Power Book III: Kanan Finally Becomes 50 Cent’s Ruthless Version – Mother vs Son All-Out WAR in Final Season!

The Kanan Stark that Power fans first met has never been closer.

In the fifth and final season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan, star Mekai Curtis says the character resembles the version that Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson played in the original Starz series more than ever.

“You’re going to see more of the mindset that comes from the 50 Cent version of Kanan,” Curtis, 25, tells PEOPLE. “The last four seasons of the show, Kanan has spent a lot of time just being young and mad at the world for his own decisions. But in this final season, you really see him step up and understand what Raq has been saying.”

He finally starts to “in so many ways, understand Raq,” Curtis says of Kanan’s mom, played by Patina Miller. “He’s turning into exactly what she was — or is — in so many ways.”

“He doesn’t see it, and he’s trying everything in his power to not be that in his mind, but he literally is becoming his mother’s child.”

Season 5 is an “all-out war between mother and son,” Curtis says. “This is the thing that all of the previous seasons were alluding to, but also trying to keep from happening, in so many ways. But how much can one person take?”

“I think that’s where we’re at in season 5, is we’re seeing Raq really be a human. We’ve seen the stoicism, we’ve seen the wisdom, we’ve seen how she handles things when maybe it wasn’t the right way to do it — or maybe it was. But how do people react and respond when you genuinely are losing control? And that’s what’s happening here.”

“At this point, Kanan has basically lost everything that was near and dear to him that’s not his family,” Curtis continues. “You see him trying to figure out what that is and what that looks like for real.”

While 50 Cent is an executive producer on Raising Kanan, Curtis previously told PEOPLE that the rapper, 50, had “handed the baton off” to him with the character.

“It’s kind of taken on a life and shape of its own,” Curtis said at the show’s season 3 premiere. “He trusts us enough to kind of know what’s going on. He’s handed the baton, and he trusts us to keep doing what we’re doing.”

Season 5 picks up after a major cliffhanger. The season 4 finale ended with Kanan holding his mom at gunpoint, but the premiere episode revealed that Raq survived — though Uncle Lou (Malcolm Mays) did not. The shocking moment was categorized by showrunner Sascha Penn as the show’s biggest death to date, and Penn told PEOPLE: “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.”