[This story contains MAJOR spoilers from the series finale of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, “”Unconditional Love.”]
Throughout the last two seasons of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, Kanan has been so adamant about cutting all ties to his mother that it was almost impossible to believe anything could change his heart. Whether or not Kanan killed Raq was the lingering cliffhanger from season four that ushered in this fifth and final season, and that question was quickly answered in the opening seconds with Kanan killing his beloved uncle Lou-Lou instead. Even though his mother Raq quickly covered up another one of his pivotal screw-ups, Kanan was still determined that she was the villain in his life. So much so, that he didn’t object to the target placed on his mother’s head from Snaps and Pop, as well as Stefano. Even worse, he basically gave Breeze his blessing to kill Raq.
So then, in the waning moments of the series’ final episode, Kanan surprises everyone and, in the wake of Snaps and Pop, unbeknownst to him, being killed by his cousin Laverne “Jukebox” Thomas and removing them as a threat to his mother’s life, he strikes a bargain with Stefano, the last man standing who is the strongest remaining threat to her life, to save it.
Just as it looks like Raq will live — just not in New York — here comes her niece Jukebox seeking revenge and killing her in retaliation to Kanan killing her father Marvin, Raq’s other brother.
Jukebox reached this conclusion after witnessing the conversation Kanan and Raq had at the shopping center. Juke may not have heard Kanan apologizing to Raq for killing Marvin and then letting his mother know he worked it out with Stefano to let her live, on one condition and his confession that “I still don’t want you to die.” And she certainly didn’t hear the two of them taking accountability for what they did to each other to break their mother-son bond to the point of Kanan wanting his mother dead. But she saw the tears, the hug and the love. And that’s when she decided how to truly make Kanan pay for taking away her rock, her father Marvin.
When Kanan asks Juke, “Why wouldn’t you just come after me?” Juke lets him know “That was the plan, but then I saw you and her together and I realized dropping you wasn’t going hurt enough. You wouldn’t feel the pain for as long as I wanted you to feel it. … Just like me. I want you to go through your life alone with nobody to give a fuck whether you live or die. You’re going to be alive but everyone around you who cared? Gone. And that shit’s way worse than being dead.”
When Kanan points out that Juke is just as alone as him, she explains “knowing I did this to you gone keep me warm for a long while. And that’s enough for me.”
That heart-to-heart series turning point more than lives up to the final episode title “Unconditional Love,” and is inspired by a real-life moment in Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson’s life, Raising Kanan creator/showrunner Sascha Penn, who counts the moment among his favorites of the entire five-season run, tells The Hollywood Reporter.
“I took some of that from 50,” he explains. “It’s a conversation I had with 50 about his own mother that I kind of put into that scene.”
The rapper-turned-TV mogul, as has been well-recorded in his many rap songs, hails from Southside Jamaica, Queens and, as a former drug dealer who was shot nine times and lived, has a personal connection to the entire Power universe beyond being its executive producer and early collaborator with Courtney Kemp on the flagship series. Raising Kanan is highly personal, especially since he also played the adult Kanan in Power that Mekai Curtis plays as a youth in the franchise’s first prequel.
Tony and Grammy winner Patina Miller describes Raq’s introduction in the very first season as “just a woman who is on a mission to make something for herself, to make a name for herself in Southside, Jamaica, Queens. She pushes and make things uncomfortable for others and takes up space, and you see her as being this woman who wants to create legacy and get money.”
But her gender and strong leadership become a barrier in the male-dominated space when, as Miller puts it to THR, Raq “is literally doing what every man who, in that position, Black, white, Asian, whatever, was doing at that time. She is exactly the same. She just happens to be a mother and a matriarch of a family.”
“Family” is the key word for Penn when asked if he set out to tell a woman’s story in Raising Kanan. “I don’t know that I ever made the decision that it would be a woman’s story. I made the decision that it would be a story about a mother and her son, and that that relationship would be within the context of a family drama. I don’t know that I set out to tell a woman’s story as much as I set out to tell a family story. And I made that decision before I even sat down to write the pitch,” he explains.
Penn tells THR that he always intended for the series to go five seasons, and he’s pleased with how it ended.
