The cracks within the Thomas family are only going to widen in Power Book III: Raising Kanan season 2. Raq has still not revealed to Kanan that Det. Howard is his father. And now, Howard has survived the hit Raq placed on him — at the hands of Kanan, no less — which will inevitably cause problems for Raq. HollywoodLife spoke EXCLUSIVELY with MeKai Curtis and Patina Miller about how Kanan may react if he does learn the truth.
“That will change things a lot for sure. Raq is Kanan’s world, and everything that Raq has told Kanan up until this point he has believed with his entire heart,” MeKai told HollywoodLife during the show’s season 2 junket. “So for him to find out that Def Con wouldn’t be his father would change a lot of things and make Kanan question basically everything about his relationship with Raq or even Raq herself. That will change a lot of things. That’s the sort of realm that relationship falls into [in season 2].”
Patina added, “Everything that he’s tried to live up to has been trying to live up to not just as mom but who his father was, right? Def Con and all of the choices that he’s grappling with, and one is about I’m Def Con’s son, so to find out that’s actually not it, that’s a big ole thing. And for Raq, the stakes could not be higher for that. First off, finding out that he’s the son of a cop puts them both in a very unsafe space. I mean, Raq sort of dealt with this in a way where she didn’t want that to be the secret, but that’s just a secret. She’s had to keep them safe, keep both of them safe. It doesn’t justify what she’s doing now, but I think their relationship will be tested, and it is going to be tested. If he finds out, that just puts a whole other layer of chaos that she just does not have time for right now.”
At the end of season 1, neither Raq nor Kanan knew that Howard is alive. Kanan promised his mother that he finished the job, but he looked skeptical from the moment she asked. Patina noted that both Raq and Kanan will find out soon enough, but Raq’s not scared about Howard still kicking.
“It’s about how she keeps the secret, how she maneuvers within that to make sure that he never tells. Will she let him tell? Will she not? So I think it’s just an uncomfortable place for her, and it’s one that’s going to play out and that people will have to just watch, but Kanan is coming back to town, Howard is alive. There’s this a lot of juiciness,” Patina teased.
The fracture between Raq and Kanan ultimately started back in the first season ever since he decided to “spin the world into chaos” by following in her footsteps. From the start, Raq hasn’t ever been able to fully trust her son in dealings with her line of work. Now that the stakes are even higher, that truth is going to put pressure on the mother-son relationship as they both try to protect the other.
“Now we’re in this face of she doesn’t need Kanan to protect her, and that’s the thing that she’s always saying is like, ‘I don’t need you to protect me. That’s not your job to protect me.’ That’s just the way she feels about it, so she’s sort of like ‘I’m doing the protecting.’ All of that was what the first season was about, them going through this journey of protecting one another.” Raising Kanan season 2 airs Sundays on STARZ.