Kanan Stark’s evolution from teenager to ruthless crime boss continues in the fourth season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan
The origin story of Kanan Stark — a sociopathic drug lord who murdered his own son and cousin for their lack of loyalty, played by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson on the original Power — digs even deeper in its fourth season. After the end of last season left the characters with something of an opportunity to make changes in their lives, the schedules of the Stark/Thomas family are — if only for a brief moment — open for some soul searching. “Season three, sort of, ended in a slightly hopeful place,” says series creator Sascha Penn. “I hesitate to say that given the violence, however, you do get the sense that maybe this family is going to realign itself. But I think over the course of season four, you see that people don’t change that much.”
With a character like Kanan Stark, portrayed in Book III by MeKai Curtis, the gradual evolution of a teenager-turned-cold-blooded killer is what drives the series forward. “With every interaction, every scene, every decision you see him make, it shapes even further what Kanan turns into,” says Curtis. “It’s the story of how this environment and the people around this dude turned him into this thing. What happens with everything that Kanan takes on, is that you see him now connect a new piece and falling further into what he’s seeing around him.”
Of course, what he sees closest to home is his own mother, Raquel “Raq” Thomas (Patina Miller), a drug lord in her own right, who seems to now have fully shaken off any guilt about her son’s career choices and directs her focus on rebuilding her business after getting rid of some pesky obstacles in her professional path. “The business, without a doubt, is one of the most important things to her,” says Miller. “You watched her trying to become the one on top and in season two you watched her having to duel it out with the Italians for her power. Season three, you saw her losing it again. In season four, she’s feeling confident. The FBI is off her back. She feels like she can just focus on the business. The relationship with Kanan is what it is, and I think that she’s come to terms with that relationship not being like it used to be. So what other way can she at least have him in her life? And that’s by being business partners.”
Raq’s relationship with Kanan may not put her in contention for a “Mother of the Year” award, but Miller views her character’s approach to parenting as maybe more misguided. “Because she’s able to provide monetarily, that is a way to show her love,” says Miller. “She shows her love and her mothering in different kind of ways, and it can be destructive sometimes. And she’s ambitious, she’s a dreamer. She has all these things that maybe [we don’t associate with] mothers. I just think she’s super raw, not perfect, very human, and she makes the mistakes.” At the core of Raq’s parenting philosophy is a young girl basically having to wing it. “Raquel is very flawed,” says Miller. “Having a child so young, there is something about the emotional growth of having to switch gears from being a kid to now having to be a parent and not having someone to show you the way.”
With viewers keenly aware of where Kanan Stark is headed, every relationship evolution with his mother is of great significance. “This has always been a family drama,” says Penn. “What we see across this next season is that this family is profoundly dysfunctional and as much as they would like to right the ship, it’s very, very hard. The journey we go on, season four, is yet another incremental step in Kanan’s journey towards the man he becomes later. You really feel that shift.”
For Penn, the prequel series continues to be an exploration of fate versus free will. “Since day one, when we first got into the writer’s room on this show, we’ve known our destination,” he says. “To a certain extent, yes, fate hangs over everything. Kanan’s journey we know. But we’ve also woven that into all the other characters, this sense of foreboding that you’re heading in a direction and there’s really no way to get off this road. So fate is a really big part of the story we’re telling. But it’s not interesting to start the character where he ends up. We need to bring him on that journey. A big part of what Mekai has brought to this, is starting Kanan in a place that was very, very different than where he ended up in Power. And that’s part of the brilliance of the performance he’s given.”
Power Book III: Raising Kanan airs Friday, March 21 on Starz 2