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Following a horrific snowcat accident in January 2023, it was initially questionable if “Mayor of Kingstown” star Jeremy Renner would survive, let alone walk again.

But 18 months later, watching him in the TV-MA-rated third season premiere of “Kingstown,” streaming episodes weekly on Paramount+ beginning Sunday, it doesn’t look like Renner, 53, missed a beat. There’s no evidence of the accident as Renner’s Mike McLusky marches through the alleys of Kingstown, Mich., portrayed in the series by Pittsburgh and its surrounding areas.

“That’s all me,” Renner said in an interview last month, three days after production on the season wrapped. “How things feel and how things look are completely different.”

Renner, who recently filmed a commercial for Brooks Running shoes in Pittsburgh, said he was in pain while running for the ad.

“I look like I’m running great,” he said. “But it felt like I was on a freeway with four flat tires and was white knuckling it like crazy. It’s an awful feeling, just like it was acting even in that first scene (of the new season of ‘Mayor of Kingstown’). Walking on ice and in dress shoes in this graveyard was not ideal at all but you act as-if (it is) and try to get this walk back and do it. Using the show and the character to get back out in the world and be rebirthed into it again, it looks better than it felt. It did quickly turn back around to where it needed to be but it was a little dicey in the beginning.”

Renner’s McLusky is the head of a family of power brokers in Kingstown, Mich., where the main business is prisons.

McLusky’s primary adversary, Milo, (Aidan Gillen, “Game of Thrones”), appeared to get blown up at the end of season two, but series star/executive producer Hugh Dillon demurs on whether Milo is gone for good.

“There is always a chance in this world” that Milo survived, Dillon said.

Alas, the same cannot be said for McLusky matriarch Mariam (Dianne Weist), who was accidentally shot by son Kyle (Taylor Handley) in the season two finale. Season three opens with her funeral in a snowy cemetery.

The logline for season three reveals a familiar face from McLusky’s incarcerated past threatens to undermine the ‘Mayor’s’ attempts to keep the peace.

That familiar face is Konstantin (Yorick van Wageningen), who emerges as a major player in a season Dillon said is about “crime and punishment, corruption and redemption. It’s a city built on revenge.”

“We’re just trying to convey the intricacies of human emotion through these characters and this world with all the pain and loss and regret and despair and helplessness,” Dillon continued.

But making the show was a different vibe as the show’s producers rallied around Renner following his accident.

“(Executive producer) Taylor (Sheridan) called me right after Jeremy’s accident and said, ‘This is what we’re doing: We’re protecting Renner at all costs,’” Dillon recalled. “It was up to me to go see what he wanted to do — if he even wanted to come back. I had to ask his mom — it was not me asking his agent or going through managers — because Renner couldn’t walk at that point. It was very much looking his mom in the eyes and her kind of shrugging and going, ‘OK, you better take care of my boy.’ It’s that kind of commitment.”

Last month Renner told The Los Angeles Times that he was so exhausted while filming at the start of the season that he fell asleep while shooting a scene.

“We realized they worked me too hard, too many hours, too many days in a row,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “What I’m willing to do is everything, but what I’m able to do is a different thing.”

Producers adjusted filming schedules to accommodate Renner’s recovery and the actor stayed in Pittsburgh rather than flying home to Los Angeles on days off.

In “Kingstown,” series regular character Robert (Hamish Allan-Headley) is recovering from a serious injury. The dialogue around that almost brings to mind how filmmakers might react to Renner as he returned to acting after his accident.

“How are you?” one concerned character says to Robert. “Man, you nearly died!”

Dillon said that was not the writers’ commentary on Renner’s recovery.

“It’s seemingly so only because I had such an accident, Renner said, “but when we left (Robert at the end of season two), he was in ICU in the same kind of condition, intubated and on life support.”

The week of May 12, “Mayor of Kingstown” shut down Downtown Pittsburgh’s 16th Street Bridge for multiple days and nights for a gunfight scene, a “huge set piece,” Renner said, that includes helicopters and explosions, that will be part of the season finale that’s slated to stream on Aug. 4.

“Taylor (Sheridan) is very specific,” Dillon said. “One of the first things he said was we’re gonna have this gunfight on this bridge. And (director) Christoph Schrewe designed the shooting schedule and the look of it. Christoph worked closely with Taylor. (Writer/executive producer) Dave Erickson and I came up with what the characters would be doing. It’s at nighttime and it’s all very cinematic for the season finale.”

Dillon, who’s developing a ’70s-style revenge/film noir script independently for a movie called “Suffer Machine” he wants to film in Pittsburgh, said even with striving not to overwork Renner, season three was an easier shoot in Pittsburgh than season two.

“We know what we’re doing and Pittsburgh loves us,” Dillon said. “And Pittsburgh loved Jeremy and everybody went out of their way for Jeremy. Any of the bugs we had in season two were worked out. And we were lucky to be at 31st Street Studios.”

Whether “Kingstown” gets renewed for a fourth season remains to be seen.

“Everybody’s very positive about it,” Dillon said. “Everything is pointing in the right direction. We’ve got the crew, Renner wants to come back and I want to come back. We really locked into Pittsburgh and our studios and our partners. You play the hand you’re dealt and you play it well and then you see what happens. I do know Taylor Sheridan has seven seasons up his sleeve.”

In streaming’s current austerity era, seven seasons — especially on the perpetually for-sale Paramount+ — may be wishful thinking but four or five seem feasible. Just don’t expect Renner to jump in any of the three rivers if the show is renewed.

“I think it’s really beautiful,” Renner said of Pittsburgh, “but I don’t think I’d really be hanging out in the rivers; they’re kind of chocolatey. I don’t think I’d be a river rat in Pittsburgh.”

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