'Mayor of Kingstown' Episode 2 Recap: Two Major Twists Send Shockwaves

You can always count on Mayor of Kingstown to deliver a jolt, but Episode 2, entitled, "Staring at the Devil," is the most shocking installment of the series to date. (That's saying a lot. Remember the Season 1 premiere?) Written by co-creator Taylor Sheridan and directed by frequent helmer Stephen Kay, this week's installment doesn't let up. Jeremy Renner is at his best in an ambitious, extremely well-crafted diplomatic centerpiece involving all four gangs that oozes dramatic irony. Then, in a one-two punch, a major character makes a stunning decision that will, no doubt, ricochet throughout the remaining 8 episodes of the season.

Most impressively, though, Episode 2 wraps with a three-pronged exploration of violence and trauma, spotlighting the sad futility of so much personal and institutional reform.

Warning: Spoilers ahead for Mayor of Kingstown Season 2, Episode 2

"Wars Inside Means War On the Outside"

The episode opens with a Tent City after dark special. A group of inmates pummel a lone inmate to death with a pillowcase stuffed with rocks. In voiceover, Mike (Renner) repeats this season's mantra, "Wars inside means war on the outside," and we see the wisdom of that statement immediately. The Crips shoot up a Blood traphouse, killing innocent women and children. The prison war has migrated to the streets. 

Mike hears the gunfire from his sailboat in the middle of the lake, and it's like the Bat-Signal has summoned him. He drops Iris (Emma Laird) off at his mother's house for safekeeping, and the scene makes for a fraught, but warm-hearted reunion between Mike and Kyle (Taylor Handley). The latter didn't know that Mike had found Iris after the whole Witness Protection fiasco/triple homicide last season, and, anyways, he's never actually met Iris. Miriam (Dianne Wiest) saves the day, insisting that their "guest" be shown to the extra bedroom. 

Mike does a walkthrough of the traphouse massacre with Ian (Hugh Dillon) and Stevie (Derek Webster). Ian spits an all-timer "Don't throw up on my crime scene" at one weak-stomached officer. Around 36 Blood affiliates were killed in the shootout. Most of the Crip shooters got away, but one was mortally wounded. Before dying, he tells Mike that the Bloods have joined up with the Whites, and the Crips with the Mexicans. The scary part? Nobody ordered the traphouse hit. Gangs are committing random, unsanctioned atrocities. 

Mike the Mediator

The day after the massacre, Bunny's put Mario's Cell Phone Repair, his new base of operations, on lockdown. Mike has to chuck a bottle onto the roof of the building to get his attention. It's one of those resonant little details Taylor Sheridan is so good at scripting. The bottle-throw is ridiculous, yes. But it's also emblematic of the breakdown in communication that's occurred throughout Mike's network, and that's made his job as the de facto mayor so necessary — and so impossible.

Bunny (the incomparable Tobi Bamtefa) didn't order the shootout. In fact, he blames the law for the massacre. Lax prison guards have looked the other way while inmates fight to the death in Tent City, sparking wars in the streets. If things continue boiling over, the National Guard will post up in Kingstown, and that's bad for business. Mike reluctantly agrees to mediate a truce between the law and the gangs, warning Bunny that his plan will "sting." But Bunny trusts him. 

What's Mike's brilliant idea? Charge all four gang leaders with felony firearm possession (a 10-year sentence), which will land them in Tent City. Once inside, they'll choose new inmate leadership to stabilize the prison, and the charges against them will be dropped. It's an insane plan, but, like Bunny, Assistant DA Evelyn (Necar Zadegan) is trusting Mike on this one. Drastic times and whatnot. 

The Kingstown Accords

Mike recruits Kareem (Michael Beach) to the mission because he's the new, albeit temporary, prison warden. The guards must restore order in the yard again, so Mike needs the warden in on the peace talks. While he has been a friend to Mike, we're getting hints that Kareem isn't fit to run the prison. Last episode, Kareem beat his inmate assailants to death, and now he tells Mike, "I lived [through the riot]. I wouldn't say I survived." It's clear that he's suffering from PTSD, but then so is everyone in Kingstown. Mike declares that he doesn't "talk to anyone" in the therapeutic sense because it wouldn't be of any use: "I got nothing to lose."

