Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0
4
And just like that, everything is falling apart.
Just when you thought everyone was going to band together and defeat the biggest evil of all, Detective Carter, things went spectacularly awry, as things tend to do on Power Book II: Ghost.
Carter and Noma working together? Brayden killing drug dealers in the name of love? WHAT IS GOING ON?
This hour was a weird one because, on the one hand, nothing should have been overly surprising. Loyalty comes and goes with these people, but still, some moments genuinely confused me.
And I have no idea how they plan to wrap everything up in the next two hours. Good luck with that.
Carter gets increasingly villainous every week, and lying straight up to Nico about Felicia’s death, who has his back more than anyone else, must come back to bite along with his other lies.
Carter doesn’t seem to trust anyone fully, and the way he’s moving, which is fast, loose, and reckless, will eventually come to a head because why should anyone have loyalty to him?
Monet and Tariq spend the whole hour trying to get up from under him, but when your plan hinges on help from the one woman who wants you dead, the chances of your plan working out are slim to none.
Tariq and Monet forgetting all their beef to work together feels abrupt, even if it’s something no one is really talking about. Yes, they have a common enemy right now, but the history between these two being completely forgotten is another tragedy of the speedrun these final episodes are on.
Noma would never willingly help Tariq and Monet, especially when she had no reason to believe them entirely.
For all she knew, they could have been setting her up (which they were), and she was right to bide her time.
The unlikely meeting between Tariq, Monet, Noma, and Cane gave us one of the hour’s best moments: Noma flashing her ring at Monet, with Tariq snickering in the background.
Monet is beyond tired this season. While the first half of the season dug into her past and helped us better see that Monet has always put the business above her children, you can tell she’s trying to protect her children, but she’s doing it in her Monet way.
Meaning she’s trying to protect them by berating them, telling them they’re stupid, and doing things behind their back.
It would have been wildly out of character for Monet to emerge from her near-death experience and suddenly become the mother of the year. That’s never going to be Monet Tejada.
But is she actively rooting on her children’s downfalls now? No, she’s not. It’s also clearly weighing on her that she has no control over them anymore. She’s pushed them all to a point where they’re making their own decisions for themselves, regardless of what it means for her.
For Cane, it took him a long time to emerge from Monet’s shadow, and his situation with Noma has made him feel like he’s indestructible.
Cane versus Dru has been brewing for years, and it hit a fever pitch when Papi chose Dru over Cane to follow in his footsteps. Cane hasn’t ever moved on from that, and no amount of slick insults from Monet or Dru will make Cane tuck his tail and run back to the family.
However, Noma teaming up with Carter should force him to pick a side once and for all.
The reveal that Noma and Carter were going to combine evil forces instead of going after each other was definitely meant to be a big, shocking cliffhanger, but it landed with a big thud because those two have a maximum of one hour to wreak havoc before it’s all over.
But it should force Cane to either fully alienate himself from his family or force him to team up with them to defeat the mega-evil that a Noma and Carter partnership inspires.
The same goes for Dru.
He’s running around with Cane, going petty for petty, and doing Carter’s bidding, but Noma and Carter together do nothing for him and further hurt Monet, which doesn’t appear to be what he’s after now.
Dru has to be working some con on Carter, and I respect it, if only because he’s being proactive instead of reactive. Maybe his plan will be a hot mess, but at least he’s trying to do something, which I can appreciate.
Whether you’ve liked Dru’s arc this season or not, you must admit that he’s showing some serious flashes of the man Papi saw. He’s working angles, gaining leverage, and he’s tactile. He’s the opposite of unmotivated.
Dru has made many foolish choices in the past, and maybe things with Carter will explode in his face, but he’s doing something for himself. And that’s a point ALL of the Tejeda children have needed to get to.
The last of those children, Diana, was having a tough time with what happened to her, and not only was she grieving the loss of her baby, but she was also feeling guilt and shame about killing Felicia and what that would do to her son.
Felicia was not a good person. Even though we barely knew her, it doesn’t feel like a leap to make a statement like that because she was out actively aiding criminals while walking on some moral high ground, and she beat Diana to a pulp, causing her to miscarry her baby.
That’s a horrendous human being. But that doesn’t mean Diana won’t feel bad about the repercussions of her actions.
It’s unclear exactly how much time has passed from Felicia’s death to where we see Diana here, but she’s not handling things well, and she doesn’t really have anyone to confide in.
