Power Book IV Kills Off One of the Flynns! Director Lisa Demaine Explains Why [Spoiler] Had to Go

Warning: This post contains major spoilers from Friday’s Power Book IV: Force. Proceed accordingly.

Power Book IV: Force has taught us that Chicago drug kingpins must always be ready for attack from all sides. But in this week’s hour, Walter Flynn learns the hard way that “all sides” also includes “from within your own family.”

The Irish drug lord played by Tommy Flanagan dies in Episode 5 when Claudia and Victor orchestrate a hit on him. At the last minute, though, Claudia double-crosses her brother and makes it so that he’ll go down in the attack, as well. But things don’t proceed according to plan; in the end, Victor is the one who fires the fatal bullet, then realizes that his sister meant for him to die, as well. Though he doesn’t reveal to Claudia what he’s learned, he visits U.S. Attorney Stacy Marks at the end of the episode and offers to hand over Claudia, now the head of the entire Flynn operation, in exchange for complete immunity. Marks counters by asking him to help take down CBI and Tommy Egan, and Victor barely pauses before agreeing to all of it.

Walter’s death is yet another moment of instability in the highly volatile Chicago drug scene, and it will have ramifications throughout the rest of the season. To mark the occasion, TVLine chatted with director Lisa Demaine (Lucifer, Westworld), who helmed the episode.

TVLINE | You find out that you’re going to direct the episode where Walter Flynn goes to the Great Beyond. What’s the first thing that pops into your head?

I’m like, oh, my God, not Tommy Flanagan! [Laughs] He is such a beloved cast member. Everyone loves him. So, I felt a huge responsibility to send him off with an epic opus ending, right?

Gary [Lennon, showrunner], and [writers] Sammy [Horowitz] and Adam [Pasen] wrote an amazing script that sent him off. So I just felt it was my duty to send him off in a blaze of glory. And just being the big personality that Walter Flynn is, he went out in a blaze of glory. At the end when he, right before Victor kills him, he said “My beautiful boy, you have your mother’s eyes” — in that moment, it’s like he still loves Vic. Mind blown, right? And then, “Pull the f–king trigger!” [Laughs]

TVLINE | Walter is so savvy. He knows that people are always coming for him. Yet there’s still that blindspot when it comes to the kids, right?

It’s familial. Every parent has a blind spot with their child, you know? He sees it more with Claudia, because he knows her ambition, than he does with Vic. He doesn’t see it.

TVLINE | Were you able to shoot so that the death was Tommy’s last scene?

Yeah. The [assistant directors] scheduled it in a manner that when we — at sunrise, because we shot that all night — so when we had sufficiently taken care of Tommy and Walter and sent him off, it was a fond but bittersweet goodbye, saying goodbye to him.

TVLINE | Did Tommy have any strong feelings or thoughts about how he wanted the scene to go?

We had a nice collaboration, because Walter’s so formidable. We talked. And I [also] didn’t want any of this kind of activity, but in terms of coordinating the stunt, he’s like, “I don’t want to be like ratchet-strapped and pulled and blasted and all of that.” He goes, “I’m a man that stands my own ground, even in getting shot.” So when he gets shot in the back, you see it, and he stumbles forward, but it’s not one of these big stunty [moves] where he gets pulled and all that kind of thing, right?

TVLINE | Right.

He stays in control of his world until the end, when he directs Vic to shoot him.

TVLINE | I love that moment, that Victor could not shoot his father until Tommy turned around. He doesn’t have that in him.

No. When we were prepping and shooting, and I was talking to Shane [Harper, who plays Victor] and Tommy about the scene and what’s going to happen ,and talking especially to Shane about where I wanted and needed him to go, we were talking and would he be just really cold and icy-like, “This is on you, old man.” And I’m like, “You’ve got to lose your sh-t at this moment. You have to. You have to let go of everything that you have felt because of Gloria’s death and all the indignations that you have suffered under Walter, over the years of being Walter Flynn’s son.” I mean, the arrows have been deep and many over the course of Vic’s life. I said, “At this moment, you have to lose it. You have to let all of that rage go.” And he did, and it was incredible.

TVLINE | I was thinking about how, if that first shot had killed Walter, Victor wouldn’t have been able to voice what he was thinking.

He had the chance to clear the air and tell Walter what he thought and that he was actually part of it. This isn’t all on Claudia. Paulie’s floating face-down in the pool, and Walter’s trying to pin this on Claudia. [Victor] is like, “No, we did this together, Dad.” What a moment!

TVLINE | How much restraint did you have to use to only have one person fall in the pool and die?! I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself from doing more.

[Laughs] Oh, my God. It was so great. Well, I wanted everyone’s death to be slightly different. Paulie’s death felt so right to be the poetry of slow motion, hitting the water and the blood kind of spreading out because, you know, he said a thousand times over he would do anything for this family, even die. Having that crew and that camera underwater for that slow motion, wonderful tragic ending to Paulie [was] sending him off in a way that he earned.