‘Raising Kanan’s Mekai Curtis, Patina Miller & More Talk Shocking Premiere Death (VIDEO)

Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 4 ended with Kanan (Mekai Curtis) pointing a gun straight at his mother, Raq (Patina Miller). A shot went off as the finale faded to black, and we were all left to wonder whether or not Raq walked away alive. While the Season 5 trailer confirmed Raq survived, Raising Kanan dropped a huge twist in the opening moments of the Season 5 premiere.

As with any Power universe show, dying is always a possibility. The major death in the Power Book III: Raising Kanan premiere will inevitably send Kanan down a darker path and will change his relationship with his mother forever. TV Insider spoke with Mekai Curtis, Patina Miller, showrunner Sascha Penn, and more about the fallout from this death. (Warning: Spoilers ahead for the Power Book III: Raising Kanan Season 5 premiere.)

Kanan is getting ready to pull the trigger when Lou-Lou (Malcolm Mays) and Ruben (Dean Wil) walk in. Ruben sees what’s about to go down and fires a shot to scare Kanan, but Kanan reacts by firing two shots of his own — straight into Lou-Lou. Raq immediately runs over to her little brother and holds him in his final moments.

“I just didn’t expect to be the one administering that loss,” Curtis said of his reaction to Kanan killing Lou-Lou. As for how this act changes Kanan, Curtis revealed, “I think the loss of Uncle Lou-Lou is part of a bigger balloon or basket of loss and transformation for Kanan, I think… That’s probably the biggest turning point for real of him understanding his role in all of this, of Kanan understanding what he’s doing [and] the world he’s decided to fully enthrall himself in. It’s the callback and the testament to what Raq taught him in Season 1, Episode 1: If you decide to pull that trigger, who it hits is out there and you did it, so you have to be OK with that, regardless of what that is. He comes to another place of understanding, for real. But Uncle Lou is definitely part of the bigger conglomerate loss that Kanan has experienced over the entirety of the show.”

Starz

Miller believes that Kanan killing Lou-Lou is the point of no return for Raq. “I don’t know if she could forgive him for it, but she still loves him,” the actress said about Raq and Kanan’s relationship moving forward.

Penn shed further insight on the impact Kanan’s devastating decision will have on him over the course of the final season. “It deadens him,” Penn said. “I think he does it, and in the moment when he does it, you see he’s totally shocked. And then, it’s almost like you see him across the episode, sort of not make peace with it, but just sort of let it sort of like kill everything. It’s like, oh, wow, I killed my uncle. Everything’s on the table now.”

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TV Insider was able to catch up with Mays at the Season 5 premiere to get his reaction to Lou-Lou’s death. Turns out, he wasn’t that surprised Lou-Lou was on the chopping block. “That sounds about right,” he said about his reaction. Mays explained that he had ruptured his Achilles heel while doing a play shortly before he had to film Lou-Lou’s death scene. “It was kind of like very mythical in a way because it was like I was living that same injury, and I couldn’t really move, and it was my first surgery ever…  It just felt like it was very palpable. It was like a little too real, but the love of my family, the love of the set, the love of the other actors, can’t beat it. It felt like I was coming home.”

Watch the full video above to see the cast and the showrunner discuss this game-changing shift in the final season.

Power Book III: Raising Kanan, Season 5, Fridays, Starz