She tries with Tariq, but it’s Tariq. There’s not much he’ll ever feel guilty about, and even if he did, he’s not one to sit around commiserating with.
I said this after watching Power Book II: Ghost Season 4 Episode 7, and I’ll reiterate it here, but in another life, Tariq and Diana make sense. They make much more sense than nearly anyone else Tariq has ever dated, and there’s a quiet chemistry between the two that works.
But in THIS LIFE, they need to call it a wrap and move on. Diana has baby fever, and while Tariq feels something about the loss of his child, he’s clearly in no rush to have another baby, and that’s okay.
They have never been on the same page, and it’s time to go their separate ways. If the series ends and Tariq and Diana make it out alive, they should never speak to each other again, and I’m so serious.
Diana needs to take a page from her oldest rival Effie’s playbook and get the hell out of New York City so she can start fresh. She will never be free from the Tejada madness as long as she is tied to that city and those people.
Circling back to Tariq (because how did we get this far and barely mention the man), he was a frazzled mess as he always is, and with only two hours left, I genuinely can not predict what’s going to happen to him.
Ultimately, he will realize that he has to get rid of both Noma AND Carter, and figuring that out should be his main priority.
If he wants to ascend to be anything, bigger than Ghost, bigger than Ghost and Tommy combined, he will need to find a way to dead those two and find some kind of truce with the Tejadas.
Well, whichever Tejadas are left when the dust settles, because there’s no way EVERYONE makes it out of this series alive. The odds could not be less in their favor. As usual, he’ll need Brayden because he always needs Brayden, as much as he may not want to admit it.
They need each other, and we’ve seen the two in much worse places than they’re currently at, but it’s so clear that everything that’s led them to where they are now has just broken them down in a way that I’m starting to wonder if they’d also be better off going their separate ways.
The two always show up for one another, but they’re so disjointed right now. Neither is being honest with the other, and they’re both so stressed and on high alert that every time they interact, you’re waiting for the argument to start.
Brayden found another love interest in Elle this season that was headed nowhere fast, if only because they genuinely do not know one another.
Getting disavowed by the Westons, kicked out of school, and then only having Tariq has done more of a number on Brayden than maybe he ever realized. And Elle was someone away from everything where he could wind down and not be a former Weston ingratiated in the drug world.
But as we’ve seen throughout the series, Brayden doesn’t always make the correct choices regarding women, nor does he seem to understand the women he’s dating.
And while you could consider it noble that he sought to exact revenge on the drug dealer who gave Elle the bad drugs, to know Elle would be to see that she wouldn’t want that.
She’s not about that life and had every right to react as she did.
It leaves Brayden out in the cold with no girl and no best friend because Tariq thinks he’s lost his mind.
The hour ends in such an odd place because we’re obviously continuing on the trajectory of a team-up to bring Carter and now Noma down, but everything feels so scattered.
There are a bunch of different plot points just hanging out there, and it’s starting to feel like there’s no way the ending to this isn’t rushed.
Does that mean it’s going to be unsatisfying? Not necessarily. But it just feels like they will run out of time to give every character and plotline the time it deserves.
Everything Else You Need To Know
- Davis is such a mess. Did he seem actually jealous about Cane and Noma? Or was that just me? He needs to keep that head in the game because Noma doesn’t want him any more than she wants Cane.
- Speaking of Noma, the way she lied to Anya was WILD. Anya seems hip to her mother, though, and while Tariq will probably use the intel she’s fed him to help bring down Noma, don’t be shocked if Anya ultimately turns her back on Mommy dearest.
- This season has shown the Stansfield classes the least and we’re all better for it.
- Effie’s mom showing up was quite a surprise! She sounds like a terrible woman, and I understand why Effie wants nothing to do with her. Again, this feels like something they could have tapped into sooner with Effie rather than dumping it here and giving it zero room to breathe.
- I sound like a broken record, but get these men away from the ladies! Cane needs to let Effie be great on another coast.
Two hours left. That’s it. We will be done with Power Ghost forever, and it feels wrong even to say that.
A lot needs to happen before the screen truly fades to black, and I’m curious about what you guys are looking forward to seeing before it all ends.
Who’s going to make it out of the series alive? Drop your thoughts below!
You can watch Power Book II: Ghost on Fridays at 8/7c on Starz.
