Power season 4 episode 6 debate: Does Kanan have to die now?
Through most of the time in which Ghost was behind bars, Kanan continued his efforts to befriend Tariq and draw distance between him and his father — for the most part, it was to great success. There are still some things that Tariq does not know about this man, but he got him close enough to capture him with Jukebox and prepare for the standoff to end all standoffs. You have one of Ghost’s most notorious enemies in one corner, and James St. Patrick sitting firmly in the other. We expect a collision course like no other ahead.
The complications thrown into this situation are both dark and all sorts of exquisitely done. Ghost’s struggle here is twofold — his son is in grave danger, but he does not even know his captor is among the living. He’s also still shell-shocked following his release from prison, and his finances are in total disarray. He’s present, but he’s also distracted.
We also do continue to wonder the same thing regarding Kanan. Does he see any of himself in Tariq? It may be naivete, but there remains a part of us that somewhere wants to hope that 50 Cent’s character feels some sort of kinship with Tariq and, whether intentionally or unintentionally, finds some way to screw the plan up.
Will Kanan survive this?
That is the central question of this article, and it’s going to take a brilliant stroke from the writers to figure out a way for this to happen. With villains like Kanan, there is often a tipping point where they cannot venture far past it and hope to be the same anymore. Think of it as similar to the Trinity Killer in Dexter, where at a certain point, you realized that there was no way that he could make it out alive. Or, another good example of this is Nicholas Brody in Homeland — this was a man who ventured so far that there was no way to imagine his survival anymore.
It feels like Kanan is in so deep that if the vast majority of the characters see him, they’re going to just kill him without a second thought. How do you write around that? The showdown is highly anticipated, but it could also be very brief. Maybe Kanan is the show’s version of the Joker where he never really dies, but in order for Ghost to move forward once he realizes that he’s still out there, he may have to. Watching this play out should be both emotional and painful for some of the characters; watching how it all unfolds may come close to surpassing the greatness of this past episode — which, by our money, is the best episode of the whole series.
If you did miss it, head over to the link here to get a further preview regarding the next new episode of Power. (Photo: Starz.)