The Devil is Us

Season

1

Episode

8

Air date

December 26, 2021

Writer

Taylor Sheridan

Director

Clark Johnson

Episode guide
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Along Came a Spider	The Lie of the Truth

The Devil is Us is the eight episode of the Paramount+ series, Mayor of Kingstown^[1]. It aired on December 26, 2021.

Synopsis[]

Kyle and Kingstown PD try to make sense of the crime scene. Mike takes matters into his own hands. Sam makes a costly mistake.'^[1]

Plot[]

The police have joined Mike in the field to uncover the metal box that Milo directed him to dig up. As it turns out, it is not a box, but rather an entire school bus, buried whole under the ground. Ian and Kyle go inside the bus only to discover 26 bodies suspended from the ceiling. The police abandon the crime scene, retching, and say they'll do their initial investigation at the morgue.

Meanwhile, Iris, lays out on a bed in some house.

As the police and DA decide what to do about the situation, they make plans to push forward with charging Milo for his involvement with whatever happened on the bus. Mike isn't sure that the bus is the metal box he was supposed to find and thinks he's being set up somehow. Thus, he decides to pay a visit to Milo's lawyer so as to put pressure on him to figure out what Milo's up to.

After accosting the lawyer, Mike meets up with Rebecca at their old office, which is now the scene of multiple homicides, so she can take him to their new office across the street. Mike resigns himself to the new space, but takes it as a metaphor for the inability to escape his past and the entire city of Kingstown. While he deals with his inescapable bad fate, Ed calls to tell Mike that rival gangs are meeting in the prison yard, which means they must be planning something for the guards. He asks Mike to take the temperature from the outside.

Mike meets with Bunny to see if the peace brokered at the prison is real. Bunny puts on a good front, telling Mike that everything's good, but as Mike walks away Bunny drops his air of nonchalance. Mike seems to be aware that this was all a façade and tries to meet up with Duke to see what other gangs might give away. Duke gives Mike the address of his house where he and his confederates have been holed up with Iris, who is now so broken from the trauma of repeated sexual assault that they need to drug her to stop her from crying.

At the women's prison, the inmate who's been eyeing the new guard reels in pain on her side. The new guard escorts her out of her cell to the infirmary, but in the stairwell she stands upright and drags the guard out of sight of the cameras for a secret sexual encounter. Initially the guard protests, but pretty easily gives in to the inmates desires and has sex with her.

With Iris compliant in her drugged-out state, Duke sells her to another gang who leaves just as Mike arrives at the house. In the driveway, Mike and the Duke share threats and Duke reveals that Mike used to run with his racist white gang in prison. Mike tells him that he knows that his gang is conspiring with the others to kill a guard and warns him what the repercussions will be; both for the inmates and for the gangs on the streets as well.

After the guard finishes having sex with the inmate in the women's prison, she stabs him in the neck repeatedly with a makeshift knife. She then crawls out of the stairwell screaming for help, seemingly trying to make it appear that she's survived an attack from the guard and that her killing was justified.

As Iris is driven away, the car is detoured into an area of a clearly rival gang. A van pulls up alongside and opens fire, killing everyone in Iris' van except for her. Mike gets a call from Bunny saying that they've found something that belongs to him. When Mike goes to collect Iris, he goes inside Bunny's place for the first time and sees it's filled with children and family. Bunny says he has something for the gang that did this to Iris, but Mike says he's got something for them too.

Mike drives to Duke's place and gets confirmation from Iris that this was the man responsible. Mike shoots him where he stands without a second thought, then enters the house and shoots everyone else, making good on his threats from earlier. He also steals a water bottle for Iris.

At the men's prison, a group of inmates pass a knife between them as they take their trays back after a meal. A couple of inmates jostle the guard who's keeping watch on the floor and then P-dog stabs him before passing the knife on again. Everyone involved washes their hands in dishwater before abandoning the knife. When the guard falls down, the prison goes into lockdown as other guards rush to his aid.

Mike takes Iris to his cabin in the woods, calling it a safe place for her. But Mike also tells her that no place will be safe as long as she has Milo's tracker embedded in her and he asks if she's comfortable with him removing it. Iris asks if he knows how to do this and Mike tells her that he's learned how from lack of options. Mike cuts into her hip and has to dig deep to remove the tracker with no way to numb the pain. Iris claims that, after what she's just been through, she's numb enough for it.

As they finish driving to the cabin, Iris jokes about this being a strange date before revealing that she's never been on a date. She shares in vague terms her past that led her to lose her faith in humanity. Mike tries to encourage her to not give up hope, and to not let these people take from her the desire to be loved or to have a date eventually. The two share a fleeting moment of joy as they drive through an area with no cell service, but Iris remarks that even this small joy will soon fade.