Image via FX
13.
The FX series Snowfall, an antiheroic show where you’re guaranteed to root for the bad guy, is loaded with characters who cause an emotional seesaw in the hearts of viewers. In Season 1, Franklin Saint, the fan-favorite protagonist, built a crack cocaine empire from scratch. Fans watched him make tough choices where money and family/friends were involved. His life was spared too many times to count. And things only got wilder as the seasons went on. There’s always a character to either encourage Franklin to do the right thing (or the wrong thing), challenge him, insult his intelligence, betray him, judge him, and more. All the while, the viewer goes through many different emotions at a staggering pace.
Viewers gravitate to this series for the simple fact that it doesn’t only show you what the drug game entails; it also makes you feel what that world is like and the role that each player plays. But Snowfall rips some of the closest friendships and relationships apart while retaining the core of the characters and their value to the story. By the closing of Season 5, the series proves to both Franklin and viewers that who you start with is not who you’ll end with. After five seasons of twists and turns, we’ve assembled a list ranking the characters from worst to best based on everything we’ve seen and felt so far. Take a look below and see where your favorite Snowfall character landed on our list.
12.Teddy McDonald/Reed Thompson
Played by: Carter Hudson
After losing his job, a CIA agent decided to go rogue. Teddy McDonald had a baby with a former colleague, and for a second, viewers saw hope for the agent: We watch him briefly, and I do mean briefly, attempting to parent along with Jules. The attempt failed because Teddy became too deeply rooted in the drugs, money, and weapons he’s been smuggling into Los Angeles, leaving his son fatherless. He introduced himself under the pseudonym Reed Thompson when he recruits Franklin, a Black kid way in over his head, and proceeded to use his charge’s drug business to fund a war against Nicaraguan communists—before Franklin did some research and realized that Teddy wasn’t just some drug dealer.
Teddy doesn’t know where to draw the line: He dragged his decent brother into his world and got him killed, and he found himself disappearing anyone who posed a threat to his grand scheme (like Franklin’s father, Alton, whom he shipped off to Cuba alongside Franklin’s mother, Cissy). In addition to all of the homicides (sometimes double homicides), power trips, and lack of fathering, Teddy robbed Franklin of $73 million and then lied about it. Teddy’s been awful from the get-go, demonstrating exactly how far the government will go to get its way, even if it makes life worse for the low-income communities and neighborhoods it’s supposed to protect.
11.Franklin Saint
Played by: Damson Idris
The boy who started out slinging dime bags of weed for his Uncle Jerome evolves into a massive drug lord. Working at a convenience store and feeling aimless, he jumped off the porch and commenced to build his operation brick by brick before metamorphosing into the CEO of an empire. Although he reads Ernest Hemingway books while waiting at drops and uses his intelligence to manufacture real estate deals to wash his dirty money and construct opportunities for the wealth of his loved ones, his brains are also the root of his villainy. Some might argue that he assisted in the debilitation of his South Central community. He stashed a kilo-filled bookbag in the bedroom of his girlfriend-next-door, Melody Wright, to hide it from her cop dad, Andre, knowing the trouble she would endure. If putting your girl in harm’s way wasn’t bad enough, what about murdering her father, the last parent she had left?
Franklin became this psychopathic antihero who no longer put his community’s best interest at heart. He’s the character who manipulated Ray Ray into killing his own best friend, Lenny. Whiteboy Rob trusted Franklin and never crossed him despite their racial and class differences, and Saint killed him in cold blood. What about the time he wiped out an entire family (Tianna, Khadijah, and Manboy)? Undoubtedly, Saint has been on an undeniable mean streak, but he never crossed family. That is until he did the unthinkable and pulled a gun on Aunt Louie, the same person who introduced him to the game in the pilot.
10.Aunt Louie
Played by: Angela Lewis
No one ever lets Louie forget that she came from nothing and used to do something strange for a little change. But as the show goes on, we learn that she can fight. She took Franklin to a nightclub to move his first kilo and handed him his first gun. When Jerome wanted nothing to do with luring Franklin into the crack game, Louie threw spousal solidarity out the window and not only got Franklin started but she also saw fit to advance with him to the point of no return. As we near the end of the series, the same round-the-way girl shape-shifts into a high-fashion, fur coat–wearing, Benz-driving queenpin.
Having finally made it, gotten out from underneath Franklin’s thumb—or anyone’s thumb for that matter—and developed the drive to build her own empire, she turned into one of the other villains in the series. Never as methodical as Franklin, she conducts dirty work with the same person (Teddy) who screwed Franklin over. Louie knew she was one of Franklin’s prized players, and she also knew that becoming a queenpin would wreak havoc on her own nephew. But with plenty of missing pieces and not a single care in the world, she’s begun making whatever move she needs to in order to win.
