Power: Kanan Is Alive, Ghost Is Dead, and Everyone's Making Terrible Decisions

We didn't see him in the great first episode of Power's third season, but make no mistake: Kanan (50 Cent) is alive.

You knew this though: Investigators at the site of that brutal, fiery fight at the end of Season 2 said someone escaped from the locked room and, well, 50 Cent has said Kanan comes back in at least one interview. Where is he? We can't say just yet, but with all the other main players attempting their own kind of resurrections, the stage is set for us to see more of the intoxicating catastrophes Power delivers.

"The theme of this season was, 'Be careful what you wish for,'" says executive producer and showrunner Courtney Kemp. "Ghost wanted to be out [of his marriage] and is living with Angela. Is it perfect? Maybe not. Angela, you wanted Jamie. You got him, girl! That's not good."

No, it's not. But nobody's situation is any good really. Tasha (Naturi Naughton) is coping with losing her marriage, her lover Shawn (Sinqua Walls) and explaining all this to her shaken kids; Tommy (Joseph Sikora) is descending into mania and paranoia as he stalls on the edict to kill his best friend; Angela (Lela Loren) is welcoming her still-married, still-criminal boyfriend into her life without boundaries. She, like everybody else, is plowing ahead in a state of baffling denial, as if all their previous choices, and the things they do to maintain them, have no repercussions.

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That sense of maddening denial -- the fun kind that has you screaming, "No! Why are you doing that?!" at the screen -- frames the season from the first scenes. Jamie (Omari Hardwick) is standing in his nightclub Truth, trying to convince himself and everyone he's out of the drug business, despite the bruises adorning his face that remind us of his wicked past. Angela, beside him, is convincing herself that Jamie is brand-new, though she's packing heat in her purse as if she's the ride-or-die chick in a rap song instead of the federal prosecutor she really is. Later, when she tells Jamie that Lobos didn't die in the hit he ordered but believes the Jimenez Brothers did it, she naively whispers, "You're safe, it's all over. I guess Ghost really is dead," while simultaneously acknowledging she could go to prison if the truth got out. Why's she not freaking out? Shouldn't she see the imminent danger they're in, leave the force and get out of Dodge before everything collapses?

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"Why would she need to?" Kemp says, sarcastically. "He's James St. Patrick! He's clean. There's never going to be any recidivism on his part and it's going to work out fantastically well. It's going to be amazing."

Amazing for us to watch, sure, but for these characters who cannot or will not break free from the messes they've made, things are going to keep getting worse.

Power airs Sundays at 9/8c on Starz.