Tulsa King Season 4 Draws Warm but Mixed Reviews as Terence Winter Returns

Tulsa King returned for its fourth season on Paramount+ on Friday 16 October 2026, with Sylvester Stallone back as Dwight "The General" Manfredi and new episodes arriving weekly on Fridays. Forbes confirmed the premiere window, and Paramount+ set out the weekly schedule. The first reviews, published on 15 and 16 October, came in positive to mixed, and they disagree in ways that say something about what the show has settled into.

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ScreenRant rated the season 7/10, calling it "an entertaining new entry marred by frustrating old problems" and praising Stallone's performance and the season's emotional beats. Decider's "Stream It or Skip It" verdict was to stream it, crediting Terence Winter's return as showrunner for a season that feels more emotionally grounded than the last. RogerEbert.com took the colder line, headlining that Stallone and the show "start to show their age" in season four.

The three reviews measure different things. ScreenRant measures the season against the show's own history and finds the same flaws it has flagged before. Decider measures it against the previous season and finds an improvement. RogerEbert.com measures it against the strongest work Stallone has done and finds the distance growing. None of them speaks for the others, and none is a verdict on the whole season. That distinction matters more than usual here, because season 4's own aggregate scores were still arriving as these reviews published.

What the premiere sets up

The season moves Dwight toward legitimising parts of his criminal empire and settling with Margaret Devereaux (Dana Delany), his girlfriend across the show's first three seasons. RogerEbert.com and Decider both note that the premiere ends on a tragedy that leaves Dwight in mourning and unsure where his businesses stand with the government. The promotion of lieutenant governor Amanda Clark (Gretchen Mol) raises the political stakes around him.

Both outlets keep the details of that turn out of their reviews, and this roundup leaves it where they left it. What can be said without giving it away is that the season is still built around a man adjusting to a world that does not run on the rules he grew up with, and that the premiere spends its running time on the consequences of choices made before it.

Stallone remains the center of the show, and the returning cast gives the season its continuity. Dana Delany's Margaret Devereaux has been Dwight's partner across three seasons, and the premiere moves the couple toward a settled life together. Gretchen Mol's Amanda Clark sits on the political side of the story, and her elevation to lieutenant governor puts a state office within reach of a man whose business interests depend on staying out of its way. The show has always run on the friction between Dwight's methods and the institutions he cannot intimidate, and the new season leans on that friction rather than opening new ground.

Winter's return is the season's hinge

Terence Winter, who ran season 1, came back as showrunner, head writer and executive producer for season 4 and wrote the premiere, according to Paramount+. The season is co-executive produced by Taylor Sheridan, Stallone, David C. Glasser, Ron Burkle, David Hutkin, Bob Yari, Thomas Kelly and Keith Cox. That is the full Taylor Sheridan apparatus around a show that has now run long enough to have its own internal history.

Decider treats Winter's return as the reason the season lands with more emotional weight than the last one, and it is the change a returning viewer is most likely to notice. Winter wrote the first season's version of the character, before the show expanded its map and its cast. Bringing him back points the series toward character over territory, which is the reading Decider offers and one that fits what ScreenRant praises even while it complains about the familiar problems.

The show's age shapes how these reviews read. A series in its fourth season is judged against itself, and by then the critics who liked the premise have already said so. ScreenRant's 7/10 is the score of a critic who knows exactly what the show is and is tired of one or two of its habits. Decider's stream verdict is the score of a critic who thinks this season fixes one of them.

A fourth season has to argue for itself

Long-running series face a specific review problem by their fourth year. The novelty that earned the early praise is gone, the characters are established, and the critics who were going to fall for the premise already have. What is left is execution: whether the show can still surprise the people who know it best. ScreenRant's complaint about "frustrating old problems" is that test, and so is RogerEbert.com's line about the show showing its age. Both are asking the same question: whether a show this familiar can still produce an episode worth watching.

The counter-argument is the one Decider makes. A returning showrunner who knows the character can reset the tone without resetting the premise. Winter ran the first season, the one that set the show's template, and his return ties the fourth season back to that version of the series. If the emotional beats land, as ScreenRant concedes they do, the season has done the thing a fourth season can still do: deepen a character the audience already knows.

That is a smaller ambition than a new premise. It is also the only one available to a show that has already used its surprise, and the reviews split on whether season 4 clears it.

The scores are still filling in

The individual reviews are the reliable signal this week. Season 4's own Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic aggregates were still filling in around 18 October 2026, so no single season-4 percentage should be treated as settled.

The Rotten Tomatoes series page showed an average Tomatometer of about 87 percent across 57 critics' reviews and a 76 percent audience score in mid-October 2026. Those are series-level figures, not season-4 figures. The earlier seasons offer mixed context: season 3 landed around 86 percent, reported by Collider, and Metacritic's series page records a score of 75 for season 3 against 66 for season 1.

That spread is why individual outlets carry more weight here than a single number. A series average blends four seasons of reviews written under different expectations, and the first season's lower Metacritic score reflects critics encountering a premise that had not yet proved it could hold.

One caution applies to this roundup as a whole. The reviews cited here landed before the season's full run was available, and the outlets frame their verdicts as early reads of a story that pivots on the premiere's tragedy. A season can look different by its finale, and the audience score that matters most will build week by week after the critics' first takes.

Tulsa is now one part of a larger franchise

Tulsa King has already been renewed for a fifth season, which will move the show to New York, and the Samuel L. Jackson-led spinoff Frisco King is scheduled to premiere in December 2026, Decider reports. The original is no longer the whole story. It is the anchor of a franchise that Paramount+ is building out.

That context sits inside a bigger one. Tulsa King is among the most-watched titles in the Taylor Sheridan universe on Paramount+, and its fourth season arrives as Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery complete their merger into Skydance. A subscriber-facing hit now sits at the center of a larger bet on streaming against a shrinking linear business. That does not change what the reviews say about the season, but it changes who is listening.

The franchise math also explains why the company is investing in the show's future while critics debate its present. A New York-set fifth season moves Dwight back toward the city that exiled him, and Frisco King extends the template to a new lead and a new city. Whether or not season 4 wins over the doubters, the bet is that the appetite for this kind of show does not depend on any single season's reviews.

The timing is corroborated elsewhere: Den of Geek's October TV calendar carries the premiere on its 16 October entry.

What to watch

Two things will settle the season's reception. The first is the audience. A 76 percent series score and a weekly release schedule will produce a clearer verdict than three critics writing before the second episode aired. The second is whether the shift toward a more grounded, character-driven register holds for the full run or reverts to the pattern the colder reviews describe.

"An entertaining new entry marred by frustrating old problems." — ScreenRant review, Tulsa King season 4, October 2026

For now the season is doing what a fourth season of a durable hit usually does: holding the audience that arrived for the premise and testing the patience of the critics who came for the surprise. RogerEbert.com's colder read is the one review that breaks from the rest, and it is the one to watch as more arrive. Winter's return is the variable that will decide which way the season settles.

Cover image: "Sylvester Stallone (4840620570).jpg" by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The portrait predates the season.