Is [Spoiler] Really Dead? Jeremy Renner Breaks Down Season 3 Premiere (VIDEO)

[Warning: The following post contains MAJOR spoilers about Mayor of Kingstown‘s Season 3 premiere episode, “Soldier’s Heart.”]

Out with the old, and in with the new? That sure seems to be the mantra of Paramount+’s crime drama Mayor of Kingstown in its Season 3 premiere… at least where the bad guys are concerned.

The episode officially resolves what’s become of Mariam McLusky (Dianne Wiest), as her sons bury her in a tearful ceremony. The death of Mariam will leave a void in the moral compass department for Mike, as Jeremy Renner told TV Insider, “He’s starting off this season with the loss of his mother, the anchor for him through a lot of it.” Plus, since her death came at the hands of his own brother (who accidentally shot her in a gunfire exchange with Milo’s men), Kyle (Taylor Handley), there’ll be some distance between them, too: “That’s one of those things where they kind of just bottle that up, ‘I shot mom, she died.’ It’s like how do we [deal with it]? He’s going to have to grieve that for a long time,” Renner said.

Meanwhile, though the episode doesn’t quite address what happened to Milo (Aidan Gillen) after the events of Season 2’s explosive finale, it does bring in some new scary figures in Constantine to try and take ownership of the town. Plus, the trailer for the new season assures the return of Merle Callahan (Richard Brake), the Aryan Brotherhood’s shot caller at Anchor Bay who was serving a life sentence.

Renner told TV Insider of the new threats Mike will face, “As we lose Milo, which was a huge force in the show, the new powerhouse steps in for him and creates a different whole different dynamic. Mike can kind of start fresh, pragmatically, tell him, ‘This is how it works in his town.’ … With new drama, there’s new baddies, so it forces Mike to probably be that much better, or that much more evil.”

One person who does stand to benefit from a changing of the guards, so to speak, is Iris (Emma Laird), who has lived under constant threat of Milo’s aggression ever since she first stepped foot in Kingstown.

“I think this is a time for a little bit more growth in all the main players in the show. There’s a lot more intimacy and shared safe landing spots,” Renner said. “There’s nice safe landing spots where you find out what Mike and Iris talk about, what do me and my brother talk about? Mom or his new baby? There are all of these beautiful [things], birth, rebirth … after a death there’s a birth. And Iris is kind of familial in that process in the beginning of this thing. And it’s kind of great to have a nice landing spot for her character.”

However, “that doesn’t last long,” Renner promises. “She’s never safe.”

Mayor of Kingstown, Season 3, Sundays, Paramount+