Mayor of Kingstown has never been gentle with its characters, but few storylines have hit as hard as Kyle McLusky’s descent this season.
Taylor Handley has always played Kyle with an earnest, open-hearted innocence — the youngest McLusky brother who wanted a normal life, a family, a way out.
But Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 has shoved him into the darkest corners of Kingstown’s machinery, and Handley is delivering the kind of raw, lived-in performance that makes the series as gripping as it is brutal.
Kyle has been in prison for four episodes now, and each one has carved another piece off him.
He walked in believing his six-month bid was doable — unpleasant, sure, but manageable. He genuinely thought he could survive, come home, and start fresh with Tracy and baby Mitch.
Instead, Kyle barely made it ten feet into the intake process before the prison reminded him exactly what it thinks of former cops: guards dragged him aside and beat him to a pulp before he even reached his cell.
And the violence hasn’t stopped. Threats, intimidation, more beatings — Kyle has been enduring a slow, grinding collapse ever since.
Things took a terrifying turn on Mayor of Kingstown Season 4 Episode 5, when Mike discovered who was residing in the cell next to Kyle’s — Arayan Brotherhood’s biggest bad, Merle Callahan.
The race was on not only to secure Kyle’s safety, but also that of his family, and to somehow get across to Kyle that the man he was beginning to trust was his worst enemy in a prison filled with them.
But with a new wardon who appears to have her own ax to grind, Mike’s efforts spun wildly, and now even the appearance of safety has proven to have little merit.
When I told Taylor Handley I was doing better than Kyle, he laughed — but only barely.
“At this point, I don’t know how he even continues,” Handley said. “There’s a certain drive in Kyle that’s second to none… It’s one conflict after the other, one threat after the other. It’s pure survival mode.”
Through all of it, Kyle has held onto the one thing that’s never changed: the McLusky bond. He may be angry at Mike, hurt by him, worn down by him, but that doesn’t erase decades of loyalty.
So when I asked Handley whether Kyle is beginning to resent Mike — especially now — he didn’t frame it as blame.
“You’d really think he’d start questioning his brother — and he does — but it’s complicated,” he said. “They’re all they have. Their mom’s gone, their brother’s gone… They’re the last of the brothers, and that bond makes not liking each other very complicated.”
And “Damned” is where the bottom drops out.
Mike finally learns that Merle Callahan, a powerful white supremacist with unfinished business, is being housed right next door to Kyle. Worse, Kyle sees him as a lifeline when he’s anything but — the grooming has begun, and Mike knows it.
Their conversation in the visitation booth is one of the most heartbreaking moments of the season. Kyle can barely breathe, his chest tight, his fear palpable. And then comes the question that guts both brothers.
“How did you survive it?”
Mike doesn’t answer. Not really. He just tells Kyle that he survived, and that “light is coming.”
Handley understood the weight of that line. “That’s the McClusky way,” he said.
“You suit up and show up. One foot in front of the other. If you can get through that day and go to sleep, hopefully you wake up and do it again.”
Except the minute Mike tries to intervene on Kyle’s behalf, everything backfires.
He begs the new warden to move Callahan out of Kyle’s range. She reluctantly agrees, playing Mike’s game, and then moves Kyle straight into GenPop — a former cop, surrounded and entirely alone.
It’s one of the cruellest power plays the show has ever pulled.
Handley took it in stride. “It’s just one thing after the other,” he said. “At that point, it’s moment by moment.”
That final shot — Kyle sitting rigidly on a cot, alone in a sea of hostile bodies — is the culmination of everything he’s endured over the past four episodes. He looks terrified. He seems hollowed out. He’s a man who’s beginning to realize that the light Mike promised may not come at all.
Handley credits the authenticity of the series for making these scenes so raw.
“The easy way would be he has some trouble, gets in a fight, makes it through, and they’re all reunited,” he said. “Not in Mayor of Kingstown. This is shit that probably really does happen.”
And that’s where Part One of our conversation should have ended — on Kyle’s unraveling and the horrifying place Episode 5 leaves him.
But then Handley said something that reframed everything.
“At the start of this journey… I was planning on quitting acting,” he told me. “I was at what I felt was the end of my career.
This show resurrected my 25-year career and resurrected my love for acting and filmmaking.”
It’s a beautiful, unexpected confession — and honestly, you’re going to want to hold onto the hope in it.
Handley is giving the performance of his career, bringing depths of emotion to Kyle that only he could. But if you think Kyle’s descent has been brutal so far, you haven’t seen anything yet.
We’ll have more of our conversation with Handley later in the season. For now, you’ll need to keep watching Mayor of Kingstown as he navigates the increasingly hostile waters of Archer Bay.
New episodes of Mayor of Kingstown drop Sundays only on Paramount+.
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