Warning: Some SPOILERS lie ahead for Mayor of Kingstown season 3!
Summary
Kareem is finally getting some semblance of power, but learns of the dangers that come with it, inMayor of Kingstownseason 3. Portrayed by Michael Beach (Sons of Anarchy, Aquaman), Kareem was first introduced in season 1 of the Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon show as the leader of the titular prison’s guards who gets caught up in the deadly riot. While season 2 saw him grappling with the PTSD of the riot, it also saw Kareem appointed interim warden, with which he begins slowly enacting his own plans for the prison.
Mayor of Kingstownseason 3 picks upsome time after the events of the season 2 finale, with Kareem now fully promoted to being the Kingstown warden. While some of the trauma still lingers from the season 1 riot, he finds himself distracted by trying to implement positive change into the Kingstown prison system, which involves largely ignoring Mike’s various plans of trying to keep the peace. Despite his efforts, Kareem still finds himself entangled in Mike’s world, particularly with the arrival of AB leader, Callahan, after his transfer from Anchor Bay stirs up more tension with Mike and the other gangs.
Mayor Of Kingstown Season 3 Review: Jeremy Renner Is Brilliant In Compelling, Action-Packed Crime Thriller
Mayor of Kingstown season 3 gets off to an explosive start, with Renner in top form, but the tension has begun to stagnate thanks to Mike’s heroics.
Alongside Beach, theensembleMayor of Kingstownseason 3 castsees the returns of Jeremy Renner as Mike, Hugh Dillon, Taylor Handley, Emma Laird, Tobi Bamtefa, Derek Webster, Nishi Munshi, and Hamish Allan-Headley. Raising the stakes even further for its characters while laying some emotional groundwork for everyone, Dillon and Taylor Sheridan’s crime thriller remains in top form.
With the season a little over halfway through,Screen Rantinterviewed Michael Beach to discussMayor of Kingstownseason 3, Kareem’s efforts to break free from the town’s corruption in the prison, how the final few episodes will expand on his family life, what to expect from hisTulsa Kingseason 2 return, and his thoughts on a potentialDead Boy Detectivesseason 2.
Kareem Knows “There’s No Way He’s Ever Going To Win” In Season 3
With his own past as a guard when Mike was in prison, Beach feels that part of Kareem’s decision to move away from the Mayor’s plans comes from knowing the McLusky brother is “a guy who is just making deals”. Despite his better efforts to correct the system, though, Beach acknowledges that even Kareem’s aware “there’s no way he’s ever going to win”, but that he is going to keep trying regardless:
Michael Beach: I think it’s good, because obviously, in the show, there’s not many people that don’t just do whatever Mike says. Everybody, they may argue about it, but then they go, “Okay.” And ultimately, Kareem has known Mike for a long time, since when he was a prisoner, and I think he sees him more in line with what he is, which is a guy who is just making deals, but these deals aren’t really making things better. Kareem is just trying to go back to how things are supposed to be run, the original idea of what prison and correctional responsibility was supposed to be. Of course, there’s no way he’s ever going to win, but that’s what he’s trying to do.
Because if you notice that in the first season, Kareem, obviously he’s been around, so he’s aware of all the corruption and how the deals are made and all of this stuff, but he kind of kept himself separate from that. Not that he wasn’t for it, and he wasn’t doing anything to prevent it, he just wasn’t getting involved, and his life was much better. He had a great home life, and he was able to contain what was happening in the prison and prevent it from getting inside of him. And then, obviously, with the riot, that just changed everything in his life, and he’s just trying to hold on now. It’s tragic, really. It really is. Yeah, that’s the thing about the show.
Obviously, Mike is the central figure and the audience loves Mike, so it doesn’t matter, and of course, Jeremy’s performance is so amazing, that you’re just magnetized by him. So, anybody who’s going against him is considered the bad guy, or “What the hell are you doing? You need Mike. Tell Mike, Mike will fix it. Mike will do this, Mike will do that.” But as far as Kareem is concerned — because, it’s like the idea of “show me the good that he’s doing, show me the lives that he’s saving, because all I see is death and destruction.”
