shooting is one of the most shocking moments the series has ever produced, not because it’s loud or gory, but because it’s horrifyingly logical. Of course Breen would implode like this. Of course his obsession would metastasize into violence. The show has been screaming this outcome at us, and we still weren’t ready.
Cindy stepping in, delivering the kill shot, saving Kyle in the literal last possible second, is the kind of moment that redefines a character forever. Laura Benanti plays Cindy with a mixture of terror, resolve, and aftermath shock that feels brutally real. This isn’t a hero moment. It’s survival. And the fact that the show doesn’t let her bask in it, doesn’t give her a victory lap, makes it hit even harder.
If that was where the episode ended, it would already be an all-timer. But Mayor of Kingstown isn’t content to let you breathe. Instead, it pivots into an ending sequence that feels like a warning shot across the bow of the finale. The montage set to The Doors’ End of the Night is pure mood warfare. It’s nihilistic, exhausted, and weirdly mournful, like the show itself is pausing to acknowledge the carnage it’s about to unleash.
And then, because this series is apparently powered by spite, we get the diner shootout. Mike’s safe haven, his neutral ground, violated. Kyle, still mentally shattered, frozen in place as chaos erupts around him. A shooter, almost certainly Cortez, opens fire, and suddenly the episode becomes a cliffhanger grenade lobbed directly into the audience’s living room. Cut to black. Credits roll. Me staring at the screen like I just got punched.
This is where the season’s larger achievement really crystallizes. Season 4 hasn’t just been good. It’s been confident. There’s a notable shift in tone and pacing that longtime fans can feel even if they can’t articulate it. While Taylor Sheridan’s DNA is still all over the series, this season feels more focused, more ruthless in its storytelling economy. Every scene earns its runtime. Every character decision carries weight.
That confidence extends to character reversals that could have felt cheap in lesser hands. Nina Hobbs is the standout example. Watching her transition from outright antagonist to tragic cog in the cartel machine is one of the smartest arcs the show has pulled off. Mike’s realization that she isn’t the monster, just an extension of one, reframes their entire dynamic. It also paints a massive target on her back. If this show has taught me anything, it’s that moments of empathy are often death sentences. I’d be shocked if Nina survives the finale.
The one area where I still feel a twinge of disappointment is the relative lack of sustained in-prison drama this season. Kyle’s stint in Gen Pop was compelling precisely because it felt like the show reconnecting with its roots. The prison is the engine that drives Kingstown, and while we’ve revisited it, we haven’t lived there the way earlier seasons allowed us to. Characters like Raphael feel underutilized, sidelined in a season otherwise bursting with narrative momentum.
That said, Frank Moses now being in Evelyn’s custody opens up fascinating possibilities. If season 5 happens, and that’s still a massive if, Frank could become a terrifying new force behind bars. The idea of him building influence inside, potentially clashing with Bunny, is the kind of long-game storytelling that Mayor of Kingstown excels at. Speaking of Bunny, Tobi Bamtefa continues to be one of the show’s most magnetic presences. Every scene he’s in hums with barely contained menace.
As we barrel toward the finale, the stakes couldn’t be clearer. Callahan is the last domino. Mike and Kyle’s survival feels probable, but this is Kingstown, where probability has a habit of getting executed in an alley. Paramount+ hasn’t confirmed a season 5, and that uncertainty hangs over every frame of this episode. The show feels bold enough to kill Mike. I don’t think it will, but I believe it could, and that belief is everything.
Teeth and Tissue isn’t just a great episode of Mayor of Kingstown. It’s a declaration. A statement that this series, four seasons in, has not only found its voice, but sharpened it into a blade. If the finale sticks the landing, we may be looking at the show’s high-water mark.