“I think we have a very good sense of how Kanan became Kanan. I think we accomplished that, which was what I set out to do in episode one. Having said that, obviously this was a broad canvas, and we were able to explore all these different characters and stories in a way that was incredibly gratifying and meaningful for me. But I think the fifth season told a complete story as it relates to this family and this character.”
Curtis believes that by episode seven of the final season where Kanan kills his uncle Marvin in the church, Kanan “is not this full dark/doesn’t care person that everybody thinks he is.”
Instead, Curtis says Kanan “is really accepting his role in everything he’s caused at this point. He’s really understanding the lesson Raq taught him at the beginning of the show, which is that you reap what you sow. She basically tells him that this bullet you’re putting out in the world has your name on it. It’s going to be circling around until it comes back to you. Kanan’s seen and has been exposed to enough in this world and his life that he just understands it. It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s okay with it, but this is just the deck of cards he’s been dealt.”
Below, THR asked Miller and Penn in separate interviews (edited together) various questions about the series and their answers contain many interesting reveals, including why it had to be Hailey Kilgore’s Jukebox who killed Raq, if Raq is really the one to blame for how Kanan turns out, if Kanan had to kill Marvin after the beatdown, and Raq’s legacy in the Power Universe.
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Is Raq really dead? And did she think Juke was going to shoot her?
PATINA MILLER Listen, Raq is really dead. I love Sascha’s decision not to show the final moment on screen. You see the eyes between them [but] you never really see the bullet. I guess people could question that but no, she’s done and at the hands of her niece. I don’t think she ever saw that coming but I do think she saw her end. I think she knew her end was here, but I don’t think she was afraid of that at all.
Did you always know, as the showrunner, that Juke would kill Raq?
SASCHA PENN It just always made sense to me that that’s how it was going to happen. So yeah. Obviously, Jukebox and Raq had an incredibly close relationship, and obviously there were twists and turns across the five seasons, but ultimately, they were connected in this very important way AS the two female members of this family, and Jukebox killing her just always felt, for lack of a better word, right, to me.
In the original Power series, as the social media sleuths remind us, Kanan shares that he visited his mother. So that’s why they felt that Raq didn’t die.
PENN Look when I go to Boston, I visit my dad. In the cemetery. I’ll say to someone, “I went and saw my dad.” My dad is no longer alive. That’s what Kanan did.
Where is Raq by the end of the series, pre-death of course?
MILLER Raq has, by the end of it, lost herself. She’s lost that thing that made her who she was. On her quest for more power, she lost sight of really what’s important. In the beginning, family was important, like, “We got family. This is family.” Then by the end, [there are] so many things she’s done. Devastating actions all have consequences, and by the end of it she’s this dark, ruthless, one-woman show that is just trying to survive by any means necessary.
Was Kanan killing Marvin inevitable after Marvin beat Kanan down?
PENN Kanan sort of had a choice to make, in terms of his mother or his uncle, and I think he chose his uncle partly because his uncle beat him up. But I also think that was going to be easier for him. You see in that final episode that he does hesitate about killing his mother and tries to get her a pass out of town, and obviously that doesn’t work out. But I don’t know that it was inevitable. I just think it was, maybe on some level, ordained. Maybe that’s the same thing as inevitable.
Is Raq the real reason Lou and Marvin are dead?
MILLER No, everybody’s actions have consequences. I think it’s the hustlers’ way. This is a life they chose, and it’s a dark road. Like they said in the show, there are two ways out: in jail or dead. And [they chose] to go into a life this way and do the things they have collectively done as a unit. Raq didn’t tell Lou to come back into the family fold. Lou came to her saying, “I want back in.” It’s very easy for everyone to blame Raq for everything, but at the end of the day, they’ve all had a hand in their demise. Just like Raquel is the reason for her demise.
Marvin has done many things and has killed 9,000 people. He got a conscience before it ends, which I think makes it more devastating. I think with Lou, he had his moment to battle his demons. He could battle those demons and come out on the other side. Raquel didn’t really get to do that, but that’s just the price of this life. It is the price for choosing this path and doing the things they do. But do I think Raquel is the reason? She’s a little bit of the reason, but they’re also the reason as well.
What mistakes do you think Raq made raising Kanan?
