Happy New Year and welcome back Power fans! The STARZ drama returned Sunday night for the final episodes of the James St. Patrick saga. The question on everybody’s mind is, at least what the network’s social media campaign wants it to be, Who Shot Ghost? Well we know who didn’t do it. R.I.P. Dre, we hardly knew you.
I want to start by saying the device used in Sunday’s episode of giving you the sequence of events leading up to a major dramatic moment through the eyes of a specific characters POV is time honored. It has been done successfully throughout television and movie history. It is a device that I really enjoy when utilized properly. Sunday’s episode was not one of those times.
This is a problem we have been talking about, really for the last few seasons. When you have too many storylines to wrap at the end of a season, it boxes you into a corner. Ultimately we have to get to the reveal of who Ghost’s killer is, but the writers have to eliminate suspects and wrap up character storylines. So what we get is what we saw on Sunday.
Pro tip. None of the first few episodes will reveal Ghost’s killer. It will likely come in the penultimate episode with the final episode setting up the rest of the extended Power universe. But if they haven’t wrapped all the storylines by the third episode, then expect to see the reveal in the series finale.
Back to Dre…so he’s a family man now, singing church songs to his daughter Heaven? Didn’t he ditch his baby mama when he first linked up with the Feds? If Dre wasn’t the killer, they had to wrap his storyline. This was certainly one way to do it. Giving Dre some layers and context as a character is awesome. But we could’ve used this three seasons ago. Filling the screen with the backstory about his mother now is out of place. At this point, the audience is limping to the finish line with this series. Any true connection or empathy is reserved for Tasha, possibly Ghost or Tommy? Not someone like Dre.
As an aside, the theme of poor parenting intertwined with religion is actually very fascinating and something worth exploring. Again, would’ve been better three seasons ago and developed out over time.