Sophia Michaels
At this point, we know trouble follows Tariq everywhere he goes. No matter how many times he survives unscathed, there’s always a new problem waiting just around the corner, and the finale is full of them.
First, he wakes up in the hospital after getting knocked out while trying to save Tasha from taking a bullet from Tommy. After he comes to, he pieces together how Tommy tracked his mom down. In his mind, Saxe, before he got murdered, told Monet where Tasha was being hidden and Monet then tipped off Tommy. Tariq then goes on the hunt for Tommy and sets out to kill Monet for trying to harm his family.
He heads to Tommy’s mom’s house but comes up short, until he later tracks Tommy down and pulls a gun on him in the street. Tommy calms Tariq down enough to tell him what happened after he got knocked out, informing him that Tasha did it because she didn’t want anyone to get seriously hurt. Like his mom, Tariq and Tommy settle their differences, too, before the former asks his uncle to support him in his plan to get rid of Monet. Tommy warns him of the consequences before reminding Tariq that technically, in New York, he’s already dead anyway (he faked his death in season one) so he’s of no help.
Meanwhile, Tariq still has to figure out a way to prevent Lauren from testifying in court against his ex Effie, who tried to kill her in season two, as the latter is being baited by the feds to snitch on Tariq’s drug activities. He finally convinces Lauren to recant after getting Cane to threaten her parents; this gets Effie out of jail, too.
Tariq’s last order of business involves eliminating Monet and threatening to harm Noma’s daughter (who’s being hidden in an unknown location) so he can get from under their thumbs. But without Brayden’s help, he’s forced to team up with Diana instead, who’s also been trying to find a way to get away from her mom. Together, the two conjure up a plan to kill Monet in a drive-by shooting, with Tariq being the trigger man. But their plan goes haywire when someone else beats him to the punch: his mom.
Turns out, Tasha had her own plans for revenge after Monet put her in danger, leaving Diana no choice but to pin the shooting on Tariq. That was always her plan from the beginning, though, as she secretly teamed up with Dru and found a way to get rid of both Monet and Tariq in one fell swoop.
While Monet’s in the hospital, Tariq catches up with his mother, who tells him that his hands are clean of Monet’s attempted murder because she took the shot at her. But Tariq has his own confession: he tells his mom that he lost his trust fund in a Ponzi scheme at Brayden’s family’s investment firm. As viewers may recall, his promise to his mom in season two’s finale was to get enough money and power so he could reunite with her and his little sister, escaping the street life once and for all. But with both things even more out of reach, Tariq makes one last desperate attempt to get his freedom.
He meets with Noma at her warehouse to offer her a proposition: take Monet’s spot working alongside her being her New York distributor. But the Tejadas already let Noma know that Tariq tried to kill Monet, so they all turn on him. Just before he gets killed by Cane, Brayden comes in guns blazing and helps Tariq escape. Noma’s henchman, Obi, had given him a tip about what was going down. Tariq and Brayden then ride off knowing they’ve just started a full-out street war, and there’s no telling how it’ll end.
