Power season 5 episode 8 review: Tasha’s plan ends in a bloodbath

Tonight, Power season 5 episode 8 showed us one thing more than anything else: Tasha can be just as smart and methodical as Ghost. She is the one with the black hat in this episode, and because of the moves that she made, the series is changed completely forever.

Over the course of tonight’s episode, we saw the death of one of the series’ most significant characters in Kanan Stark. This is a man who was a ruthless killer for most of the series’ run and even in his closing minutes, he remained a ruthless killer as he started to realize precisely the trap that he had fallen into. After being confronted with a choice that could save his family in the Raymond Jones investigation, Tariq made the call to sacrifice his sometimes-mentor. He allowed him to be set up with the gun used in the murder investigation so that he, a “friend of the family,” could be set up in just about everything.

Kanan wasn’t willing to go to prison, though, as he engaged in a shootout with police that led to many dead cops and also him losing his own life. The way in which Kanan died felt exactly like what you would expect from him — in a car, attempting to get away from the scene of the crime. Kanan was a killer, and after surviving his previous near-death experience he never acted like he was afraid of death. Instead, he was just ready to do whatever he felt needed to be done and would take the consequences if the consequences came.

Probably the most-important line in all of this was Kanan proclaiming that you’re not a real killer until you kill someone you love. On some level, Tariq loved Kanan. He just loved his mother more and he went along with her plan because of that. He also still remembered the death of Kanan’s son Shawn and that was the one thing that always would be a difference between the two. On some level, Tariq never forgot about that and this was the real vengeance for it. The “friend of the family,” played fantastically by 50 Cent in this episode, is now gone.

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The aftermath of this

It’s going to be severe, given that Tommy now has no trust in Ghost over it. He, understandably, thinks that Ghost had some sort of role to play in this even if he didn’t. It makes some sense that he would at least consider it, especially since Ghost’s own actions have set this precedent. That’s what makes Power so fantastic — nothing is forgotten, and Ghost has dug some of his own grave with Tommy, who was under the impression that there was still a plan in the works involving Dre. It was also one he was prepared to execute until Ghost learning about Tasha’s plan got in the way of it. (Granted, there was another way to take down Dre — pinning Diego’s death on him is a good start.)

Moving forward, these characters are going to have to come to grips with everything that they’ve done here, and that includes Tommy trying to convince LaKeisha to testify and Joe Proctor throwing Angela under the bus to save his own hide. She thinks at the moment that Tasha’s plan has her in the clear, but Proctor has worked to ensure now that this isn’t quite the case. While maybe one door is closed, there are still some others that are still out there. The cops on this show aren’t idiots, and that’s been proven a few times over.

CarterMatt Verdict

An excellent, game-changing episode. The death of Kanan, despite all of the gunfire, was in the end quiet and powerful. The sight of him dying in the car is going to stick with us in ways very few other ones do.

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