Snowfall's Final Season Begins With Its Most Devastating Scene

Snowfall Season 6’s opening scene is the most heartwrenching in the FX drama’s history, getting the final episodes off to a poignant start.


The following contains major spoilers for Snowfall Season 6, Episode 1, “Fallout,” which debuted Wednesday, Feb. 22 on FX. It also contains discussion of violence and substance abuse.

FX’s Snowfall has showcased the dramatic rise of the crack epidemic in devastating ways. It regularly depicts the intrigue, the conspiracies and the eventual fallout of the drug trade. Given that subject matter, the series has been rife with tragedy. But the opening scene of its sixth and final season was even more tragic than The Last of Us — because it didn’t have anything to do with the main characters.


Although Snowfall has shown the effects of the rise of drugs and gangs, the audience rarely gets the feeling of what it’s like to be in that community. When they do, it almost feels inevitable. When Franklin’s father Alton began working with a journalist to uncover the CIA’s involvement in the crack trade, even the most naive of audience members knew his time was short. Even the ruinous saga of Franklin’s childhood crush Melody Wright ended off-screen as she rebuilt her life in Texas. Season 6’s premiere “Fallout” was a much more visceral and devastating experience.

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Snowfall’s Final Season Opens In Heartbreaking Fashion

The death of Franklin and Leon’s childhood friend Kevin Hamilton was one of Snowfall‘s bleakest moments. Another argument could be made for Khadijah’s 5-year-old daughter Tianna being killed in a drive-by shooting as the show’s most tragic beat. However, the opening scene of “Fallout” cut to the bone. Is there any sight that tugs at viewers’ heartstrings more than seeing a child clutching a stuffed animal while quietly crying on her porch, knowing what she must be distraught over?

The episode opened on a mail carrier who stopped to talk to a very sad but wide-eyed little girl named Tisha, who revealed she’d been left home alone all night. Her father, it turns out, was one of the victims of Franklin’s end-of-Season 5 rampage. His fate was revealed when the mail carrier took her to her father’s work — where his body was covered by a sheet as police processed the crime scene. The mail carrier cried out as he pushed past the police tape, “Is that Will Daniels?! Is that my son?”

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Snowfall’s Season 6 Premiere Affirms Its Great Crime Drama Status

Snowfall Tisha looks at her grandfather

The effectiveness of this opening sequence was in its build-up to the inevitable. Hearts were already breaking for Tisha as she sat alone looking small, sad and helpless. When she also snuck past the police tape and lifted the sheet over her father’s body to reveal the bracelet she made for him, it was devastating. But as terrible as it sounds, scenes like this one are what make Snowfall such an effective and fully realized drama. The script put viewers so directly in Tisha’s world that that they not only feel her loss, but feel her whole life. Young actor Charity Joy Harrison did more to communicate emotion with her silent expression on the porch than most actors can do with dialogue. Snowfall is not only based on real events, it feels painfully authentic.

As Snowfall begins its endgame, beautifully written and acted moments like this one should put it on the same level as prestige TV series like The Sopranos. But perhaps it will have to be satisfied with just being considered great by everyone who doesn’t hand out trophies. The show’s fifth season achieved a 100 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and if Season 6 is opening with an event this affecting, one can only wonder what the writers have planned for the series finale.

Snowfall airs Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. on FX.

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