Taylor Sheridan's Most Underappreciated Show Is Officially Ending After One More Season

Taylor Sheridan has created some of the best Western series in TV history, but his work in this genre has overshadowed the fact that he has also created one of the most underappreciated crime thrillers on TV, which has now been renewed for a final season. Virtually single-handedly reviving the Western genre is an impressive achievement, but despite great success with his sprawling worldbuilding and character-driven stories, like the saga of Yellowstone's Dutton family, Taylor Sheridan's best TV show is not a Western at all, and it deserves more attention.

Mayor of Kingstown might not be a Western, and it has a very different tone from most of Taylor Sheridan's TV shows, but it incorporates similar themes to a typical Western, with the central McLusky family asking as lawmakers and mediators, who make their own justice in a town with very little. Set in the fictional company town of Kingston, Michigan, the show is gritty, violent, and extremely timely, focusing on the business side of the American prison system through a cast of morally complex characters played by some of the best character actors working today.

Mayor Of Kingstown's Rotten Tomatoes Scores Vary Wildly

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Sheridan created Mayor of Kingstown shortly after striking gold with Yellowstone, but it is only relatively recently that the show has begun gaining traction, going from strength to strength after a very uneven start. Mayor of Kingstown initially polarized audiences and critics, with Rotten Tomatoes audiences rating the show's first season as even more successful than Yellowstone, giving it an 86% positive rating compared to the groundbreaking Western's 82%. On the other hand, critics felt that the show's gritty tone overshadowed everything, including the characters, offering viewers few people to care about.

This rather depressing observation was not to last, though, as Mayor of Kingstown began to win over critics. Virtually every element of the show had been tightened up by the third season, bringing in complex power struggles, characters to root for, and excellent performances from Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Aiden Gillen (Game of Thrones.) While audiences were slightly less impressed, with the third season's rating dropping to 80%, the series' most recent season saw a dramatic change, with reviews of Mayor of Kingstown season 4 calling its improvement "truly astounding."

Season 4 of Mayor of Kingstown has a 100% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating, which not only sets a record for the series but is a testament to how much its quality has improved. With Mike McLusky's grip on the town beginning to falter as powerful enemies step in, this introduces some of the show's darkest storylines yet. However, unlike season 1, there is more to Mayor of Kingstown than gritty gloom. Instead, the series is a masterclass in tension and character writing, with fleeting moments from past seasons becoming disturbingly significant, setting up the final season and its inevitable showdown.

Mayor Of Kingstown Is Right To End With Season 5

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While Taylor Sheridan had planned to make seven seasons of his crime drama, some fans may feel that Mayor of Kingstown will have a disappointing ending due to the show's abrupt cancelation, which will happen after season 5. Instead of the ten-episode run as seen in the previous four seasons, the final season of Mayor of Kingstown will have eight episodes, which is also a potentially unpopular creative choice. That said, it is not necessarily a bad decision to end the show here, as season 4 reached such a strong peak that an earlier ending could avoid a possible slump.

With the drama reaching its most exciting point yet, this leaves Mayor of Kingstown in an interesting position. After such a divisive start, ending the story on a high note would be the perfect way to cement the show among the greatest crime dramas of all time, while renewing it and risking a mediocre few following seasons could see the show losing all the progress it made. Even so, Taylor Sheridan is known for expanding his shows' worlds, so Mayor of Kingstown could still return in a new way, depending on who is left alive by the end of it.

Release Date November 14, 2021

Network Paramount+

Showrunner Dave Erickson

Directors Stephen Kay, Guy Ferland, Christoph Schrewe, Clark Johnson, Paul Cameron, Tasha Smith, Taylor Sheridan

Writers James Arcega Tinsley