Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 5 Episode 2 Sets The Stage & Says Goodbye To A Major Player

Critic’s Rating: 4.3 / 5.0

4.3

It’s hard to call any hour of a series like Power Book III: Raising Kanan filler because every single second of this show advances the plot.

Some hours may be more robust than others, and some may be slower, but they all prepare us for the inevitable gut punch that the final hours of every season bring.

I shudder to ever call an episode boring, but there are ones that simply aren’t as exhilarating as others, and that’s okay. That’s television.

Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 5 Episode 2 set the stage for Raq and Kanan to build their respective businesses, with their rival enterprises likely headed for a collision course at some point this season.

Raq had a lot of product and nowhere to sell it because Stefano wouldn’t have anything to do with her, which meant a whole borough was now a no-go.

Raq’s always thinking ten steps ahead, and she’s always thinking about how to get herself and her people paid, even if it means sacrificing something for herself or resisting certain impulses.

Obviously, she knows that Unique wasn’t the one who killed Lou-Lou, so she wasn’t overly concerned with getting revenge on him in the same way Marvin was, but even if she hadn’t known that Kanan killed Lou-Lou, I’d expect her to move in the same manner because she doesn’t have the luxury to dwell on things.

You take your eye off the prize, and before you know it, someone else has claimed what was rightfully yours.

Making the move to Manhattan reminded me of the original Power, and I’m wondering whether this phase of Raq’s business was something Kanan would later replicate once he hooked up with Ghost and Tommy.

As you know, in this world, you can’t just open up shop anywhere in the city, because you’ll be stepping on someone’s toes. Getting into bed with a new set of people always comes with a caveat, and branching into a whole new city meant Raq had to impress Pino and then Flossie with her plans.

Flossie came across like a girl’s girl through and through, with a mean streak. So not unlike Raq herself.

I want to think these two could really run things together, but as much as she talks about being all pro-women, you just know that the minute Raq can’t make a payment or something goes amiss, she’s not going to give her a pass just because they agree men are annoying.

Raq’s whole plan also hinges on Stefano leaving them alone for the most part, which he’s unlikely to do, since he blames much of his recent misfortune on her.

Speaking of Stefano, the minute we got an extended look at Russo and his wife, it was pretty damn obvious that he was about to get whacked.

And for his right-hand man, Carmine, to set him up? What a way to go.

Stefano’s hospital meeting with Snaps, Pop, Breeze, and Kanan didn’t amount to much beyond going over logistics, but it was the catalyst for pissing off Unique, who grew increasingly worried about his place in this new business venture.

During Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 5 Episode 1, I discussed how Breeze’s introduction was a little lackluster and that he seemed more interested in placating Kanan and Unique, which was clearly a tactic.

When Stefano chided Breeze about his name, and he came back at him about why that name was so fitting for him, I audibly said ‘ahhhh’ when he described himself because it’s very clear that he’s the kind of man who prefers to stay under the radar a bit.

He doesn’t necessarily need to raise his voice, push people around, or be the loudest person in the room. He’s an observer, and he’s clearly someone who’s always thinking, which is hard to do when you’re more concerned with leaving your mark everywhere you go.

Now, who does that sound like? It sounds like Ghost.

The whole thing with Ghost was that no one knew who he was because he stayed in the shadows, and that sounds a lot like something he gleaned from Breeze’s playbook, because he is not a Tommy. Nor is he a Kanan, for that matter.

One of the best scenes of the hour was when Unique came to him and expressed his displeasure at being left out of that hospital meeting, and Breeze played it beautifully.

He was direct, but still menacing, and it was all hidden behind—for lack of a better word—a breezy façade. He and Unique were sizing each other up, and the BS was flying back and forth between them.

Some of the great moments are born out of characters just steadily lying to one another, and us sitting back and trying to figure out who is ultimately going to get the better of the other.

Unique’s whole plight this season has been about him feeling like a dead man walking, AGAIN, and deciding not to hide from it, which has always been who Unique is at his core.

Born and bred in South Jamaica, the streets are his home, and he’ll be damned if someone ever forces him out of the city that made him and the city that he loves. But everything was closing in on him in a completely new way, and he pushed back until he realized he was fighting a losing battle, and he no longer wanted to fall on his sword.

Unique was the OG Raising Kanan villain, and he was a great one. Those Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 1 battles were fantastic, with Raq and Unique plotting and scheming against one another, then having these tension-filled conversations that had us all going…now wait a minute!

Side note: Raq and Unique were never going to make it, as there was a deep level of mistrust between them that would never fully dissipate, given their past and ambitions.

Even knowing that, their coupling was so damn buzzy, though. It’s a shame that we’ll likely never get a true resolution for them, but then again, Power has been known to leave storylines open-ended.

Unique and Pernessa have one of those first-love kind of relationships where they’ll never leave each other, even though it’s kind of a mess, and Pernessa puts up with much more than she should.

She sees the boy she fell in love with when she was younger when she looks at Unique. She sees his potential and all the memories, and she sees Unique in the son they share.

She’s probably the only person in his entire life who has never given up on him, and that’s ultimately why Pernessa and Jerome convinced him to leave South Jamaica behind when everything inside of him told him that he was supposed to stay in those streets until the day he died.

If this truly is the end of Unique’s story, as Kanan’s voiceover at the end suggests, I’m kind of surprised that, out of everyone, he may be the one who ultimately gets a happy ending.

When Unique speaks, you believe him. And he seemed so hellbent on never backing down to anyone that his decision to run felt a little out of character at first. But that hug from Jerome really allowed him to see, for maybe the first time ever, that there were things bigger than himself.

You don’t become a Raq, Unique, or Kanan without a whole lot of narcissism and an inability to put anyone else’s needs ahead of your own.

What makes Unique’s ending so surprising is that he may be the one who finally learned how.

Instead of dying of pride or hanging on to the little bit of power he didn’t want to admit he no longer had, he chose the people who mattered to him over everything else.

Finally finding something worth walking away from makes him the rare victor in this universe, which has seen many a man and woman die before they realized they had something greater to live for.

Elsewhere during this hour, Marvin was on the hunt for Unique, and I sense something brewing between Marvin and Raq at some point. It may not happen anytime soon, but Marvin isn’t as dumb as Raq would have you believe.

He’s perceptive, and he’s more intelligent than he’s ever given credit for. But even if he were to figure out that Kanan killed Lou and that Raq knew about it, would he ever do anything?

The real question isn’t whether he’d uncover the truth, but instead it’s whether there’s any truth that could finally make him turn his back on Raq.

Everything Else You Need To Know

• Kanan talking to the police and realizing, for the first time, that maybe every bad thing that has happened to him or to the people he cared about wasn’t Raq’s doing. He still has a long way to go in recognizing that he is in bed with the enemy, but this was the first time I had faith that he might get there one day.

• Is Jukebox okay? We’ve been steadily seeing her become more and more like adult Jukebox, but the way she treated Iesha, followed by her being ready to shoot a cop dead on his doorstep, feels like we’ve firmly entered her supervillain era.

• Did anyone else think Breeze and Kanan were going to kill Taz at first instead of going after Unique?

• Marvin killing a room full of men with two guns and a dum-dum in his mouth. No one else is doing it like Marvin.

How are you guys feeling after this one?

This was a slower hour, but they’re putting the pieces in place for the season, so I’m going to let them cook.

Make sure to share all your thoughts in the comments below!

You can watch Power Book III: Raising Kanan on the STARZ app at midnight. On linear, it airs on STARZ at 8:00 pm ET/PT in the U.S.