Jacob Latimore in 'The Chi.' Paramount+ Logo text After an eight-season run, The Chi now heads into its series finale after spotlighting the many heartaches, tragedies, joys and triumphs of a tight-knit Chicago South Side community.
What audiences have found in the Showtime/Paramount + streaming series is a tapestry of people who live on the vast South Side of the city of Chicago, a section of that is home for a great majority of the city’s Black population. In The Chi, like in real life, the people who live in these communities run the gamut from working-class citizens to well-off small-business owners and dedicated church-going people to members of the LGBTQ community, as well as the most hardcore violent gangsters.
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Many of this community’s neighbors and family members, however, are connected by the commonly known theory of “six degrees of separation.” Their social economic backgrounds may be different, but viewers can be sure they will all cross paths either during a family member’s summer barbecue, reunion with school classmates, a community social gatherings, or, of course, a funeral or wedding.
The Chi’s creator and executive producer Lena Waithe recently spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about her vision for the streaming series when she first started developing storylines.
“I am only going to speak for myself, but I think with the pilot of a show, which obviously I wrote and I had this vision for it, was that it’s like life,” Waithe explained. “You could have a vision for your own life, but a higher power, the universe, has no patience for that vision. Because there’s another vision that you know nothing about, and you have no control over.
“So what I’m grateful for is that the show took on a life of its own,” Waithe continued. “And that it has become way more than I could have envisioned. It is vast. It embraces so many. I think my dreams, the human dream, is always too small. I always want to surrender to a greater power or bigger vision than one I could ever dream of for myself. So I’m really grateful for how the show has evolved. Everything that happened on the show was supposed to happen. And I’ve grown so much because of it. I’ve learned so much about who I want to be as a person, as an artist, as a leader, as a show creator and about what I want to say. I don’t want to be preachy. I always want to just show people maybe in a different way, not unlike Living Single, A Different World and all these shows did for me.”
Birgundi Baker as Kiesha, Jacob Latimore as Emmett, Anthony B. Jenkins as Devante and Danyelle Monson as Shay in The Chi. Sandy Morris/Paramount+ After the penultimate episode, “Cold Feet,” and heading into the series finale (releasing on Friday), the boundaries of loyalty are tested, especially once-tight family bonds. In the eighth episode, “Cold Hearted,” everyone in the circle of family and friends for engaged couple Emmett Washington (Jacob Latimore) and Keisha Williams (Birgundi Baker) seemed to know the truth about Tiffany (Hannaha Hall) killing head gang leader Nuck (Cortez Smith) — The Chi’s most feared gangster since Douda (Curtiss Cook) was taken out by Nuck in season six. Everyone except Keisha, making for a precarious situation as Nuck is the father of Keisha’s firstborn. But Tiffany is her best friend from childhood and the ex-wife of Emmett, Keisha’s soon-to-be husband.
Nuck, who became Tiffany’s lover this season, was shot at close-range in her house after discovering through a secret recording that Nuck shot and killed her boyfriend, Rob Lafayette (Iman Shumpert), in the season six finale after he refused an extortion attempt by Nuck. As hardcore of a killer that Nuck was, he a loving father to his toddler son, which endeared him to Keisha and they stayed friends.
Baker, and Latimore explained to THR how the blended family of raising six children between them and Tiffany impacts this final season. Baker believes her Keisha character is the glue that holds the family and friendships together between those three. “She’s the voice of reason. She is the emotional core. She’s a mother, a leader,” she told THR.
Being the one who holds the core family together, it breaks Keisha’s heart when Emmett finally breaks down and tells her that it was Tiffany who killed Nuck (Tiff had originally tried to make mutual friend Bakari, played by Ahmad Ferguson, take the fall for the murder because he knew Nuck killed Rob, but never told her).
In a bright and flowery dream sequence, Emmett’s mother, Jada (Yolonda Ross), visited her son after she died from cancer at the end of season seven. The scene plays out beautifully the joy yet grief that Emmett is dealing with as an only child who has recently lost the person who was always there. Now, he struggles with telling his fiancee the truth about who killed the father of her first child, which he knows will break the bond the three have as friends and co-parents.
His mother gives him the right advice that leads to the courage of telling Keisha the truth in this episode. The scene between Emmett and his deceased mother also points to the substantial growth that Latimore’s character has had over the eight seasons as Emmett, who some fans would argue has been the lead character of the ensemble cast. Latimore is proud his character’s growth, from a careless teenager all the way into manhood and being a partner and parent.
“Seeing his evolution as a father, and even in his romantic life, we’ve seen Emmett grow into the man we want him to be, or actively pursue that,” Latimore told THR. “He’s been in a better relationship with his father. And being a father and a great boyfriend, a man of the house — and a great businessman as well and trying to move forward and grow. If we look back from season one till now, it’s a lot of growth. I’m extremely proud.”
Jacob Latimore as Emmett, Jason Weaver as Shaad, Luke James as Victor and Rolando Boyce as Darnell in episode eight. Sandy Morris/Paramount+ The penultimate episode also picked up on what many fans consider to be some of the most heartfelt scenes between the three brothers, Reg (Barton Fitzpatrick), Victor “Trig” (Luke James) and Jake (Michael V. Epps), who grew up with a drug-addicted mother and the call of the streets into gang life to survive. While Victor and Jake managed to break out of gang life over the course of the show to become a respectable politician and clothing designer entrepreneur, respectively, Reg went into hiding for several years after being shot in a drive-by early in season two and was thought to be dead, only to reappear in season seven to raise hell in the streets of Chicago with his brothers. (Fitzpatrick left the show for much of the series to pursue other projects.)
In episode eight, Victor received a phone call that the brothers’ mother was found dead in a motel from a drug overdose. Reg had already let Rashaad (Jason Weaver) know that he wanted him to reach to his best friend, Victor, to help mend the broken relationship between the brothers after being brutal with them throughout the years. He felt he had to make his brothers tough to survive the violent streets. But Victor and Jake are having none of it when it comes to reuniting with their eldest brother — not until the phone call about their mother’s death.
In a poignant scene, the three brothers came together to try to make sense out of the deep feelings of grief and anger of losing their mother, who pretty much forced them to take care of each other while growing up. Jake, the youngest is hurt, but angry about the lack of time he had with her. Victor wants to grieve but keeps it all bottled up the best he can. And Reg, the most ruthless and seemingly cold-hearted out of the three, breaks down in full tears in front of his two brothers, wondering what they are going to do without her now. In his tears, he tells his siblings that their mother would want them to take care of each other.
How does Reg keep his word on being his brothers’ keeper? Where The Chi leaves off heading into the series finale is with Reg taking the rap for killing Nuck after Victor falsely confesses he did it (trying to protect Tiffany from being arrested and separated from her child). Reg finds out where Nuck’s body is buried and tells the police where to find it so that they will believe him. He reached the conclusion that this is the best way to repay his brothers back, and that he is more built to survive in prison than Victor is. Next, we’ll find out how it all ends.
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The Chi releases its series finale, “The Last Dance,” Friday at midnight PT on Paramount+ and Sunday at 6 p.m. PT on Showtime.
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