Snowfall Season 6 Review: Damson Idris Is Unmissable in the FX Drama's Bleak Final Season

At the end of Snowfall's fifth season, Franklin Saint (Damson Idris) found himself backed into a corner. Teddy (Carter Hudson) had seized all $73 million of his fortune, and there was nothing he could do. His plan to finally leave this life behind and focus on Veronique (Devyn Tyler) and their unborn child was completely shattered. With nowhere to go, Franklin decided on the nuclear option, robbing Jerome (Amin Joseph) and Aunt Louie (Angela Lewis) and betraying his family.

The sixth and final season of Snowfall is fully immersed in the fallout of that betrayal and asks a lot of interesting questions about loyalty and freedom, not only in regard to the relationships that have formed through the show, but also in terms of what these characters own themselves, their communities, and their country. The show has, of course, always been political, but there's something about the end being near, and all of us knowing just what's coming in terms of the War on Drugs and its lasting legacy, that makes the start of this season feel particularly poignant and stirring. 

8.2

Snowfall

at FX

Like

• Damson Idris remains a star
• Tense pacing
• Impactful and character-based storytelling

Dislike

• Some minor characters are involved in repetitive storylines

Franklin begins the season with very few people on his side. Cissy (Michael Hyatt) has his back, but other than that he only has reluctant partners. Black Diamond (Christine Horn) and Dallas (Taylor Polidore) remain loyal because they're getting paid, and Veronique still wants to have a family with him, but his inability to get them out of the drug game is starting to wear on her. When Franklin wants to get her more involved in the business by getting her to launder the money they stole from Jerome and Louie, Veronique initially balks at the idea because she clearly sees that starting down this path again will only lead to destruction, not the freedom that Franklin craves. 

What Snowfall has laid out beautifully over its entire run is that there's no real freedom when it comes to the War on Drugs. Every single character involved in this six-season story is fighting for their own version of freedom, believing that they're always just one step away from achieving their goals. But what most of them fail to see is that no matter how big they get, no matter how close they get to forging their own path, they're still just a small piece of meat to be ground up in the grand machinery of American capitalism and imperialism. Whether it's Gustavo (Sergio Peris-Mencheta) realizing that there's always one more favor to be done to keep his family safe or Teddy staring down an empty life spent constantly looking over his shoulder, there's really no way out.

Take Franklin, for instance. He begins the series believing that if drugs are going to infiltrate his neighborhood, then at least he's going to get a piece of the pie for himself; he's not going to sit back and allow rich white folks to profit off of his community. He creates this narrative of nobility around his drug empire, when really he's just offering up his own version of conservative "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" capitalism. Franklin, in the early going, thinks he can become a king. By the time Season 6 rolls around, he basically is… but only in his own world. His kingdom is nothing compared to the machine he's working within. Franklin is trying so hard to rebuild what he believes is an empire, a flailing Napoleon who fails to realize that he's been relegated to Saint Helena.

And really, that's the theme of the final season of Snowfall: inevitability and the inability to accept it. The first two episodes of the final season suggest that these characters, no matter how much they fight against their circumstances, are trapped by powers and structures so much stronger than them. It's bleak and violent, and it's totally compelling TV. 

Premieres: Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 10/9c on FX (and the next day on Hulu)
Who's in it: Damson Idris, Carter Hudson, Angela Lewis, Michael Hyatt
Who's behind it: John Singleton, Eric Amadio, Dave Andron (creators)
For fans of: The Wire, The Shield, Narcos
How many episodes we watched: 2 of 10