9.Cissy Saint
Played by: Michael Hyatt
The single mother who raised Franklin is an admirable, hard-working character in the beginning. We see her holding down a nine-to-five job for a slumlord and making sure her son has some respectable employment and is against his drug business. But as the series takes its course, Cissy becomes less admirable, more hypocritical, and more enabling of her drug dealer son. When she found out Franklin was selling weed for his Uncle Jerome, she kicked him out of his childhood home even though she was smoking the very drug she’d been sermonizing him to avoid. When she lost her job, she refused Franklin’s dirty money to help keep the house. But eventually, she pulled up a chair to sit at Franklin’s illegitimate table. The mother who once condemned her son for his inexperienced decision-making eventually gave her seal of approval and even some advice on how to do wrong the right way. Then in the end, it was her that ruined any chances of her son having a happy ending.
8.Drew “Manboy” Miller
Played by: Melvin Gregg
Where there is a Batman, a Joker is not too far behind. Manboy was the series’ Joker, from the “why so serious” persona down to the Cheshire grin. The leader of the show’s Crips created obstacles and dead ends that Franklin & Co. had to work overtime to squirm their way out of. He would smile in front of Franklin and propose business ideas one minute and the next he’d conspire against him. When he, Franklin, and Franklin’s right-hand man Leon got into business together, Manboy turned around and shot up The Bottoms in Inglewood, starting a needless war with Skully, the leader of the Bloods. When Franklin refused to give up Leon after Leon’s crew kills Manboy’s niece by shooting up a car, Manboy abandoned their partnership to join forces with Skully. Manboy proved that it’s never just business with him, it’s always personal.
7.Officer Andre Wright
Played by: Marcus Henderson
As far as solid mindsets and honorable characters go, officer Andre Wright was the standard. How ironic was it for a cop to be living next door to a burgeoning drug lord whom he had a hand in raising? Officer Wright’s philosophy seemed to be the cliche, “If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.” With his good agenda in place, he never acknowledged that the same system he joined was the same system that serves as a threat to his people. We watched his officer colleagues do backdoor things and he didn’t rock the boat. Once Wright made up his mind that Franklin was moving weight, he utilized all his powers to prosecute him. But his fixation on Franklin, when he could’ve done so much more in the community that he supposedly doted on, led to his undoing. He turned a blind eye to arcane activities done by his department and peers. He didn’t stop law enforcement when they beat up Jerome. He only saw Franklin poisoning the community, causing him to be a disservice to his people and even his own daughter, Melody.
6.Uncle Jerome
Played by: Amin Joseph
At the beginning of Snowfall, Uncle Jerome gave his nephew the leeway to make his own money illegally by selling weed for him. He was the guy who wanted something to call his own: Jammin’ Jerome, a speaker shop that he would eventually afford to open. He wanted his family to be happy and the people around him to have a good time. But he also placed limitations on how far he wanted Franklin to go. When the idea of slinging crack was presented, Uncle Jerome was the only one who wasn’t in favor. When Franklin tried to recruit him into his new operation, Jerome told him, “Man, money ain’t nothing but paper with them crackers’ faces on it. And that brick, that ain’t worth the trouble that it come with. I promise you, man.”
But against all his warnings and hesitations, Franklin proceeded. Still, Uncle Jerome provided Franklin with any and everything that he needed, making the earlier lecture hollow. He gave his nephew a place to stay after Cissy kicked Franklin out of the house. He found a new cookhouse for Franklin to stay a step ahead of an impending police raid. Uncle Jerome became a pillar Franklin could lean on. For a character who initially didn’t want in, toward the end of Season 5, Uncle Jerome wanted more, and being underneath his nephew’s leadership would only hinder that ambition.
5.Terrence “Skully” Brown
Played by: De’Aundre Bonds
Skully, the leader of the Bloods, achieved notoriety for being unhinged. He was widely feared and for good reason: When Leon and Manboy first met him, Skully was holding someone hostage in his bathroom. But for a character with such a bad reputation, he was also heavily provoked. He only orchestrated a shootout with the Crips after Manboy targeted him. He only plotted to kill Louie after his daughter Tianna was murdered. Though he was still referred to as the Blood whose screws were loose, the narrative shifted. They no longer called him crazy for impulsively killing but instead for shouting out Bible verses. He listened to Jerome and Louie when they told him about a snake in his camp. He didn’t kill Louie when he had the chance to avenge his daughter and her mother. Viewers could see him standing at an emotional crossroads where he’s unable to pull the trigger. A skill that used to come easily to him at the start of the series was now stunted by his viable conscience. In the end, Skully revealed that there were layers to him and he ended up being one of the series’ most redeemable and memorable characters.
