Spoilers for the Season 4 premiere of Mayor of Kingstown are ahead! If you aren’t caught up, you can stream it with a Paramount+ subscription, and then catch new episodes on Sundays.
Jeremy Renner’s Mike might be the Mayor of Kingstown, but in some ways, there’s a new mayor in town, as Edie Falco’s prison warden was introduced in Season 4’s premiere on the 2025 TV schedule. I say that because her character, Nina Hobbs, is not someone in Mike’s corner; in fact, she’s a pretty big adversary. So, I asked both Renner and Falco about how their characters’ tense first meeting impacts their stories for the rest of the season.
In the Season 4 premiere, Mike goes to meet Nina at her office right after she starts the job and right as his brother Kyle is going to prison. Immediately, it’s clear that they aren’t on the same page.
Renner’s character is throwing out orders left and right to “ensure” his brother has a “soft landing” when he gets behind bars. Then he tells Nina that if she helps him, he’ll reciprocate that. However, she’s not buying it and tells the mayor:
This is my castle now, and only I can lower the drawbridge.
That line hit hard, and while Mike played it cool, there’s no question that that shook him up a bit. He’s used to having all the power players under his control. So, I asked Renner about how that line forced his character to change his game. In response, he told me:
The beginning of that wonderful relationship. Yeah, it really kind of sets the tone for the entire season, doesn't it?
The Avengers actor went on to explain that, considering what happened at the end of Mayor of Kingstown Season 3, Mike is on a mission to protect his brother. Kyle is going to prison after shooting Robert, and he can’t do much about that. However, he can try to protect him. Nina is getting in his way, though. That frustrates Renner’s character, as he told me:
I think a lot of the writing was especially with, I think our characters was just so wonderfully strong and wonderfully written. I mean, I certainly – it was easy for me to kind of work off of Edie, because obviously, she's a tremendous artist. But also just because of how much it personally kind of pissed me off, too…I care so much and feel so much for – especially because that relationship with my brother and trying to protect him. And it was really pretty, quite intense for me.
It’s certainly intense to watch. It turns out that the word can be used to describe Nina’s feelings about this meeting with Mike, too. When I asked Falco, the newest A-lister to join a Taylor Sheridan show, about her character’s feelings after this interaction, she made it clear that Nina meant what she said. The Nurse Jackie actress explained:
I think she came in with the assumption that things would go the way she needs them to, because I think that's the way, you know, it has been up until this point. So I don't know if, I mean, I think she got certainly a flavor in the beginning that this might be a little more challenging than she had anticipated. But I think at that point, she was still pretty confident that she could do what she has always done, which was to turn it around, what was going on there in the prison.
She certainly means business, and it’s very clear that she won’t let Mike get in her way. However, it’s also obvious that he won’t be stopped either.
We knew we were already in for a wild ride this season because Kyle was headed to prison. It was promised that the past “reloads” on Mike, and it feels like this situation with his brother and the new warden could be a reason why that happens.
Now, to see how this conversation and relationship set the tone for the rest of Mayor of Kingstown’s newest season, you can stream new episodes every Sunday on Paramount+.
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