Power Season 6 Premiere Recap: Angela's Fate Revealed!
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Warning: This post contains major spoilers from Power‘s Season 6 premiere.
Ladies and gentlemen, James St. Patrick isn’t the only ghost in Power‘s Season 6 premiere.
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Yes, even though Assistant United States Attorney Angela Valdes appears in a trailer for the crime drama’s final season — and I’ll admit it, I fell for thinking that she’d survive the direct hit she sustained at the end of the Season 5 finale — she’s dead. Super dead. Absolutely-not-coming-back-from-this-dead.
Meanwhile, the stage is set for Ghost and Tommy’s final (?) confrontation, which gets off to a bullet-ridden start before the latter even really knows it’s begun.
Read on for the highlights of “Murderers.”
IT’S ALREADY TOO LATE | The episode opens moments after the events of the finale, with Angela whisked to the hospital via ambulance. Ghost is freaking out, but he pulls it together enough to dodge questions by the cops on the scene. No, he didn’t see the shooter, he tells them, and they are understandably dubious. He flashes back to various moments in his adult relationship with Angela, but his reverie is interrupted by the arrival of her sister, Paz, who screams that he’s a murderer.
Elsewhere, Tommy makes a beeline to Tasha: He needs an alibi, and he wants her to provide one. “Wait a f—king minute: Who were you there to kill?” she asks, realization dawning. “Ghost tricked me into killing my father. You think I’m gonna let some s—t like that just slide?” he counters. Ooh, Tasha is HOT. “You took a shot at the devil, and you missed!” she rebukes him, adding that if he wants her to vouch for his whereabouts at the time of the shooting, he needs to fix things between him and Ghost.
PROOF OF DEATH
| In case we had any doubt about whether or not Angela is really dead, the news is stated outright at an emergency meeting of the AUSA’s office. A stunned Saxe, Robinson and Donovan grieve for about 30 seconds before launching into the game of who’s most to blame for their coworker’s death (and Greg’s… and Mike’s…). Eventually, Saxe says he’ll take the lead on figuring out who killed Angie.
Throughout their discussion, I can’t help but hold onto a small thread of suspicion that Angela isn’t really gone for good. I mean, for a woman in the pickle she was in, a lil’ faked death could do a world of good, and isn’t there SOME way that SOME Fed got to her and convinced her to play possum for the sake of the investigation (and maybe a little legal clemency, to boot)? But all of those thoughts evaporate in the next scene, when Paz sits with her sister’s dead body in the hospital morgue. Angela is laid out like a lox platter past its prime, all cold and graying at the edges, and there’s no doubt that she is most sincerely dead. (Make sure to read our post mortem interview with show boss Courtney Kemp on why Angela had to die in the premiere.)
When Saxe shows up, he asks Paz to authorize an autopsy, and she tells him to go to hell: She knows James St. Patrick is behind her sister’s death, and she refuses to give the Feds permission to further mess with Angela’s body. He argues that the autopsy will allow them to collect evidence, and if she doesn’t acquiesce… and St. Patrick gets away scot-free… “the only person to blame’s gonna be you.” Nice people skills there, Saxe.
Saxe is working on a theory that St. Patrick killed Angela because he thought she was the female witness (whom we know is really Maria Suarez). When he returns to the office, though, he’s surprised to find that Tameika has been fired — somebody’s gotta be the scapegoat! — and she’s been replaced by Jacob Warner (hi, Californication‘s Evan Handler!) Saxe immediately tells his new boss that he is likely the leak that led to Angela getting killed (he told Proctor, remember?) but still thinks that Proctor is their best bet at getting Ghost. In fact, on his way back to the office, he met with the lovably crooked lawyer, slipping him just enough information to try to provoke a second attack. After all, Angela didn’t sign any paperwork, and she wasn’t a Federal witness, which means no automatic death penalty for the person who killed her. But Maria IS a Federal witness, and anyone who tries to take her out would essentially write his or her own death warrant.
Eventually, Det. Rodriguez shows up at Warner’s office and announces that she wants to be part of the AUSA’s task force investigating Angela’s murder. She eventually gets her wish.
TARIQ PLAYS HOOKY | After Tommy meets up with Keisha exactly long enough to tell her that a) Ghost is still alive and b) he needs her to toss his gun in the river, he speeds away with a vague promise to call her. He goes to his apartment, unaware that Ghost is waiting to jump him there. The two have a big, physical fight; during it, Tommy learned that his shot killed Angela and Ghost learns that Tommy knows about Ghost’s shady machinations regarding Teresi. Tariq shows up in the middle of his dad and his uncle beating the snot out of each other, and Omari Hardwick’s delivery of the line “Why aren’t you in school?!” makes me laugh out loud. For reasons I do not understand, Ghost gives his kid 10 minutes to talk to Tommy alone, then leaves the apartment.