The great Kingstown Peace Summit is held in a dusty lot outside some abandoned warehouse. It's an astonishing, 6-minute-long scene dripping with suspense. Bunny is the first to arrive, representing the Crips. The interim leader of the Whites has traveled from Grand Rapids (Mike killed the previous leader, Duke, last season), and the Bloods and the Mexicans arrive together. Evelyn and the cops push in and arrest the gang leaders, with Mike vowing that as soon as peace is restored, the charges against them will be dropped and they'll be released. "Ice cold, Mike," a betrayed Bunny says as he's handcuffed. This could be the end of a beautiful friendship. 

After the deed is done, Mike goes to collect Iris from Miriam's house, but she's escaped through the window. Every step forward is two steps back for Mike McLusky.

The Cycle of Trauma

The final three beats of the episode share some depressing DNA, and hint toward what's shaping up to be the main thematic current of Season 2: The futility of personal and institutional reform, especially when trauma is involved. 

Take Kyle, for instance. His devil-may-care partner Morass (Michael Gaston) is shot and killed during a routine traffic stop. Kyle returns fire, killing the driver and passenger, but leaving the baby boy in the backseat unharmed. Kyle thought he could escape these kinds of horrors by leaving Kingstown, but tragedy has followed him. 

Iris is trapped in a similar cycle of trauma and, maybe for valid reasons (more on that in a moment), she decides to stop fighting it. We see her enter an Orthodox Church and head to a monastic basement apartment. There, Russian mob boss and Kingstown prison escapee Milo Sunter (played by the always-excellent Aidan Gillen), sits at a laptop. It's the kind of banal villain return that sends shivers down the spine because it's so soft-spoken. Iris begs Milo to take her back: "I have nowhere to go. I have no home. Please." He holds out a hand and she sits on the floor beside him, resting her head in his lap just as she did with Mike in Season 1. "You're home now," Milo responds tenderly. 

It's an unnerving twist with wild implications and a host of questions attached to it. (How did she know where Milo would be hiding?) The biggest unknown: Why did Iris return to Milo? A few theories:

• Milo actually is Iris's only home. Maybe belonging is what she really seeks, and the anonymity and isolation of Witness Protection was never what she wanted. 
• But, obviously, Iris did at one point genuinely want to flee Milo's grasp. She had Mike remove her tracker, and she sold Milo out to the Feds. Maybe she wholeheartedly believed that an escaped Milo would hunt her down and kill her, and she's banking on his mercy by crawling back to him. 
• Iris could be protecting both herself and Mike by returning to Milo. She heard loud and clear that her presence put all the McLuskys at risk. Plus, when Mike warned that Milo would find her if she stayed in Kingstown, she responded, "Same goes for you." Maybe Iris is hoping that Milo will call a truce with Mike now that she's returned. 

Still, what happens now that Iris is presumably back on Team Milo? Won't she be used as a pawn in his game again? If Mike tried to vanquish Milo once and for all, would Iris stand in his way? If she views Milo as her only "home," then, yes, she probably would thwart Mike. 

But Iris isn't Mike's only problem. In the final moments of the episode, the gang leaders make their grand arrival via bus at Tent City, where the inmates greet them with a mix of jeers and cheers. Bunny, who's swapped his customary blue puffer jacket for a prison jumpsuit, walks through the crowd and issues a chilling warning: "I guess ya'll must not pray to God. Cuz if you did, ya'll wouldn't be staring at the devil." (Title drop!) 

Could we see a dark Bunny sometime this season? Maybe. We've never gotten his backstory, and you don't end up leading a gang, and a sophisticated drug operation, without stepping on a lot of heads first.

New episodes of Mayor of Kingstown stream Sundays exclusively on Paramount+

READ MORE: Where is 'Mayor of Kingstown' Filmed? Inside the Crime Drama's Abandoned Prisons and Picturesque Lakes