Tulsa King Season 4 Is Here: Stallone's Cane, a Fight for Legitimacy — and Season 5 Is Already Headed to New York

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2026

Dwight “The General” Manfredi is back — and this time he is carrying a cane. Tulsa King returned to Paramount+ on Friday, October 16, opening its fourth season with “W.W.D.D.” and the show's most personal season setup yet: an aging New York mobster, exiled to Oklahoma a quarter-century after prison, trying to turn a criminal empire into something legitimate before the past, the politicians and his own body finish the argument for him. Ten episodes will roll out weekly on Fridays, closing with the finale on December 18, per the Radio Times schedule. Episode 2, “Blind Rooster,” lands October 23.

The official logline for the season, carried by Paramount+ and People, is blunt about the stakes: Dwight “fights to legitimize his empire and protect his crew as corrupt politicians, dangerous new enemies, and a crushing personal loss hit from every direction.” It is the natural endgame of the premise Taylor Sheridan launched in 2022, when Manfredi walked out of prison after 25 years and was rewarded for his silence with a one-way ticket to Tulsa. Four seasons on, the exile has built the empire. Season 4 asks what it costs to keep it — and whether a man like Dwight can ever actually go straight without the going-straight killing somebody.

The cane: a real surgery becomes a plot device

The detail everyone will be talking about is the cane — ornate, silver-topped, and unmistakably a statement. It is not, Stallone wants you to know, a sign that the 80-year-old star needs help playing the formidable Manfredi. He told USA Today that he briefly used a cane while recovering from spinal fusion surgery and decided to work the real-life experience into the show. “I don't have a cane now or anything. It was required for a while,” he said. “And I thought, 'Whoa, I got a feeling this could be a plot device, and I'm going to use it.' Since people have seen me with it, I'm going to make a reason. You'll see how it comes into play this season.”

On screen, the explanation is pure Manfredi: an old stab wound from his prison days that occasionally flares up. It is an elegant piece of writing-by-necessity — a vulnerability that doubles as a weapon, because the cane's weighty, jagged edge carries, as USA Today dryly noted, the very real possibility of whacking someone with it. For a series that has always been about what age does to a certain kind of American tough guy, Season 4 simply stopped pretending the question was metaphorical. The General is 80. So is the man playing him. The show is better for letting both facts into the room.

New faces, old enemies

The season's biggest addition is Gretchen Mol, who joins as a series regular playing Amanda Clark — a Tulsa politician, identified in premiere coverage as the state's lieutenant governor, which puts her squarely in the “corrupt politicians” half of the logline and directly in Dwight's path as he hunts for legitimacy. Around her, the established ensemble returns: Martin Starr as Bodhi, Jay Will as Tyson, Garrett Hedlund as Mitch Keller and Dana Delany as Margaret Devereaux, with Frank Grillo's Kansas City boss Bill Bevilaqua and Neal McDonough's Cal Thresher among the dangerous men circling the operation. James Russo's New York gangster “Quiet Ray” Renzetti remains in the mix as well — a thread that matters more with every episode, for reasons the renewal news makes obvious.

Behind the camera, there is a changing of the guard, too: Decider reports that Season 3 showrunner Dave Erickson has exited, with Season 1 showrunner Terence Winter — of The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire — returning as head writer and executive producer. And Stallone, in a September appearance on The New York Times podcast The Interview, quoted by People, sounded genuinely grateful for the role — he called doing Tulsa King a gift and credited executive producer David C. Glasser with giving him a whole new character at this stage of his career.

Season 5 is already renewed — and it leaves Tulsa

Most shows premiere a season and then sweat the renewal. Tulsa King did it backwards. Paramount+ announced the Season 5 renewal on Monday, October 5 — eleven days before Season 4 even premiered — and the pickup comes with a relocation that rewrites the show's premise: production will move from Atlanta to New York, to coincide with a storyline that returns Dwight to his mafia roots, with production already underway. Drew Brown, EVP of Physical Production at Paramount Television Studios, said in the announcement that the studio was thrilled to bring fans more of the series and to be “shooting the next season of Tulsa King in New York, where Dwight Manfredi's story will continue to evolve.” Parade noted the show will be the first Taylor Sheridan series to film a season in New York City.

Season 5 also expands the family, literally: Scarlet Rose Stallone, who has played Spencer across all four seasons, is promoted to series regular, joined by new regulars Erik Palladino, Glenn Fleshler, Anthony Skordi and Nickola Shreli. And the universe grows again the very day Season 4 ends: the spinoff Frisco King, starring Samuel L. Jackson as New Orleans gangster Russell Lee Washington Jr. building an operation in suburban Frisco, Texas, premieres December 18 on Paramount+ with a two-episode debut, per Radio Times and People — the same Friday as the Tulsa King finale. Stallone will guest in the spinoff's early episodes. For a franchise that started as one man's exile, that is a remarkable footprint: two series, five seasons, and a king finally headed home. Catch up on the weekend's other big streaming premieres in Previously's coverage of The Diplomat Season 4 and the Netflix weekend lineup, and browse more series in Previously's catalog.