Tommy was bound to take an L eventually.
In a season where he made move after move to secure his Chicago legacy, his personal life ended up taking the biggest hit during Power Book IV: Force Season 2 Episode 10, which by Power standards was a little more subdued than we may be used to.
While Tommy may have won some battles, he had no one to celebrate with.
There weren’t many sprawling shootouts or even big fireworks between Tommy and his biggest adversaries. It’s probably because Tommy’s at a different place now—a place where all-out war isn’t the answer.
Wars are costly and debilitating for all sides, even the ones that win, and Tommy has been content to meddle in others wars this season while doing his best to keep business at the forefront.
But I have to wonder, after seeing how things played out, whether or not all Tommy’s decisions really panned out in the end.
Tommy started Power Book IV: Force Season 2 with one goal: taking over Chicago.
Honestly, that’s been his goal from the start, but it’s not like this unknown guy was going to waltz in, snap his fingers, and suddenly have it all.
He’s carved his place by making the right decisions (mostly) about who to work with and how to move forward in a way that’s beneficial for himself and others.
No one would be interested in helping Tommy solely get ahead if there wasn’t something in it for them. Building the coalition paid dividends over and over this season, as it allowed Tommy protection and the stability he needed to make his case to Che.
Tommy had to orchestrate so many moving parts to get him to a place where he could stand before Che and ask to be his sole distributor. He needed the Serbs out of the way and Miguel out of the way, too, though that proved much trickier than maybe he ever realized.
The plan to finally get rid of Mirković tying into his plan to get payback on Claudia was a nifty piece of storytelling.
Since Walter’s death during Power Book IV: Force Season 2 Episode 5, Claudia has been doing her damnedest to make a name for herself. Admittedly, it hasn’t been easy.
Even in death, Walter found a way to screw her over, and it wasn’t easy for her to get to the place she was at. She managed to strong-arm the Serbs and set herself up with a cartel.
If Tommy didn’t hate her guts, he’d probably be impressed.
Claudia’s ambition has always been sky-high, but her biggest mistake was investing so much trust into someone she barely knew.
Teaming up with Shanti made sense at the time, and she wanted to expand with Shanti because she needed her, frankly. How far was she genuinely going to go with just Elise?
But did she ever take a minute to think about what Shanti’s plan may be? What she may be after? When getting into business with someone you don’t have any relationship with, you better do your due diligence and make sure you’re not jumping into a situation you don’t have control over.
Shanti’s interests lie solely with herself and Jenard Sampson. Everything she does is intentional, and it’s all about getting her and Jenard to a place where they’re essentially where Tommy is. And no one else fits into that plan at all.
By “siding” with Tommy (while actively working behind his back), she saw a better path forward, and Claudia was collateral damage.
I still maintain that Tommy and Shanti would work well together if it were legit because they’re both intelligent and ruthless enough to get things done. In fact, imagine Tommy, Diamond, Shanti, and Jenard all trusting one another and actually working as a team.
It will never happen, but damn, that really would be the dream team.
Setting up Claudia, the Serbs, and the Marquez cartel was vintage Tommy. And while he was obviously feeding Vic lies, it wasn’t clear what the endgame would be.
Was he just trying to get the FEDs to an abandoned place to make them look like fools while he drove Vic out to the middle of nowhere and killed him? That would have been a move, certainly, but crippling multiple organizations and getting your biggest opp arrested was a much better move.
What’s so special about Tommy Egan is his ability to think long-term. He’s always thinking ahead, and removing all his rivals was as much for the present as it was for the future.
Even with Che deciding to split things between CBI and Miguel, essentially making CBI the new Serbs, he was getting rid of people in his way. People who were never going to be with him.
And if he got petty and decided to hit Claudia with a little jagged edge to the back, then that was the cherry on the top for him.
I highly doubt Claudia is dead. When people die on Power, you will always see it, so you can’t proclaim there’s a chance they’re alive somewhere.
But when Power Book IV: Force gets renewed (because it will, people!), I’m not all that interested in seeing how Claudia makes it out of jail. She’s entirely alone now, sans Elise, and it’s hard to imagine a way for her to achieve even a fraction of the power she possessed for those few minutes she was bold enough to step to Tommy’s face.
Vic was clever enough to set Claudia up one more time before he thought he was leaving the city. He will never get over her betrayal, and getting that recording was as much about closure as it was about ensuring she would pay.
Vic, Vic, Vic.
Man, he was really tugging on my heartstrings this season, if only because you could see the pain radiating off him constantly.
Gloria was truly his sense of calm. His sense of peace. And most importantly, his happiness. Without her, he was a shell of a man, trying desperately to honor her memory and keep himself alive.
Stacy was not letting that man go until he hand-delivered Tommy on a platter, and even though his paranoia was ramped up, he still trusted Tommy until that car ride.
Spilling the beans about Claudia was too little, too late, but surely Vic thought maybe he could build some goodwill with Tommy if he started to get suspicious.
I can praise Tommy one second for always thinking ahead and blast him in the next for keeping a certified rat around when it wasn’t necessary.
Keeping Vic alive and thinking you can mold him into some kind of super double agent is risky at best and stupid at worst. You can’t trust Vic Flynn, even if you’ve grown to like him.
