SPOILER ALERT: The following reveals major plot points from the series finale of the Starz crime drama Power Book III: Raising Kanan.
After five seasons, not only are fans saying goodbye to Starz’s Power Book III: Raising Kanan, but so are the actors who have played many of your favorite characters like Patina Miller. She played Raquel Thomas, mother of Kanan Stark (Mekai Curtis), sister of Lou (Malcolm Mays) and Marvin (London Brown), mother figure to Jukebox (Hailey Kilgore), and Queenpin of a major drug organization that brought many, many men to their knees.
If it sounds like I am eulogizing her, it’s because Raquel went home to be with the Lord in last night’s series finale. Her murder will hardly be a surprise to most anyone who watches the show and understands that Kanan needed to be stripped of everybody who cares for him, as Juke, her killer, said, so that he can continue becoming the character we meet him as in the original Power series.
“At the end of the day, I can have my thoughts about the character, and nobody ever wants their character to die, right? That’s the thing you never want. But you have to also remember that you’re in service of the words and the writing and the vision of Sascha Penn, who created such a brilliant show, with such a layered world and characters, and I trust him. I’ve always trusted his vision. It has been a collaboration throughout our years of working together, trying to bring out so many different facets of who Raquel is and was,” shared Miller with Deadline.
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She added, “I really do think these past five years, we’ve really gotten to see her really strive for greatness. You’ve been on her side, and then you got to see her at her lowest, and you’ve gotten to see this season just her raw, ferocious, frank, and spastic, with spiral energy. When you’ve given all of that life to a character, the only way a character like that can go out is the way that she does.”
In my recap of the episode, I explained that when you dedicate yourself to a life of crime, and even further as the Queenpin of a powerful organization whose associates and family members will turn on you at the drop of a dime, most roads lead to death or imprisonment. While ending the life of a character you embodied for so many years is sorrowful, Miller understands why Raq had to die.
“There are consequences to this world, and even Raquel, who has been untouchable in some way, she’s not untouchable. And the one thing that I love about her is that she’s always known that, right? She’s never been afraid. But she wants to live, and she wants what she wants, and she wants it now. I’ve had an incredible five seasons of investigating that and trying to do different things every season to find another layer to play, something new to find about her. And at this time, that’s the way it ends.”
In what is perhaps the best scene from the entire series, before Raq dies, she meets up with Kanan on a busy public street for a tête-à-tête. She chose the location because she was afraid her son would kill her otherwise. For possibly the first time, the mother-and-son aren’t afraid to be vulnerable, so they open up about what they need from one another. The day Miller and Curtis shot this scene, there was a personal tragedy the South Carolina native had experienced that would’ve rendered most anyone else unable to breathe, much less go to work and perform a heavy dramatic scene.
“She’s like, ‘Do you love me?’ It’s heartbreaking because that’s literally all she’s wanted from him for five seasons. That’s all she has ever wanted from her son is for him to love her and to forgive her. And it was a hard scene and a hard day knowing that I’d be working with him for the last time. We got into this together, and we’ve had such a great partnership. With Mekai and me, there’s so much love I have for him as a person, as an actor. And my brother died in real time at the same time as this episode was airing. My real-life brother,’ Miller revealed.
“The day we started this episode, Marvin’s death. When they were filming Marvin’s death, I was legit kind of still in shock. When we went to Marvin’s grave, I had just buried my brother the day before. So the scene and life really kind of helped me put all of that… I got to mourn my job, and I was mourning my brother at the same time. So I’m just so proud of the show and the whole experience,” she continued.
