Mayor Of Kingstown Season 3 Recap: Everything To Know Before Season 4

The cost of maintaining peace is hefty, and the path to attaining it often is not the righteous one—a lesson Mike McLusky has been learning and relearning since the first season of Mayor of Kingstown, after being thrust into the role of de facto mediator of the prison town. The third season of the series reiterates this by bringing Mike’s moral compass into question, as the rise of new threats and the return of old ones totally destabilizes the existing balance of power among criminal factions. With the fourth season dropping soon, let us take a look at all the major events and plot points from the third season viewers need to catch up on. 

The second season of Mayor of Kingstown ended with Russian mob boss Milo Sunter’s supposed death in a boat explosion, which was secretly orchestrated by Mike during the exchange when he handed the bomb-rigged bag of land bonds over to Milo in exchange for Iris’ safe return. Previously, Milo had held Mike’s mother, Mariam, and Iris as hostages, and while engaging in a shootout with Milo’s men, Mike’s brother, Kyle, accidentally shot Mariam. As the third season begins, Mariam is revealed to have passed away, and during her funeral, a car bombing takes place, which Mike fortunately survives. While it remains unknown who the target was or who orchestrated the bombing, Mike and KPD decide to crack down on the Aryan Brotherhood. Kyle, who is now a member of the SWAT team led by trigger-happy Sergeant Robert Sawyer, is trying too hard to absolve himself of guilt and prove his worth. After all, Mariam believed Kyle to be different from her elder brothers, as he never got involved in morally questionable dealings with crooks. Mike, aware of the fact that Kyle can drag the troubles of his professional life back to his family, advises him to instead focus on taking care of his pregnant wife, Tracey, to no avail.

The failure of the judiciary system haunts Mike on several occasions through the season, but the case of a grieving mother, Anna Fletcher, who reminds Mike of his own late mother, remains prominent. Anna approaches Mike with a request to lengthen the prison sentence of her son’s murderer, but despite sympathizing with her, Mike is unable to help her. Anna takes it upon herself to kill the murderer and surrenders herself to the authorities. 

On the other hand, in Milo’s absence, a brutal Russian mob leader, Konstantin Noskov, rises to power and starts taking down Milo’s loyalists, beginning with Tatiana, the escort/Milo’s lover who was previously seen speaking with Milo over the phone even after the boat accident. Konstantin’s cruelty is evident from his decision to dump Milo’s infant kid with Tatiana in the dumpster along with her corpse. Konstantin comes onto KPD, Mike, and Bunny’s radar after it is discovered he has been poisoning the Crips’ drug supplies. Mike also learns from Bunny that one of his associates from his prison days, Merle Callahan, has assumed control of the Aryan Brotherhood, which remained without a leader since Mike killed their former boss, Duke. Merle orchestrates a bombing on KPD headquarters, but Mike covers his tracks to keep his own troubled past a secret. Things turn dicey when Bunny orders a hit on the Russians by sending a gunman to attack their bar—and even though Mike threatens Konstantin with consequences if he retaliates against Bunny’s attack, he too knows things are going to escalate pretty soon. 

In the meantime, Iris gets herself arrested on misdemeanor charges and finds herself drawn back to her sordid past after learning about Konstantin’s presence in town from Ian during police questioning. As it turns out, during her days in New York, Konstantin and Iris shared a romantic connection, and he gave her the name ‘Iris’ in the first place. As she reunites with Konstantin, Mike confronts her the first chance he gets, and Iris offers to act as his informant by spying on the Russian mob boss. Knowing the risk such a decision entails, Mike tries to discourage Iris, but eventually agrees to the proposal. Thanks to Iris, Mike and KPD learn that the Russian Mob are in cahoots with the Aryan Brotherhood. Konstantin’s retaliation for Bunny’s hit takes a heavy toll, as Bunny’s cousin, Rhonda, is killed by the Bratva gunman. As the situation continues to deteriorate, Mike finds himself in a precarious position to broker peace. 

A bus full of Russian women, whom Konstantin invited to Kingstown, gets thrown off of a bridge by a skeletal crew, resulting in a horrendous tragedy. On Ian’s suggestion, Mike nearly considers Bunny the possible culprit and confronts him, but he denies being involved and gets dismayed by Mike’s sense of judgment. 