He will do whatever he has to do to stay alive, sure, but his direct line to the FEDs could cause much more damage in the long run. And then, on top of it, to not even bother to tell Diamond?
What’s gotten into him?
This is not the same Tommy who shot up the penthouse and wouldn’t stop until he killed Joe Proctor.
Speaking of Diamond and Tommy, their little spat at the bar was a long time coming. And Diamond deserved to speak his truth about feeling like Tommy’s idea of a partnership was doing what he wanted and filling in Tommy about it later.
What I’ve never been able to figure out is why Tommy hasn’t been more upfront with Diamond all along. I understand it’s hard for him to trust anyone, and hell, maybe he was right to keep Diamond at arm’s length sometimes because Diamond was never a beacon of truth either.
It’s not always about you, Tommy.
Diamond
But some moves Tommy needed to share. Like the whole situation with Vic, which affects them all.
Without full transparency between the two, their partnership lives on borrowed time. And it’s a shame because they don’t even realize they’ve got supposed allies working hard to bring them down.
I can’t solely rag on Tommy because Diamond may be holding the biggest secret of all with D-Mac and the bounty on his head.
How long until Tommy finds out what happened? The streets are loud, and D-Mac’s mouth is even louder, so there’s no way he doesn’t get wind of what’s going on.
D-Mac, D-Mac, D-Mac.
Marshall: Are you tweaking? Did you not just hear anything I fucking said? No one from CBI can hit back.
D-Mac: Good thing I ain’t CBI.
He came back to the city and chose violence immediately, without a care in the world.
Kate is the only one in that family that knows Tommy. Not only what he’s capable of but also how he is generally.
Tommy would never let D-Mac back into CBI and let his failures or death be on his watch and on his hands. Tommy may have only met JP and D-Mac recently, but that’s family, and they’ve been good to him.
He would never set out intentionally to bring them harm. And D-Mac back on the streets, back in CBI, was harmful.
Killing Mad Dog to get into Diamond’s good graces was so misguided it’s not even worth diving into that much. He had barely any facts, and he certainly never once thought about the consequences of his actions, which became a common theme for him throughout the season.
He has all these people in his life who, while new, are putting forth the effort to show him that they care for him and are trying to help him achieve more than they ever could.
When D-Mac was yelling at his father to stand up for him, I almost fell for it momentarily before remembering he’s a kid and far too young and immature to understand this life he’s gotten into. It’s all he knows, but that’s becoming less and less of an excuse now.
I felt for JP and even Kate when D-Mac was swearing them off, but it’s so hard to help someone who pushes back cruelly at every turn. Sending him away didn’t work. Trying to coddle him didn’t work. So, realistically, what more can they do?
JP cutting Tommy off was the right decision for him then, and you can’t fault him for it.
Feel how you want to feel about Kate, and both JP and Tommy feel a lot, but Tommy was standing there okay with watching her overdose right in front of him. And you couple that with D-Mac’s words, and it was just too much for JP to handle.
It was such a departure from the end of Power Book IV: Force Season 1 when Tommy looked at his family happily, almost reveling in the idea of finally having this unit he could be a part of. One built simply on blood and not some business loyalty.
And if that wasn’t enough of a bummer, Miguel took Mireya on top of it.
There’s no way Miguel hurt Mireya, but did he send her far, far away? That’s a definite possibility. Someone like Miguel would have connections in other parts of the country, perhaps even in other countries, so there’s a scenario where she’s gone for a long while.
They’re lucky they weren’t discovered earlier because they hid in plain sight.
Even though it felt like we were just waiting for this moment, it was still such a shock to see Miguel Garcia all giddy and Tommy looking like his heart was ripped out yet again by losing the woman he loved.
We’ve seen what real, unbridled heartbreak can do to Tommy Egan. But Chicago hasn’t.
Good luck to them.
Everything Else You Need To Know
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Miguel was such an odd villain because he wasn’t terrifying and didn’t ever know what was happening, but the image of him smiling, burning that plane ticket, and taunting Tommy was so deliciously sinister.
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Kate busting into Tommy’s house to tell his girlfriend he gets women killed was PEAK Kate. She does and says whatever she feels like.
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The MVP of this season was Kris Lofton. They asked a lot of him, and he peeled back every layer of Jenard with precision and care—major props to him.
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Stacy and Bobby are doomed, and it’s more than their interests not aligning. As partners, you’d think they would be more attuned to each other, but Bobby looks at her like he’s never seen her before in his life sometimes. And she didn’t ascend to her current position by being different than she is now.
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Where is Big Smurf? Is he okay? Can I get an update, please?
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Considering how many people were killed this season, the lack of major deaths in the finale was surprising.
What a season this turned out to be.
There were a lot of vintage Power vibes during this one, and the final hour was an excellent showcase for both the actors and what this show has become: a proper case study of Tommy Egan.
I’ve enjoyed covering this season immensely, and I patiently await the season 3 renewal because there are still a lot of stories left to be told from Chi-town.
Drop all your comments about the hour and the season down below, and as always, you can watch Power Book IV: Force online anytime you wish so you don’t miss a minute of the action.
Whitney Evans is a staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on X.