“Raising Kanan” Kills Off a Fan-Favorite Character in Shocking Season 5 Premiere: ‘It’s Going to Be Tough’ (Exclusive)

Warning: this post contains spoilers for the season 5 premiere of Power Book III: Raising Kanan.

NEED TO KNOW

• The fifth and final season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan starts with a bang, literally, with the death of an OG character

• The death, showrunner Sascha Penn tells PEOPLE, “creates a lot of conflict and drama and, frankly, tragedy” in season 5

• Stars Patina Miller and Mekai Curtis tell PEOPLE why the death was “devastating” and tease how Kanan moves forward

Within the first five minutes of the final season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, a fan-favorite character is killed.

Season 4 of the Power prequel series left off on a major cliffhanger, as Kanan (Mekai Curtis) was holding his mom, Raq (Patina Miller), at gunpoint, and pulled the trigger as the screen went to black. The series confirmed ahead of the season 5 premiere that Raq survived, but the premiere episode revealed that another one of Kanan’s family members did not: Uncle Lou (Malcolm Mays).

Raq seemed to have accepted her fate as she faced Kanan’s gun, but then Lou walked into the house, intercepted Raq’s bodyguard, Ruben (Dean Wil), who was holding a gun up at Kanan, and the commotion caught Kanan’s attention. He turned around too fast and fired, killing his uncle in a twist that creator Sascha Penn sees as the show’s biggest death to date. “I think people are going to have a big, big reaction,” Penn tells PEOPLE ahead of the season 5 premiere. “It’s going to be tough.”

Penn says the decision to keep Raq alive wasn’t set in stone until shortly before production on the season 4 finale. “We went back and forth quite a bit,” Penn says. “I think ultimately, the feeling was for me, there was still more story to tell with Raq, and there was some unfinished business that I felt like I really wanted to [tie up].”

Once Raq’s death was off the table, Uncle Lou became the next victim “immediately,” he says. “Lou [is] the heart and conscience of the family, and so what I thought made a lot of sense is to remove that from the family … That’s why it sets off the season, because all of a sudden, once he’s gone, there’s no one to check everybody. And I think that creates a lot of conflict and drama and, frankly, tragedy.”

Even Miller, 41, had “no idea” whether she would make it through to see season 5 or not — and she definitely didn’t expect Mays to be killed off.

“It was devastating. It was so sad,” she tells PEOPLE of learning Lou’s fate. “I got to talk to Malcolm after [the table read] … We were both on the phone just sad, and I was devastated. And he understood — we both understand that this is what we sign up for [on a Power show].”

Filming Lou’s death, which Raq is by his side for, was “uncomfortable” for Miller. “Sitting in grief in that way is hard, you know? And as actors, luckily, we were on a set that they give us the freedom, and the respect, to sort of find it. Everyone’s just so supportive and gives you the room to have the moments.”

“It was very hard, but the emotions were very real. Everything about it was just real. And the finality of like, oh my God, this is our last moment — that’s devastating as Patina,” she continues of her last day with Mays, which was a “very hard, somber day on set.”

“He’s like my brother in real life, and so I mourned that in real time,” Miller adds. “It was devastating.”

Raq surviving the season 4 finale didn’t come as a surprise to Curtis, 25, who knew there was “no way” the scene would take that turn. “What Patina and I were trying to play, leading into that, was: it’s still a son looking for his mother. I think that was literally what that vibe was. So I knew there was going to be some accidental, somebody else comes in, or he just shoots at the wall.”

He similarly “wasn’t shocked to find out that we were going to be losing Uncle Lou,” he tells PEOPLE. “You understand that, canonically, coming into it, he’s losing all of his family. It just sucks that it was Lou, because he’s getting his spark back, he’s understanding what he wants to do. But that’s, again, just part of the poetry that is the show. The ones that you least expected are the ones that are going to wind up in the way of things.”

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In the rest of season 5, Kanan is “sitting with” what he’s done to his uncle, Curtis says. “He understands more than ever his impact and the things that he’s done and caused and created. He’s really reflecting on all the things that his mother taught him — especially that one scene in season 1, episode 1, where she takes him out to the beach, and he’s firing a gun and [she tells him], ‘Your name’s on that bullet, whatever you do after that is up to you.’ He’s really realizing that in this season.”

“It’s not necessarily that he’s okay with [killing Lou]. It’s very difficult to look at something or take accountability for destruction,” Curtis continues. “But he’s just realizing — this is what comes with the territory, this is what comes with what I’ve been trying to do.”

New episodes of Raising Kanan drop Fridays at midnight ET on Starz.

Read the original article on People