He heads over to meet Tasha at the nightclub, where he informs her that “the woman I love is gone.” Well, DAMN. She, in turn, demands to know the whereabouts of Terry, “the man that I loved” — but she’s pretty sure he’s dead. She also announces that she wants a divorce.
Later, Ghost lets Proctor know that he was wrong about Angela being the Feds’ witness, and Proctor tells Ghost about the other female witness. Proctor suggests giving Tommy up, but Ghost says he’d prefer to kill him instead. That little nugget of information, however, is left out when St. Patrick and his lawyer voluntarily meet with the AUSA’s office. Ghost spins a story about how he and Angie met up at their old high school so she could tell him she wasn’t going to testify against him, and Saxe and Donovan definitely don’t believe him. But he continues the lie, saying he has no idea who killed AUSA Valdes.
SMOKE HIM IF YOU’VE GOT HIM | Meanwhile, when Tommy meets with his primeras and gives them news they don’t want to hear — Jason is delaying delivery of the product until Ghost’s check clears — a couple start to revolt. “You ain’t s—t without Ghost,” one mouths off, so Tommy shoots and kills him, right there in the room. Pretty much everyone falls in line after that.
Sometime later, he and Tariq are on the roof of Tommy’s building. Tommy cues up some Bone Thugs-n-Harmony (ha!) to set an appropriate mood, because Tariq is going to scatter Kanan’s ashes over Manhattan. Tommy scoops up some of his mentor’s remains and smokes them (eeeew), then informs ‘Riq about his father’s role in Teresi’s death. “How would you feel is something really bad happened to him?” he asks the teen, and Tariq replies that he’s not sure. Then they reaffirm that they’ll always be there for each other. It’s sweet… until we notice that Ghost is watching them as Tariq says goodbye in front of the building.
The next time we see Raina’s evil twin, he’s in the passenger seat while Tasha drives him back to Choate. He’s happy to learn of Angela’s death, but Mama St. Patrick sets him straight, and fast. She points out that Ghost’s mistress kept his adolescent butt — as well as pretty much everyone they know — out of jail, and they should be grateful. (Side note: And if you ever told me in Season 1 that TASHA would be saying this about ANGELA in Season 6, I’d have told you to keep on smoking whatever Ghost was selling. Crazy how people change, eh?
Then again, our girl is still the same at her core: When she meets her mother for a bite to eat, Estelle thinks Tasha’s plan to divorce Ghost is a foolish one. “You really think Ghost is gonna let you walk away?” she asks. But Tasha merely says she’s going to get even with her husband herself. Is it wrong that THIS is the showdown I will most eagerly await all season?
YOUR MOVE, TOMMY | After Ghost visits Paz and offers to pay for Angela’s funeral — an offer which is loudly and soundly rejected — Paz meets with Saxe and changes her mind, allowing him to move forward with the autopsy on her sister. Elsewhere, Keisha dresses like a cat burglar and throws Tommy’s gun into the river, like he requested. And Tariq calls Ghost from school and asks if he knows who killed Angela. Ghost says no, but he appears to be touched by his son’s reaching out. Afterward, though, the teen tells his boarding-school roommate that he’s just playing nice with his dad “for now.”
Then all that’s left is for Tommy to see Jason, who seems very jovial as he embraces the younger man and they talk about finally moving his product. Jason has one of his underlings bring Tommy’s car around the front of the warehouse where they’re meeting — and Ghost is lying in wait for the perfect moment. He opens fire on the vehicle, strafing it with bullets from a machine gun, and there is a LOT of blood splattered all over the interior before he’s done. Ghost thought it was Tommy in the car. Heck, the audience is made to think it’s Tommy — even Tommy doesn’t know how it all went down until he realizes why Jason got a little cuddly earlier. “That weird hug. You took my keys!” he says. Jason wants to know if Tommy is going to run, or stand and fight. Afterward, while having a drink at Lakeisha’s apartment, Tommy tells her he didn’t kill Ghost — “and I’m beginning to regret that decision.” He declares war and offers to send her and Cash away for their own safety. “If I can help you,” she vows, “I’m staying.”
At Angela’s apartment, Ghost finds a photo of them as teenagers in her drawer. “Sorry, Angie,” he says to her door as he lets himself out. Then he cries approximately half a tear for the love of his life, and leaves.
Now it’s your turn. What did you think of the premiere? Grade the episode via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
Launch Gallery: <I>Power</I>: Everything We Know About Season 6
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