There may be people that obviously, audience-wise, are like, “Oh, you like this guy,” or “You like her, so he saved her, and he saved him, but he’s dead, and he’s dead and this guy’s dead and that guy’s dead.” People are dying everywhere, all over the place, and so one of his lines is like, “What lives is he saving?” And I think that’s part of the big, big problem that Kareem is up against.
Kareem Will Never Leave Kingstown (& It May Prove Troublesome For His Family)
With so much trauma stemming from his work and the town, it’s understandable to wonder how Kareem’s family life is being affected. Beach confirms that the remaining episodes ofMayor of Kingstownseason 3 will touch upon this, but also indicates that his character has no intention of leaving Kingstown, in part due to the benefits that come with his job, as well as the feeling that everyone “is kind of stuck there”:
Michael Beach: Yeah, there’s going to be [more of that] in the next few episodes, obviously, but there are four left. It’s going to kind of tie that in on how it is affecting his home life, and how important that is to him, and how it’s coloring his decisions. We’re going to see more of that, yeah. Well, I mean, if you go by what you know, where in the country is the prison system going to be better or different? I think it’s like a lot of people in the world, but particularly in this country, is that somebody says, “Oh, well, if you don’t like what’s happening, why don’t you just move to another place out of the country or just choose to do something else?”
And I guess, ultimately, you could, but it’s a lot more difficult than just saying it, especially if it’s the thing that you know. With Kareem, it’s all the benefits that he gets now. I don’t know exactly what would happen with him if he just quit, up and left and did something else, and if he could go somewhere else and have the kind of control that he has now — or apparent control. I think everybody in Kingstown is kind of stuck there. They don’t know anything else, they don’t know how to move on. And when you look at society as a whole, I think most people, percentage-wise, kind of stay where they grow up, they stay where they start. It’s not a huge percentage that move on to other places and get involved in other aspects of a professional life or a personal life.
Kareem Isn’t Aware Of Bunny’s Inside Man (But For A Good Reason)
One of the bigger aspects of Kareem’sMayor of Kingstownseason 3 storyline has been his relationship with new prison guard Kevin, a seemingly straight-laced local trying to do good, though is revealed to be Bunny’s inside man. When asked whether Kareem is aware of this, Beach confirms his character doesn’t know about Kevin’s dual alliances, which he says comes from his hope to believe Kevin and the other new guards “will come in and help him change the system”:
Michael Beach: Well, it’s interesting because I think everybody in the prison life knows that guards are being used by the ABs, by the Crips, by the Bloods, by the Mexicans or Hispanic-affiliated groups. Maybe not all of them, but a huge percentage of them are being paid off and used by other gangs, other factions, and I think Kareem knows that, but I don’t think he knows that that’s happening in this case. I think, somewhere deep inside of him, he hoped that there are — that’s why he got all these new rookies — people that will come in and help him change the system back to what it should be, because they’re not deeply embroidered in it yet.
So, if he gives them attention, if he tells them, “Swing by my office, whatever you need,” he wants to try to keep them on the straight and narrow, so that it will be easier for him and for the whole system to start to change. I think even Kareem knows he’s trying to push a million-ton boulder up a mountain, but he’s giving it a shot, and he’s got these forces from all over the place, including Mike, who is obviously one of the strongest forces that is preventing him from doing this.
Mitch’sTulsa KingSeason 2 Return Will Bring A Lot Of Tension
Mayor of Kingstownisn’t the only Sheridan-created show Beach is a part of, as he holds a recurring role in fellow Paramount+ crime dramaTulsa Kingas Tyson’s father, Mark. In looking to the future of that show, Beach confirmed thatTulsa Kingseason 2is “almost at the end” of filming, and teases that Tyson’s struggling loyalty between his father and Sylvester Stallone’s Dwight will be a major theme of the next chapter:
Michael Beach: Yeah, there’s quite a bit of that going on. We’re almost at the end of season 2 now filming it. So yeah, I’m back there as Mitch, oddly, as Mike’s brother Mitch. [Laughs] Mark Mitchell on Tulsa King, his name is Mark. And yeah, the battle between who Tyson is going to become is a big theme in season 2. So the battle between Dwight’s character and Mark’s character and his son Tyson being right in the middle, and which way is he going to go and why? And based on the events that happened throughout the season, you start to see where Tyson starts to go and why. It’s pretty cool, yeah.
