50 Cent’s Kanan Story Comes Full Circle in ‘Raising Kanan’ Final Season, Says Mekai Curtis

The fifth and final season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan is shaping up to be the moment when the character finally becomes the version fans first met in the original Power series. Mekai Curtis, who plays young Kanan Stark, spoke about this shift.

Curtis explained that this season brings Kanan much closer to the version of the character originally played by 50 Cent. According to him, the earlier seasons focused on Kanan’s anger and confusion as a teenager dealing with family conflict and personal mistakes. Now, things are changing in a major way.

“You’re going to see more of the mindset that comes from the 50 Cent version of Kanan,” Curtis said. He added that earlier seasons showed a young man reacting emotionally to the world around him, but the final season forces him to grow up fast. “But in this final season, you really see him step up and understand what Raq has been saying.”

Raq, Kanan’s mother played by Patina Miller, remains a central force in his life. Curtis said Kanan begins to see her in a different light, even as tension between them reaches a breaking point.

“He’s turning into exactly what she was — or is — in so many ways,” Curtis said. He also explained that Kanan struggles with this realization. “He doesn’t see it, and he’s trying everything in his power to not be that in his mind, but he literally is becoming his mother’s child.”

The final season is described by Curtis as a direct clash between mother and son. He said the story has been building toward this conflict since the beginning of the series, but now it finally comes to the surface in full force.

“This is an all-out war between mother and son,” he said. “This is the thing that all of the previous seasons were alluding to, but also trying to keep from happening.”

Curtis also talked about how the emotional pressure builds on Kanan as his world falls apart. He said the character has already lost many of the people and things that mattered most to him, leaving only his family and a need to figure out who he really is becoming.

“At this point, Kanan has basically lost everything that was near and dear to him that’s not his family,” he said. “You see him trying to figure out what that is and what that looks like for real.”

The actor also reflected on the connection between his performance and 50 Cent’s original portrayal of Kanan Stark. While 50 Cent serves as an executive producer on the series, Curtis said he has been trusted to shape the character in his own way.

Curtis previously said at a season 3 premiere that the rapper had “handed the baton off” to him. He explained that there is a sense of trust between them. “He trusts us enough to kind of know what’s going on. He’s handed the baton, and he trusts us to keep doing what we’re doing.”

The final season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan continues that evolution, bringing the character’s story closer to the darker version fans already know from Power.

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