Like mother, like son is the name of the game for Power Book III: Raising Kanan, and the latest installment is a grim reminder of how a parent often functions as a child’s first role model.

As characters in Starz’s Power prequel series universe embark on a new chapter, Kanan has officially stepped into his own. The question remains: Is he truly built for a life in the streets?

Is Kanan ready to inherit the lifestyle he’s learned from his mother?

“I don’t think anybody ever stepping into something will truly be ready,” Mekai Curtis told Blavity’s Shadow and Act. “I think you kind of just have to take it on the cuff as it comes. If you sink, you sink. If you swim, you swim. I think the story we see unfold with this show through and through with all of the characters is a constant audible call of, like, oh you thought you were going to do this one thing? But nope, surprise, you gotta switch courses. I genuinely think that is more so what happens in that entire space of [Raising] Kanan.”

Nuances in familial relationships

Going into the fourth season, showrunner Sascha Penn focused on what the complexities of familial relationships mean to him as a writer as well as how to bring viewers into a world where, sometimes, the most essential relationship in our lives is rooted in chaos.

“The relationships are very complicated — in some cases, very dysfunctional — and there are definitely some moments where I’m like, ‘What does this say about me? Where am I getting this from?’” he said. “And, of course, much of it is informed from my own sort of sense of the world and sense of myself. For me, I kind of feel like it’s very hard for people to change. It takes a lot for people to feel inspired to change. It usually takes something really big happening, something seismic in their lives, which is hard.”

“I’ve gone through some tremendous change over the course of this series to be honest with you, and I think a lot of that is on the page. The audience doesn’t see the scripts, but Mekai does, and he knows I’ll put a lot of sort of editorializing in between the dialogue to try to locate the characters emotionally, but to also locate myself emotionally when I’m writing it. And so much of it is about, you know, my father died also as we were shooting this, in an accident. Just so much of that is on the page. On some level, I do feel like there is a hopefulness to this series, which is hard to believe. But the hopefulness that I see in the series is that you do have characters who are trying to figure things out, who are trying to be better. They may not get there, but they’re trying. And to me, trying is kind of 95% of the battle.”

The power of art imitating life

Patina Miller has captivated audiences and Power franchise fanatics from day one for the layers she brings to the character Raquel “Raq” Thomas. On a personal level, she said the most rewarding part of breathing life into the role is playing a person who makes the audience question things about themselves.

“Raquel is not good or evil, because she’s so many different things at all times. She is heroic in one sense, but then she’s the villain in another sense,” Miller said. “You watch her try so desperately to be a good mom. But also, she has this scarred relationship with her own mother. And what that means, and a lot of what she’s gotten from her own mother — the hardness from her mother — lives within her, which is why she’s a little hard with those that she loves, right?”

She added, “You do pick up things from your family, and that just is what it is — but also, you know, she always is battling that as well. And we are who we are. At the end of the day, so much of who we are comes from the people who raised us, the people who we’ve been around. And sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad. I love being able to play roles like this that make an audience perk up, listen, question themselves. … It’s created conversations in life. All of the different conversations that I’ve heard about the show, and what Raq represents, what Kanan represents, who are the Kanans and Raqs in their relationships and their lives, has been very interesting.” 

The fourth season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan premieres on Starz on March 7.