MILLER We’d be here all day. But what I love about her is that she is a very flawed character, as are all the characters in this show. What makes it more intense is that she’s a woman, so I think people tend to question those things a lot more. Everything she’s done in this world, men in power have all done. Being the head of an organization, she’s had to make calls that are trifling, low-down, not great, but so have other people in this position. I think if it were a man, I don’t think we would be talking about this sort of thing. I love that Raquel has caused this discussion of, “Is she the devil? Is she the worst character ever?” But, yeah, I’ve loved her. I loved the great things about her. I don’t think she’s evil, but I also don’t think she’s the best person. She’s a mix of all of it. And that’s what humans are — very flawed, and we can all see a little piece of ourselves in a character like that.
As the showrunner, is the way Kanan turns out Raq’s fault?
PENN I certainly think Raq has a pretty heavy hand as it relates to how Kanan ended up, but, look, we are the sum total of our experiences and our relationships. So certainly there are experiences and relationships that Kanan has along the way that also inform how he ended up. But the pillar in his life is really his mother. She is the sun, and he orbits [around] that. I hate to use the word blame, but I do feel like his mother is responsible for who he turns out to be in many respects.
Is it fair for Kanan to blame Raq?
PENN Kanan is a child, right? His mother is supposed to protect him and look out for him. His brain isn’t even fully formed. He’s a kid, and so he has a mother. Look, this is just my opinion.
But you came up with it. You wrote it with a team of people.
PENN One of the things I’ve realized in doing this is no one’s right and no one’s wrong. Someone else may have another take on it, and it could be way better than mine. But I have children, and, while they can be challenging, at the end of the day, they do look to me for affirmation and support and protection, and time and time again, I feel like Raq disappoints Kanan in that way. In that final scene where they’re talking, I do feel like she’s still just thinking about herself. She’s like, “Tell me you love me, tell me you love me.” I think in that moment, Kanan realizes that’s how flawed she is and that she’s never going to change.
What about social media’s comparisons between Tariq and Kanan?
PENN I would argue they’re children thrown into this absolutely chaotic, dangerous world and people are always like, “They’re stupid.” No shit, they are stupid because they’re kids. If you’ve ever raised a 16-year-old or a 17-year-old boy, you are truly amazed they can put one foot in front of the other and get out the door every morning and return home at night. But it is interesting how the fanbase turns on these kids as opposed to the parents who’ve raised them. I think that is really interesting. Not sure what it says, but it is interesting because we should be protecting these kids. Instead, what happens is we blame them, and it’s sort of fascinating to see how that plays out.
Online, after penultimate episode, people had Marvin in the top five of all Power characters. Someone had Unique in the top five, but they didn’t even have Raq in there. How do these characters rank for you as the show’s creator? How does Raq rank in the Power-verse to you? Where does Marvin rank?
PENN Raq, Marvin, Unique, Kanan as played by 50, Mekai — it’s an embarrassment of riches as it relates to the actors. I can only speak about Raising Kanan, but the actors who we were able to assemble on that show! I haven’t talked about Tony Danza. There are so many. Joey Badass. It’s been incredible and so humbling and so gratifying. We’re just lucky that we got the cast we got on this show.
Again, I’ve been saying this for years and I will continue to say it: We are criminally unrecognized by the Emmys in my opinion.
Well The Wire never received one acting nomination, and you can’t really turn on the TV without seeing someone from The Wire.
SASCHA PENN I know. I choose to celebrate things rather than mire myself in frustration over things I can’t control. The work speaks for itself. It’s been an incredible journey.
What’s Raq’s legacy in the Power Universe?
MILLER I think her legacy is that she was a boss. She was really the one to step up. She was unafraid to do the things that people wouldn’t do. I think her resilience. The idea that you could get knocked down so many times and not give up. The fact that she kept going, trying to do this thing and never accepting no, and was always like, “Power, but I can have more.” Honestly, just the dreamer in her and her desire to go big. That’s a big legacy. To know that the [Power] universe in itself started with Raquel Thomas on the streets of Southside Jamaica, Queens… Without her, there’d be no Kanan; there’d be no Ghost, no Tommy to show the game. I think it’s a cool legacy for Raquel Thomas.
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All five seasons of Power Book III: Raising Kanan are now streaming on Starz.
