Tulsa King season 4 release date and season 5 renewal: Stallone is back October 16 — and a second Stallone just became a series regular

Tulsa King season 4 premieres Friday, October 16, on Paramount+, with Sylvester Stallone back as Dwight "The General" Manfredi and Terence Winter back as head writer — his third tour of duty on a show that changes showrunners the way Dwight changes enemies. And about a week before the premiere, Paramount+ renewed the series for season 5, which is already filming.

The second Stallone in the headline is Scarlet Rose Stallone, Sylvester's youngest daughter and a Family Stallone alum, who has played Spencer on the show and has now been promoted to series regular for season 5. Season 5 also relocates the whole operation: Dwight returns to New York and his mafia roots, with Erik Palladino, Glenn Fleshler, Anthony Skordi, and Nickola Shreli joining the cast.

Season 4, briefly

The October 16 season brings back the full Tulsa ensemble — Martin Starr, Jay Will, Garrett Hedlund, Dana Delany, Annabella Sciorra, Neal McDonough, Frank Grillo, Kevin Pollak, and James Russo as "Quiet Ray" Renzetti, the New York boss whose family wants Dwight dead. Winter, who created the show with Taylor Sheridan and ran season 1, left, came back as a writer for season 2, sat out season 3 for an FX project, and now returns as head writer for season 4.

The renewal-before-premiere move is worth clocking, because it's becoming the house style. Season 4 was renewed before season 3 premiered; season 5 was renewed before season 4. It's the same play Paramount+ ran with MobLand in September — order the next one before anyone has seen the current one.

Tulsa King hasn't waited for ratings to get renewed since 2025. Paramount+ orders the next season sight unseen.

The empire, and the clock

The reason for the hurry isn't a mystery. Tulsa King was Paramount+'s most-watched original, with the season 2 premiere setting a record 21.1 million global viewers, and the spinoff machine is at full throttle. The Samuel L. Jackson offshoot — introduced in season 3's finale as Russell Lee Washington Jr., the inmate-turned-hitman sent to kill Dwight — was announced as NOLA King, then retitled Frisco King and relocated from New Orleans to Frisco, Texas, with Sheridan personally writing all eight episodes of season 1. First-look photos dropped days before the Tulsa King premiere.

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Stallone, for his part, has been candid about sharing the screen with Jackson, describing their first days on set as two boxers in a ring:

"A battle and a blessing."

— Sylvester Stallone, on working with Samuel L. Jackson, via Complex

And then there's the calendar nobody at Paramount mentions in press releases. Sheridan — the engine behind Tulsa King, Landman, MobLand's home turf and most of what keeps Paramount+ running — has an NBCUniversal deal that kicks in on January 1, 2029. A season 5 ordered early, a spinoff he scripted solo, and a universe expanding in every direction reads like a streamer stockpiling its most valuable supplier while it still has him under contract.

Previously we wrote: Reacher season 5 release date after the season 4 finale: cameras are already rolling