Raising Kanan Season 4 Gets a Long-Awaited Premiere Date

Nothing is the same in South Jamaica, Queens.

On Friday, Jan. 24, Starz announced that the highly-anticipated fourth season of Power Book III: Raising Kanan will premiere on Friday, March 7, more than a year after season 3’s jaw-dropping conclusion — and fans got their first look at what’s to come in the explosive new installment.

The first-look photos provide a long-awaited look at Unique (Joey Bada$$), who shocked viewers as he miraculously came back to life in the season 3 finale, weeks after his heart-wrenching death at his brother’s hands.

The photos also show a tense-looking Kanan (Mekai Curtis), joined by his mom Raq (Patina Miller), who also left off with a major moment in the season 3 finale as she shot and killed Kanan’s father, Howard (Omar Epps). It was a move with consequences that showrunner Sascha Penn told PEOPLE fans will see “play out” in season 4.

“It’s yet another building block,” Penn said of Howard’s death – right in front of Kanan’s eyes. “The spine of this series, the heart of it, has always been Kanan’s relationship with his mother. It’s always been the defining relationship and everything else has orbited that on some level. I think the important piece of Howard’s death, on some level, is once again, how it impacts the relationship between Raq and Kanan.”

In season 4, Kanan, Raq, Marvin (London Brown) and Lou-Lou (Malcolm Mays) find themselves navigating “the fallout from their life-altering decisions” in the season 3 finale, while they “remain oblivious to Unique’s return and the chilling consequences of his near-death experience,” per the official synopsis.

While the Thomas family’s “slates have seemingly been wiped clean,” Unique’s “volatile and violent” return will throw everything off balance “as he hunts to upend the lives of the Thomas family.”

Season 4 will see Kanan, Raq and his uncles realize that their choice to “reject or embrace the truth may be the difference between life and death.”

The threat Unique poses in season 4 is something that Bada$$ previously teased to PEOPLE following the reveal that he’s actually alive.

“I think the interesting thing about Unique now is — the Unique that everybody knows is dead. This guy got his head banged and bone fragments left on the weapon of his execution. He’s not the same.”

“So I think what people can expect is a way more hyperactive, irritable, just rageful guy. It’s going to be an interesting spin on who this character [is, because Unique] has been, historically, somebody who’s more calculated and smooth with his delivery and kind of conscious and things like that,” he continued. “But I think this Unique is different. This is Unique like you’ve never seen him before.”

Penn also told PEOPLE that a “portion of season 4…explains how Unique survived and helps the audience to understand that journey.”

“Because we felt strongly that we didn’t just want this to be some sort of bulls— Deus Ex Machina type thing where miraculously he survives and we never understand how it happened,” Penn said. “One of the things that is super important to us on this show is, frankly, how much we do respect this audience. I think that they know this show and this world, in some ways, better than any of us do.”

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Season 4 of Power Book III: Raising Kanan premieres Friday, March 7 on Starz.