Mayor of Kingstown and Yellowstone are both part of Taylor Sheridan’s litany of TV shows — so it’s no wonder that viewers constantly ask if the two series are officially connected. After all, many of Sheridan’s programs exist within the same continuity as Yellowstone, and all of them are in the Paramount stable. But Jeremy Renner’s crime drama has a different style and tone from the Kevin Costner-led Western, creating a certain amount of confusion among audiences who’ve just come to expect shared universes and franchises.
Yellowstone has been a smash hit for Paramount Network, despite the recent news that it’s abruptly ending with Season 5. Audiences have loved the bold characters in the Dutton clan and the drama they face both on and off the ranch. Meanwhile, Mayor of Kingstown completed Season 2 on Paramount+ with Mike McLusky barely wrangling the corrupt city in the title. Both shows have the same big name attached and both deal with themes of family, but there are other commonalities.
Mayor of Kingstown’s Connection to Yellowstone
Taylor Sheridan’s name is the one most associated with Yellowstone, but some viewers might not know that he co-created the series with John Linson. Likewise, he isn’t the only person behind Mayor of Kingstown; he co-created that show alongside actor, musician and writer Hugh Dillon. That name should sound familiar to Yellowstone fans because Dillon appeared as Park County Sheriff Donnie Haskell in Seasons 1-4, but his association with Sheridan goes back much further than that.
The duo have known each other since 2008, when Sheridan was recurring as David Hale on Sons of Anarchy and Dillon was starring as Ed Lane in CTV’s underrated crime drama Flashpoint. Sheridan was also Dillon’s acting coach, and Dillon pitched the idea of a TV show based on his experiences growing up in Kingston, Ontario, Canada to his friend. As he told The Hollywood Reporter, “I grew up in a prison town that had nine penetentiaries.” Sheridan dug deeper into the idea, and started working on what would become Mayor of Kingstown well before he was a household name.
“He’d ask questions and he’d look shit up and go, ‘Fuck, this is crazy.’ So it exists, and that’s where I’m from,” Dillon recalled, adding that Mayor of Kingstown “was the first thing Taylor wrote, so it was always in his pocket.” The duo had Jeremy Renner and Dianne Wiest in mind for the roles of Mike and Mariam McLusky from the start, so when Renner was cast opposite Dillon in 2017’s Wind River, Sheridan took the opportunity to gauge his interest — and the rest is history.
Do Mayor of Kingstown and Yellowstone Take Place in the Same Universe?
The enormous success of Yellowstone has led to two prequels, a controversial spinoff starring Matthew McConaughey and even a Sheridan-produced reality TV show called The Last Cowboy. Given that and the common involvement of both Sheridan and Dillon, it’s easy to see where folks would think that Mayor of Kingstown is related to Yellowstone. However, Dillon also clarified to THR that the two series are absolutely not in the same universe. “They were always completely different things, and conceptually, [Mayor of Kingstown] was conceived first,” he said.
It’s hard to envision where the two series would cross over, anyway. While both have similar themes, their stories don’t have any place where they would naturally intersect. Their visual styles are as different as two TV shows can get, with Yellowstone featuring spacious landscapes and more colors that contrast Mayor of Kingstown’s dark scenes and urban streets. And of course, any shared universe would have to address the fact that Dillon has played significant roles on both series. Yet while they may not have the same continuity, they do have an interesting history that ties them together off-screen.
Mayor of Kingstown is streaming on Paramount+, while Yellowstone airs on Paramount Network and streams on Peacock.
