So it’s actually a profound statement of manhood, of masculinity, to protect her family. Because he’s also silencing someone who knows about Dru (Lovell Adams-Gray). When he says that, he’s also including the Tejadas in that. But what he says is, "It always comes down to me, my family, and a gun,” and he has to do what he has to do. It’s not that he wants to be a killer - he doesn’t want that. Look at who I really am in this moment, Mom.” And that knocks her back, and Naturi does an amazing performance with that, like, “Oh my God, he’s right.” But the kill at the end is not an assertion of any kind of identity in a sense. Tasha is trying to protect her son and she’s been away from him for some time, and when he squares off on her he does so as a man.
Do we think he is trying to prove it to himself, or maybe to others? Įarlier in the episode, Tariq declares himself a killer to Tasha, and then he shows that by taking it on himself to finish off Jabari.
If we’re on Power Book X and Tariq is 30 and Tommy is 50, different story. Right now, he’s a kid and he functions as a kid, so it’s also not a fair fight. So that’s something that makes it harder to tell more story with them, until Tariq is in a different place emotionally. It was one of the first things I told Joseph about the return as we were conceptualizing it, that he cannot break his word to Ghost - that is a completely different character. You know me better than that, but it was a really good question and I like your style! What I would say is Tommy’s relationship with Tariq does have a period on it because Ghost’s final action was “Don’t kill Tariq.” I’m not saying we couldn’t figure it out, but there is a weird difficulty in telling more story there, because Tommy is a man of action. I don’t talk about future series, obviously. You are a person in control of such things, so in your mind, do you feel like Tommy's cutting himself off for good from Tasha and Tariq? Will that hold true for him moving forward? Joseph says he felt like it was a finality. Part of that is because of the uncle he lost in Tommy, who says they will never see each other again.