4.Gustavo “El Oso” Zapata
Played by: Sergio Peris-Mencheta
Snowfall does not perceive itself to be a lighthearted series; however, whenever Oso is involved in a scene, it’s affected by an air of courtesy. Although he’s a striving luchador who gets into several out-of-the-ring fights, there’s a softness about him when he speaks or when he falls in love with one of the Villanuevas, Lucia. Oso is a lover, loyal, and liable to keep the peace with his low tonal voice. In five seasons, we’ve seen Oso show beyond measure that he cannot be broken. Oso called off the Vatos when he saw Franklin, a kid he’d only seen once after his wrestling match, in trouble with them. In Season 5, he was a voice of reason reminding Franklin of how powerful and indestructible Teddy is, thus saving him again. Now in this sixth season, Oso is being pulled in copious directions as an informant by conflicting groups—the CIA, DEA, and KGB—and his ability to remain solid weakens. Yet even with him being a snitch now, he makes viewers feel sorry for him. It’s almost as if you want to protect him from those groups, maybe even give him a hug.
3.Melody Wright
Played by: Reign Edwards
Traditionally, there is always a girl next door. Melody is a symbol of innocence in Snowfall. She’s exposed to the drug that has her neighborhood in a frenzy just like everyone else, but she never touched it. She attended high school and aspired to pursue a college degree at Spellman. Sure, she crushed on Franklin Saint and even snuck out to a few parties, but on the whole, she’s a good girl. When she and Franklin were no longer talking after a disagreement, she made it her life mission to bring him a birthday card, because ignoring him just didn’t sit right with her. Melody observed Franklin’s plummet into a bad boy yet still decided to see the good in him.
But even the best of them can falter. Melody fell victim to the crack pipe momentarily before finding her way back to normalcy. This shortcoming was never seen as a flaw but rather as her naivete simply getting the best of her. At the conclusion of Season 3, when it came time for the good girl to pick up a pistol and aim it at our protagonist, no one could truly fault her for trying to avenge her father’s murder. She doesn’t go on an expected rampage of killings or slip into poor behavior after that though. Franklin later found his childhood crush in Texas, volunteering at a religious facility. When the two encountered each other again, all Melody wanted was closure and for Franklin to admit that he murdered her father.
2.Wanda Bell
Played by: Gail Bean
A sprinkle of comedic relief is delivered whenever Wanda is present. And who doesn’t love a redemptive character arc? Throughout the series, Wanda shows herself to be a multifaceted character. She’s been addicted to crack, recovered, and later rejoins society. We watched her pull her rotting teeth out with her bare hands, knock Melody out with a lawn gnome, and get dragged out of a room for begging and pleading for another fix. In due course, the free-spirited girl who was having sex with Leon without locking the door in the cookhouse became this well-put-together person who respected and saw more for herself. At a phone sex operator job, Wanda was asked to perform sexual favors in order to scale the rankings and make more money. She spoke up for herself and left the company altogether. In Season 6 she tried to convince Leon that there was nothing back home for them as they sat on the mountaintops of Ghana. Wanda has evolved not only past her former self but also past a city that wasn’t good for her. She’s the representation that good can survive a crack epidemic.
1.Leon Simmons
Played by: Isaiah John
When we first met Leon and his boombox in Season 1, he was the poster child for a hothead. Shooting first and asking questions last was his mantra. Leon, formerly incarcerated, was the liability to Franklin’s plan, but childhood loyalty was supposed to bond them for life. He divided his time between being down for whatever plot Franklin had and tending to his girl Wanda’s needs. Leon questioned the way Franklin handled a lot of situations, especially after Leon was shot. He was the fire for the both of them until something happened right before our eyes. Leon’s irreproachable development. Leon began apologizing instead of getting into shouting matches. He stayed with Wanda not once but twice while she tried to kick her strenuous crack addiction. He showed Franklin the utmost respect, even when Franklin was wrong or wasn’t in the room. When Franklin did a brief bid, it was Leon who told him from the opposite side of the glass how to protect himself in jail.
At the end of Season 5, Leon decided he wanted to do something worthwhile with his money and his life. A plan he wouldn’t have thought of back in Season 1. His position in the drug game appeared to have come to an end, which is at length the goal for visionaries. Leon, the guy who couldn’t see past his hot temper, began dreaming of the world and places like Africa and thinking long-term. He went from being a liability to finding his own independence. In six seasons, Leon converted from friend to brother; from boy to man.