(WARNING: Spoilers for the most recent Power Book III: Raising Kanan episode will be found below.)
This week’s episode of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, though not drama-filled, is fairly tense. Episode seven in season three, titled “Where All Are Guilty,” picks up at Kanan and Ronnie’s new partnership. One of their first acts together is to rough up Paul, who threatened to call the police on Kanan in retaliation for Kanan taking Paul’s drivers. This is the start of Kanan’s more sinister ways. Throughout episode 7, we see him threaten Famous, go toe-to-toe with Jukebox, disrespect Iesha during a date, and pay a visit to Krystal — something that will prove to bring on more issues. Kanan is getting worse by the episode, but the worst has yet to come.
“Where All Are Guilty” also shows the aftermath of Lou’s visit to Scrappy’s mother. It turns out that Lou’s visit was unintentional as he was too drunk to realize what he was doing when he visited her home. That didn’t matter as Scrappy’s mother went to the police, spoke to Detective Howard, and told him everything Lou said. Luckily for the Thomas family, Howard told Raq about Scrappy’s mother’s visit and she instructed Marvin to have Lou take care of it. That resulted in Lou killing Scrappy’s mother to close the episode.
Elsewhere, Jukebox’s music career continues as her girl group Butta holds a cover shoot and prepares for a performance in the mall. Tensions in the group are still high as Krystal and Jukebox still can’t get along and it only worsens when Jukebox sees Kanan and Krystal flirting with each other. Jukebox warns Krystal to stay away from him, but as we see, she doesn’t listen to Jukebox’s warning. We also see Famous move back home with his mom and Raq makes her first move back into the game by setting up an operation with Unique’s old distributor.
Here are some of the major points and questions we had after the seventh episode of season three:
Kanan is burning every bridge in his life. For reasons caused by his mother and worsened by both him and her, Raq and Kanan’s relationship is the worst it’s ever been. Kanan and Famous are also on bad terms, so much so that Famous moved out of his own apartment for his safety after he was threatened by both Kanan and Ronnie. Kanan’s relationship with Jukebox soured after he decided to work with Ronnie, Snaps, and Pop, and it worsened after Kanan’s first date with Iesha ended on a bad note. (Just wait until she finds out that Kanan quickly moved on to Krystal). Lastly, Kanan had Paul roughed up by Ronnie and his associates as retaliation for Paul threatening to go to the police. Put all these things together and it’s clear that Kanan is a firestarter who has little remorse for the people and things he’s burned, so long as he gets what he wants when he wants it. There’s no telling the lengths Kanan will go to and the damage he’ll cause but it’s just a matter of time until he’s burned back.
I would love it if everyone just let Jukebox live out her burgeoning music dreams without fights or chaotic interruptions. First, we had her dad interrupting an audition to tell Butta’s group manager that she needed to make Jukebox the group leader. There’s Kanan’s simultaneous mistreatment of Iesha and flirting with Krystal. Finally, we have Krystal and Jukebox’s issues as the two just can’t get along. Altogether, Juke’s music career pursuit is proving to be more drama-filled than it needs to be. Pair that with rehearsals and it amounts to an extremely stressful situation that could affect the success of the group, especially in their early stages. Butta seems like a talented collective, and they can achieve everything they want to if the group members just focus on the music and keep the other noise out.
Episode six concludes with the realization from Raq that she is meant to be in the streets. Life as a law-abiding citizen is a waste of her talents in her opinion, so with that, she takes the steps to get back in the game. She connects with Unique’s former distributor so that she can sell out of a Chinese restaurant like Unique planned to. The only difference is that Raq wants to take the operation to all the restaurants that are under the ownership of the Chinese restaurant owner. She finds out that the owner has 20 restaurants, and just like that, Raq has all she needs to get back into the game in full swing. There’s something about Raq’s return that signals something different than ever. As if her next moves in the games will be better than ever, and if that’s the case, the future is truly bright for Raq and her endeavors.
In addition to supporting Jukebox and her music career as well as Raq’s endeavors, Marvin is also working to get Lou and and Gerald, two important people in his life, back on the right track. Gerald is battling a drug addiction and it’s sent him off the deep end a couple of times in season three. The first was earlier this season when Marvin saved Gerald from a deadly overdose by seemingly taking him to a hospital. The second was this week when Marvin confronted Gerald about leaving his daughters in his car for over an hour so that he could shoot up drugs in his home. Luckily for him and the girls, Marvin found the girls in the car, took them inside, confronted Gerald, and told him to get his sh*t together.
At the same time, Marvin is also trying to get Lou to stop his frequent drinking as it’s landing them both in a heap of trouble. In episode six, Lou makes a drunken apology to Scrappy’s mother for killing her son, but, as revealed in this week’s episode, he has no recollection of it. He only realizes what he did when Marvin tells him that Scrappy’s mother came into the precinct to tell detectives about Lou’s visit. Thankfully for them, Detctive Howard met with Scrappy’s mother and then told Raq who directed Marvin to clean up the mess. As a consequence of his actions, Lou had to kill Scrappy’s mother, but before he did, Marvin let him know that his drinking was what caused a lot of his recent problems. Lou and Gerald both need to clean up their act and save themselves from any future trouble. Marvin can be a big help, and he’s committed to being that, but it will only work if Lou and Gerald want to help themselves.
New episodes of ‘Power Book III: Raising Kanan’ are available on the STARZ app on Fridays at 12:00 am ET/PT and on the STARZ TV channel at 8:00 pm ET/PT.