Amidst all this, DA Evelyn continues her quest to expose the corruption in KPD as she once again targets Robert, whose unsupervised abuse of power is no longer a secret. This results in growing mistrust between her and Mike, whose moral compass is much more flexible than hers. Evelyn’s investigation prompts her to take a closer look at Robert’s good friend Detective Ian Ferguson, and his association with the psychotic serial killer, Charlie. As shown in the second season, Ian had brought Charlie to threaten the whistleblower, former SWAT team member Ben Morrissey, who was going to testify against Sawyer in court. However, Charlie attacked Morrissey and murdered him, effectively halting Evelyn’s investigation back then. Now Evelyn is determined to dig into the possible connection, and Ian realizes a mentally unstable Charlie is too unreliable to keep his past a secret. He kills Charlie after the serial killer nearly ends up spilling the beans and covers up the incident as an act of self-defense. Evelyn puts pressure on Ian, and in his panicked state, he denies accountability even before being accused of crimes, thereby nearly implicating himself. Robert and Ian meet with Mike and persuade him to have Evelyn removed from the equation, but Mike shows his allegiance by threatening them with consequences if Evelyn is harmed in any way. 

Bunny orchestrates a bombing in the prison to take down Callahan and avenge Rhonda, but the Aryan leader somehow survives the attack. Mike, well aware of Bunny’s role in the bombing, decides to pit the Aryans and the Russians against each other by approaching Merle and blaming Konstantin for the attack. Mike offers Bunny the chance to take down two of his enemies in exchange for his cooperation. On the other hand, as the tragedy of the bus incident gets to Iris, Konstantin offers her a chance to escape all this and walk away to start a life anew, but unwilling to take any favors from the mobster and get herself entangled in more trouble, Iris refuses. Konstantin’s hedonistic lifestyle prompts Iris to relapse to ill habits of her past. Mike and Bunny hatch a plan to have a hospitalized Callahan taken down with the help of Bunny’s right-hand man, Raphael, but the plan fails as Callahan escapes before Raphael is able to get to him. Callahan is found by police and detained. 

The narrative focus shifts to Warden Kareem, whose personal and professional life spiraled out of control over the third season. PTSD from a prison riot messing up his mind and a broken marriage, coupled with the financial pressure of paying for expensive therapy for his child—Kareem is truly out of luck throughout the season. His efforts to maintain a disciplined prison system were foiled by Mike and KPD long ago, but the biggest blow to his professional life comes during the prison bombing. The authorities throw Kareem under the bus for mismanagement, and upon investigating on his own, Kareem learns Kevin, his subordinate who looked up to him, was the mole in the system who helped Bunny orchestrate the bombing. Despite having every reason to expose him, Kareem chooses not to report Kevin so as to not rob him of his future and shares advice with him that he shouldn’t trust crooks like Bunny. Knowing termination of his job will ruin his family, Kareem makes a supreme sacrifice for his family by allowing himself to be killed by Aryan Brotherhood prison inmates, thereby ensuring that after his demise on duty, his family will continue to get financial aid from the system. 

Mike sets up a plan to have the Russians ambushed by Bunny’s crew when Milo announces his return to Kingstown by torturing Konstantin’s right-hand man, Roman, to death. Viewers shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Milo survived the boat bombing, given Tatiana spoke with him in the final moments of the second season. Despite Milo’s threat looming larger, Mike decides to continue with the ambush plan anyway, which nearly results in a disaster as Crips and Bratva engage with each other on a bridge in the presence of civilians, even before reaching the rendezvous spot, which was set up to minimize collateral damage. A three-way gunfight ensues among the SWAT team, Bunny’s crew, and Bratva, where most of the Russian Mob are eliminated. Sawyer nearly ends up killing an innocent civilian, mistaking him for a gang member, and Kyle stops him by directly shooting at the crooked sergeant. Sawyer survives, and Kyle is taken into custody on charges of attempted murder of his senior officer. 

Milo pays a visit to Konstantin and Iris in their yacht and calls Mike, with the intention of brokering a new deal with him as he seeks to take over Kingstown. It is further revealed that Milo was pulling the strings from the dark, as he orchestrated the funeral bombing and bus drowning incident. Konstantin learns that Iris is acting as Mike’s informant, and to torture Iris, a sadistic Milo forces her to kill Konstantin, which takes a severe toll on her mental health. As Ian’s timely arrival results in all the Russian thugs getting eliminated outside the yacht, Mike overpowers Milo and sends Iris off with Ian. Even though she doesn’t seem to be interested in leaving town, Mike insists she go, not knowing the internal struggle she is facing in light of recent events. As Iris boards a bus and leaves Kingstown, she takes drugs and is later found by the bus conductor to have overdosed and died. 

Milo didn’t want to go back to prison, and he started provoking Mike by mentioning his mother, Mariam’s death, and blaming it on him. Mike guns Milo down and gets rid of his gun to hide the evidence. Later on, he learns about the bridge shootout and Kyle’s actions and tries to convince Evelyn to help him to keep his brother from going to prison, to no avail. 

As Mayor of Kingstown season 3 ends, Mike has a new challenge in front of him already: to help his brother so that he doesn’t get subjected to the same fate as he did years ago and save him from the all-corrupting, cursed prison town.