‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ Season 5 Episode 4 Recap: Kanan’s Villain Era Begins, and Raq Is Already Paying the Price

‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan‘ dropped one of its most consequential hours of the final season this week, and episode 4, titled “Pawns and Rooks,” made the chess metaphor embedded in its title impossible to miss. Kanan and Raq do not come face to face in this episode, but their forces are absolutely clashing, and something is going to give very soon.

Kanan is moving against Raq and Flossy’s new network from multiple angles simultaneously. One of the episode’s key reveals is the identity of the escort Kanan has been getting close to, who turns out to be a young Jarita, the woman who will eventually become Shawn’s mother, familiar to longtime Power franchise fans.

We learn more about her personal life, including her special needs brother and her grandmother being in rehab, and that she holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology, though circumstances have pushed her into a very different life.

Kanan uses this relationship to devastating effect, kidnapping one of Flossy’s escorts and forcing her to swap the drugs she was supposed to deliver with a lethal batch. The client who receives the tainted drugs turns out to be a federal judge, who dies from the overdose. Flossy is furious, and Raq’s new partnership has taken its first serious hit before it has even properly taken root.

Meanwhile, Raq and Marvin tried to neutralize Stefano by calling in a hit through the Memphis crew, but one of the three contract killers switched sides. Stefano is left alive and now knows exactly what Raq was planning, which puts her in the kind of danger she cannot easily negotiate her way out of. Her business is exposed on one front, and her life is potentially on the line on another.

Taz’s storyline reaches its inevitable end in this episode. Kanan figures out that Taz was never actually short on the count and realizes Breeze had been testing him the entire time. The confrontation ends with Kanan shooting and killing Taz, and Breeze then shows Kanan how to properly dispose of a body, another lesson in the ruthless life that is being prepared for him.

Elsewhere, Jukebox is caught short on the bribe money owed to corrupt officer Garcia, who makes it very clear there will be consequences. Marvin shares another meaningful conversation with a pastor about Lou-Lou’s fate and whether someone like him could go to heaven, a thread that continues to show genuine character growth in a figure who spent years defined by violence.

The episode’s biggest bombshell lands at the very end. Breeze tells Kanan that they are blood brothers, both sons of DefCon. Whether this is the truth or an elaborate manipulation remains the episode’s central open question heading into episode 5. Breeze may genuinely believe it, or he may be tightening his grip on Kanan by making him feel a familial loyalty that would make betrayal feel unthinkable.

Episode 5 of ‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ drops on July 10 at 8 p.m. ET on Starz, with next week’s preview teasing Stefano sending Kanan after Raq once again, suggesting the mother-and-son collision course is about to escalate to a level neither of them will be able to walk back from.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!