Dwight “The General” Manfredi has never had a quiet season, but Season 3 of Tulsa King is the first one that squeezes him from three directions at once. Sylvester Stallone‘s exiled New York capo spends the season balancing a federal agent who owns him, a New York crime boss who wants him back, and an all-out turf war over a hidden stash of 50-year-old bourbon worth an estimated $150 million. It is the most crowded chessboard the Taylor Sheridan series has ever put in front of him — and somehow the most fun.
The Feds Own Him Now
The season premiere, “Blood and Bourbon,” answers the Season 2 cliffhanger in its first minutes: the masked men who dragged Dwight out of Margaret’s house in the night were federal agents, and the man running them is Special Agent Musso (Kevin Pollak). Musso’s grudge is 25 years old. Ripple, the man Dwight killed and silently did a quarter-century in prison for, was Musso’s informant — and Dwight’s loyalty to the Invernizzi family torpedoed years of the agent’s work against them. Now Musso has the evidence to bury Dwight’s entire Tulsa operation, Margaret included, and his price is simple: Dwight works for him now. The General, who never talked in 25 years, spends the season as a government asset with a handler he despises — and he can’t tell his own crew why.
New York Comes Calling
While Musso leans on him from one side, the old world leans from the other. Dwight is summoned to New York for a sit-down with Quiet Ray Renzetti (James Russo), the powerful boss moving into the vacuum left by the fallen Invernizzis. Ray offers Dwight everything he was owed when he walked out of prison — a senior seat, his own operation, the respect he was denied. What Ray really wants is a piece of what Dwight built in Tulsa. Dwight refuses, politely and completely, and a man like Quiet Ray does not file rejection away quietly. The refusal hangs over the whole season, and Renzetti is back in the picture in Season 4.
The Bourbon War
The season’s main event starts with Mitch’s old flame, Cleo Montague (Bella Heathcote), whose father Theodore “Theo” Montague (Brett Rice) owns a failing distillery and the liquor license that comes with it. Liquor baron Jeremiah Dunmire (Robert Patrick) — the so-called “tyrant of Tulsa,” a God-fearing Dixie Mafia boss with local politicians and law enforcement in his pocket — has been strong-arming Theo to sell the place to the Dunmire family. Dwight buys it instead. The Dunmires answer by burning Theo alive in his own home.
Then Dwight finds out why Jeremiah wanted the property so badly: hidden inside is a stash of 50-year-old bourbon the Montagues call the Fifty, valued at an estimated $150 million. What follows is a Hatfield-and-McCoy feud in tailored suits — Jeremiah’s son Cole Dunmire (Beau Knapp) schemes to steal the barrels, Dwight’s protégé Tyson gets played and loses the stash, and Dwight’s crew captures Cole and trades him back to his father to get the bourbon home. Late in the season, a new piece lands on the board: Russell Lee Washington Jr. (Samuel L. Jackson), a hitman who did time with Dwight and was sent to Tulsa to kill him, and who ends up the season’s most consequential ally. By the finale, “Jesus Lizard,” Dwight turns his federal problem into his weapon — using a bomb maker’s confession as leverage to secure the federal liquor license that legitimizes the distillery, settling the Dunmire war in person, and ending the season with his crew back at the bar and the permit in hand.
Watch the official Season 3 trailer:
Where Season 3 Stands Now
All 10 episodes of Season 3 are streaming on Paramount+ (the season ran September 21 to November 23, 2025), and the verdict came in early: Paramount+ renewed the show for Season 4 on September 16, 2025 — days before Season 3 even premiered. Reviewers singled out Robert Patrick’s preacher-menace turn as Jeremiah Dunmire as the season’s standout performance, and the show remains the flagship of Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ empire.
What’s Next: Season 4, Season 5 and Frisco King
Season 4 premiered Friday, October 16, 2026, with new episodes dropping weekly on Fridays through the December 18 finale — and three episodes in, it has already detonated Dwight’s world. The premiere killed Margaret Devereaux and Cal Thresher in a plane crash — the “personal loss” promised in the season’s official line — and Thresher’s lieutenant governor, Amanda Clark (Gretchen Mol), took his place as governor: in episode 2, she ordered Dwight’s liquor license revoked. Per ScreenRant, that single order threatens everything the Season 3 finale won — no license means no Bred2Buck and no way to move the Montague Fifty — and it amounts to a full story reset, with Dwight back to underdog and Quiet Ray still circling for his cut of the empire.
Terence Winter — the Sopranos veteran who ran Season 1 — is back as head writer, a return at Stallone’s own request that also coaxed Frank Grillo back as Bill Bevilaqua, and per ScreenRant the season is currently the most-watched series on Paramount+. Beyond that, the future is already locked: Paramount+ renewed Tulsa King for Season 5 on October 5, 2026, before Season 4 aired a single episode, and the fifth season is already filming in New York — with Scarlet Rose Stallone upped to series regular as Spencer — where Dwight’s story finally circles back to the city that exiled him.
The universe grows sideways, too. The Samuel L. Jackson spinoff announced as NOLA King has been retooled and retitled Frisco King — Russell Lee Washington Jr. now builds his empire in Frisco, Texas, with Sheridan writing all eight episodes himself. It premieres December 18, 2026, with a two-episode drop the same night as the Tulsa King Season 4 finale, and Stallone has confirmed he shows up in two and a half of its episodes. Dwight Manfredi isn’t just a character anymore; he’s a franchise.
The 247 Take
There is a version of this story where Sylvester Stallone’s television era is a victory lap. Tulsa King is not that. Season 3 is the work of a 79-year-old actor still building — a mob saga that found room for a Hatfield-and-McCoy bourbon feud, an FBI leash, a New York reckoning and a Samuel L. Jackson entrance, without losing the hangout warmth that makes the show more than its body count. Sheridan’s empire gets compared to Yellowstone for a reason: like the Duttons, Dwight is a man defending a kingdom the modern world keeps trying to repossess. The difference is that Stallone plays the siege with a grin. Rocky taught us he could age in public; Tulsa King is proving he can still expand. — Becky Monroe, The Cinephile