One of Beach’s other recent recurring roles was inNetflix’sSandmanspinoffDead Boy Detectives, starring as magic shop owner Tragic Mick. When asked about the possibility of his season 2 return, he acknowledged having no information about whether the next season is moving forward at the streamer, but did pitch his idea for a Tragic Mick-focused episode:
Michael Beach: You know what, I don’t know anything about that. I let that get worked out by people who are much smarter than I am. I would love to go back because he’s such a unique, interesting character and the idea of playing a man who used to be a walrus and who was doing everything he can to get back to that, it was a lot of fun. For me, the kind of stuff I normally do, it was a unique experience. I wouldn’t mind actually going home with him and seeing what his home life is.
And obviously, his name is Tragic Mick, so it’s not like he’s going to go home and turn on some TV and start laughing, but I would really like to see him at home and get to get a little bit more in depth as to why he — hates is a strong word, but why he longs to go back to the sea and how obviously I would assume that he lives by himself, that he has nothing, that he’s just — It’s almost like there’s a mini-place in his apartment, I assume he’d have an apartment, like his shop where he has all these other potions and concoctions.
Because that’s why his shop exists, because for the last 200 years he’s been trying to find a way to reverse the spell that was put on him so that he could become a walrus again and join his family in the sea. So I can imagine that everywhere you go in his apartment, there are these other things that he hasn’t quite put in his shop yet because they haven’t been tested or whatever. And it just is something about that I think would really give you more insight into the character.
Netflix’sThe Perfect CoupleWill Be “A Lot Of Fun”
Another major project Beach has on the horizon is Netflix’sThe Perfect Couple, which revolves around a rich novelist and her family preparing for her daughter’s wedding, only for it to be upended by the sudden appearance of a body, with Beach portraying the chief of police investigating the case. While he can’t share much about the story, he does tease it will be “a lot of fun” for fans of the murder mystery genre:
Michael Beach: Well, I have something coming out on Netflix. I don’t know exactly when yet, but it’s a really cool limited series called The Perfect Couple, and it’s got Nicole Kidman and Liev Schreiber and a bunch of beautiful, amazing young talents, and it was a lot of fun. It’s kind of like a murder mystery-type thing, but I don’t know what their plans are yet. I’m hoping to find out soon and hope to get into talking a lot more about that, too. Well, I mean it’s out on IMDb and everything, but it’s basically about a young woman who gets murdered, and the whole show is about, “How did this happen?” So, a lot of the stuff is done in flashbacks and stuff, and my character is the chief of police, so he’s involved in a lot of the investigations going on.
AboutMayor of KingstownSeason 3
In season three, a series of explosions rock Kingstown and its citizens, as a new face of the Russian mob sets up shop in the city, and a drug war rages inside and outside prison walls. The pressure is on Mike McLusky (Renner) to end the war, but things get complicated when a familiar face from his incarcerated past threatens to undermine the Mayor’s attempts to keep the peace among all factions.
In addition to Renner, MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN stars an impressive ensemble cast, including series regulars Hugh Dillon, Taylor Handley, Emma Laird, Tobi Bamtefa, Derek Webster, Nishi Munshi, Hamish Allan-Headley and Michael Beach.
Mayor of Kingstown
Cast
Mayor of Kingstown, released in 2021, is a crime thriller series set in a small Michigan town where the McClusky family wields influence among police, criminals, and politicians. As power brokers, they navigate the complexities of a community reliant on the business of incarceration.
