Spoiler-light: premise and relationships only. Season 5 events are not described.
The short answer
Raising Kanan is the third series in the Power franchise and a prequel to the original Power (2014–2020). In Power, Kanan Stark is a hardened, older dealer played by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, who also executive produces this show. Raising Kanan asks how a smart, soft-hearted teenager becomes that man, and answers mostly with one word: Raq.
The family at the center
- Kanan Stark (Mekai Curtis) — fifteen at the start, desperate to be taken seriously, still close to his mother.
- Raquel “Raq” Thomas (Patina Miller) — Kanan’s mother and the real boss, running the business with her brothers while keeping Kanan away from it. Most of the show’s best scenes are her deciding what a son is allowed to know.
- Marvin and Lou-Lou (London Brown, Malcolm Mays) — Raq’s brothers: Marvin is the volatile muscle, Lou-Lou the reluctant one who wants out into music.
- Detective Malcolm Howard (Omar Epps) — a cop whose connection to Kanan matters more than the first episodes let on.
How it plays
The series trades the slick 2010s clubs of Power for early-’90s Queens: block parties, pagers, and a drug trade growing more violent. It works best as a family drama about control, and the crime plot is the pressure that tests it.
The final season
Starz renewed the show through a fifth and last season, which premiered June 12, 2026 with ten episodes released weekly. Seasons 1–4 are on the Starz app. You do not need to have watched Power first, though fans will catch a lot of foreshadowing.
Where it sits in the Power universe
The Power franchise is easiest to follow as a timeline:
- Raising Kanan — early 1990s, Kanan as a teenager.
- Power (2014–2020) — the original, with Ghost, Tommy and an adult Kanan.
- Power Book II: Ghost — after the original, following Ghost’s son Tariq.
- Power Book IV: Force — Tommy’s story in Chicago.
You can watch Raising Kanan first; it was designed to work for newcomers. Watching it after Power adds irony, because you know who Kanan becomes and what he does to the people around him.
Why Raq is the center
Patina Miller’s Raq is the reason the show is more than a prequel. She is a mother trying to give her son a better life while running the business that makes that life dangerous. Her control over Kanan, deciding what he knows and whom he trusts, is both love and the thing that pushes him toward the man he becomes. The show is at its best when it makes the audience understand her choices and fear them at the same time.
Themes to watch for
Inheritance. What parents hand down, money, reputation, enemies, and habits of violence.
Loyalty versus family. The Thomas siblings love each other and do not trust each other, which is a dangerous combination in a criminal business.
The period. Pagers, block parties, music and the changing drug trade of the early 1990s give the show texture and explain some of its pressures.
How to watch
Seasons 1–5 stream on Starz. Each season runs about ten episodes; the fifth was announced as the last. If you are short on time, seasons 1 and 2 are the most self-contained introduction to the family.
FAQ
Is Raising Kanan based on a true story? It is fiction, though the franchise draws on the world 50 Cent grew up in.
Do I need to watch Power first? No. It helps with references but is not required.
Who plays young Kanan? Mekai Curtis.
Who plays Raq? Patina Miller.
Is Raising Kanan ending? Yes. Season 5, which premiered June 12, 2026, is the final season.
Quick facts
- Full title: Power Book III: Raising Kanan.
- Network: Starz.
- Premiere: July 2021.
- Creator: Sascha Penn.
- Executive producer: Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, among others.
- Final season: season 5, ten episodes, from June 12, 2026.
- Setting: South Jamaica, Queens, early 1990s.
Our take
Raising Kanan is the Power series most worth recommending to people who do not usually watch crime dramas. Its real subject is a family business, and the business happens to be illegal. Patina Miller gives one of the franchise’s strongest performances, and Mekai Curtis makes Kanan’s slow hardening believable rather than inevitable. The show sometimes overloads its seasons with rival crews and side plots, but whenever it returns to the kitchen table of the Thomas family, it finds its footing again. If you watch only one season, watch the first; it sets up every pressure the later seasons pay off, and it ends at a natural pause.
Newcomers often ask whether the show glamorizes the drug trade. It shows the money and the status, but it also lingers on what the business does to children, neighbors and the family itself, which keeps it closer to tragedy than fantasy.