James “Ghost” St. Patrick might be the poster child for murder on the dance floor, but Power lives on.
A short while before the Starz crime drama aired its final episode Sunday, and before Starz announced the greenlighting of an additional three (!) Power spinoffs, TVLine chatted with creator and showrunner Courtney Kemp about choosing a killer, Angela’s absence and which of the unused Ghost-murder outtakes blew her away. (And don’t forget to read the full finale recap here.)
TVLINE | Was it always Tariq that killed Ghost, with Tasha taking the blame? Walk me through when the idea for how the show would wrap came to you.
Well, in terms of superhero rules and the Shakespeare of it, Kim Roots, you know it had to be either Tariq or Tasha, right? Because, there’s no…you can’t…I mean, who else could kill him?! [Laughs] Now that Kanan is dead, there was nobody else, and I think the audience would have actually come to my house and burned it down if it were Tommy. Can you imagine how people would have felt? Oh, so robbed. So, robbed. So, yeah, it was going to come down to the two of them for sure. And then in terms of breaking it, I felt like at the end of the day —and this may be internalized misogyny, so hold on tight —I didn’t feel like it would be satisfying for the audience for Tasha to kill him, given just that Ghost would have seen her coming. She had no love for him at that point, and so I felt like Tariq was the only person who could have gotten close enough… because Ghost did not understand what he had done, just as many times, your parents don’t understand what they have done to you… I mean, the ultimate decision to kill Ghost is hers. She is the one who says, “I’m going to stop him”. Tariq says, “How?” Tariq doesn’t come up with that by himself. She gets him in the situation. They’re both guilty of murder in a way, aren’t they? It’s just that because she set it up, she is at least guilty of conspiracy.
TVLINE | What becomes of Yaz? Where does she end up?
With grandma. With Estelle.
TVLINE | Who only has rent paid for a year, so, I guess they’ll figure that out in a year.
How great, by the way, was it seeing Jeffrey Owens? Wasn’t he fabulous?
TVLINE | He was great. But it wasn’t surprising — you guys always got good guest stars.
Yeah. I mean he had had that whole moment, remember?
TVLINE | Yeah, Trader Joe’s. I remember.
Yeah, the Trader Joe’s moment. So it was like, time to bring him back. So we’re going to bring him back again going forward.
TVLINE | I heard that you guys shot all of the outcomes of everyone who might have killed Ghost. Is that true?
Yes. All in one night. It was very intense.
TVLINE | What was your second favorite after Tariq?
Tommy’s was amazing. Joe’s performance, which no one will ever see, was amazing. It was amazing. But you know, we were not going to have Tommy do it. So none of the actors knew who was going to do it at that time, so they were all giving 100 percent, because they didn’t know.
TVLINE | And you would never be tempted to like, put them on a deleted scenes reel or anything like that?
I would love to, if Starz would let me. I don’t always get to win that one, you know?
TVLINE| Is there anyone that you wanted to bring back for the finale that you couldn’t? Or is there any scene you wanted to shoot in the finale that it just wasn’t viable? Did you have anything left on your wish list?
That is such a great question that no one else has asked me. Go, Kim Roots. High five. I wish I had been able to have more, I guess…it would have been nice to have a little bit more Victor Garber, because I feel like Simon is always so delicious. You know, some of my favorite characters —like, Ghost didn’t get to have a cross, really, with Kate before he died. That would have been nice. Yeah, I have all these favorite characters that I didn’t get to revisit.
TVLINE | Were you ever tempted to have Lela Loren come back for the finale, in the way that Kanan did?
Well, she did come back for Ghost’s part of the finale, the [Episode 10] part, but she didn’t have a relationship with Tariq, so it wouldn’t have really made sense:
TVLINE | Yeah, but that might not have stopped other shows from doing something similar.
I know, but I have some weird OCD stuff, where I try not to cross certain things.
