Snowfall · A Viewer's Companion
One family is blood. One is a crew that calls itself the Family. The third one is a government.
Everybody on Snowfall uses the word family, and they never mean the same thing twice. The Saints (terracotta) are actual blood — Franklin, his mother Cissy, his father Alton, his uncle Jerome and the aunt who married in. “The Family” (palm-dusk violet) is the crew Franklin builds, where nobody is related to anybody. Teal is the other side of the table: the rival sets and the men who supply them. Clinical white is the Agency — and the dashed white line running the width of this chart is where the cocaine actually comes from.
Spoiler-safe mode is on: death markers, secret-reveal labels and finale outcomes are hidden on this chart and in the notes below. Use the “Spoilers” button in the top bar to show everything again.
Why it gets confusing: three things all called family
The Saints are a small family — five people. The trouble is that two other organisations on this chart also describe themselves in family terms, and Franklin belongs to all three.
“The Family” has no relatives in it
Franklin's crew is literally named the Family — and its core members are not related to him or to each other. Leon is a friend from the block, Wanda is Leon's girlfriend, Peaches is a Vietnam veteran who knew Jerome. The only actual relatives inside the operation are Franklin's uncle and aunt, and they eventually want out.
One uncle by blood, one aunt by marriage
Jerome is Cissy's brother, so he is Franklin's uncle by blood and the man who half-raised him. Louie — Louanne Jones before the wedding — married in. That distinction matters: when the two of them break away from Franklin, the show is splitting a real family, not a business. Franklin's father is a Williams, not a Saint.
The supplier is a government employee
Teddy McDonald is a CIA officer running cocaine to bankroll an unsanctioned Contra war in Nicaragua. To Franklin he is first a voice, then a man named “Reed Thompson”. That is the show's premise, not a twist: the kilos, the corners and the Agency are one supply chain, drawn here as the dashed white line.
The sets are their own map
Outside the Family sit the sets Franklin has to buy, beat or absorb: Manboy's Compton Crips, Skully's Inglewood Bloods, Big Deon in the PJ Watts projects, and Kane Hamilton's crew. Colour them teal and the plot simplifies: every season is Franklin negotiating with one teal card, then fighting the next.
Seasons 5 and 6 are the family eating itself
Louie stops buying through Franklin and deals with Teddy directly; Franklin robs her and Jerome's stash houses in return, and tells Kane she tried to have him killed. Jerome kills Black Diamond as an answer. It ends with a raid on Kane's compound: Louie is rescued, Kane is shot by Jerome, and Jerome is shot in the same exchange. Louie buries her husband, then runs from a DEA warrant.
Three killings, one chain
Alton and the reporter Irene Abe were building a case against the pipeline; Teddy killed Irene, then shot Alton in Cuba and dumped the body — a fact Cissy only confirms in Season 6. Franklin answers it by murdering Teddy's father in a Kansas retirement home. Cissy answers that by shooting Teddy dead in the street, which costs Franklin his $73 million and costs her the rest of her life.
The name decoder
Aliases, nicknames and two sets of brothers. Keep these straight and the chart reads itself:
Saint vs. Williams
Cissy's full name is Sharon “Cissy” Saint, and Saint is her family's name — she shares it with her brother Jerome. Franklin's father is Alton Williams. So when the show says “the Saints,” it means Cissy's side.
Leon is not a cousin
He is introduced alongside the family and treated like kin, but Leon Simmons is a childhood friend from the block with a mother and sisters of his own. No blood tie to any Saint — which is exactly why his refusal to lend Franklin money in the finale lands the way it does.
Teddy vs. Reed Thompson
Same man. Teddy McDonald is the CIA officer; Reed Thompson is the alias he uses on the street, and he cycles through several more. Anyone in South Central who says “Reed” is talking about the Agency without knowing it.
Kevin vs. Kane Hamilton
Brothers, seasons apart. Kevin is Franklin and Leon's third best friend from the early years. Kane is his older brother — locked up through the early seasons, back on the street as a rival late in the run, and back specifically because of what Franklin did to Kevin.
Manboy vs. Skully
Rival colours, one household. Manboy (Drew Miller) leads the Compton Crips; Skully (Terrence Brown) leads the Inglewood Bloods — and Skully is married to Manboy's sister Khadijah, which makes them brothers-in-law across the divide.
Melody vs. Veronique
Franklin's two great relationships, four seasons apart. Melody Wright is the girl next door in Seasons 1–4 — and the daughter of the LAPD sergeant hunting him. Veronique Turner is the lawyer he meets between Seasons 4 and 5, and the mother of his child.
Avi vs. Oso
Two connects, two ends of the same chain. Avi Drexler is the ex-Mossad kingpin in the Valley who fronts Franklin his first kilos. Gustavo “El Oso” Zapata is a luchador turned enforcer for the Villanueva cartel — a lead in his own right, whose story only meets Franklin's much later.
Jerome vs. Alton
The two father figures. Jerome is the uncle who taught him the street. Alton is the actual father — a former Black Panther who was absent for years, came back, and then spent his last stretch trying to expose the pipeline his son was selling for.
Not on the family tree — but running the plot
Cassandra Turner
Veronique's estranged mother and a career grifter who trained her daughter in the con from childhood. Vee brings her back in Season 6 to help trace Franklin's hijacked fortune.
Stephen Havemeyer
Teddy's handler at the Agency — the man who signs off on the operation and reminds Teddy how far up the approval goes. The pipeline has a boss, and this is him.
Rubén
A KGB officer working the Cuban desk, and Teddy's opposite number. He is the man who contacts Cissy, and he is the reason she has a plan at all.
Irene Abe
A reporter at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner chasing the connection between the Agency and the crack trade, working alongside Alton. Teddy kills her for it in Season 4. †
Andre Wright
The LAPD sergeant who lives next door to the Saints — Melody's father, and the closest thing Season 3 has to a nemesis. Franklin shoots him. †
Melody Wright
Franklin's neighbour and first love across the first four seasons, and Andre's daughter — the person who keeps offering him a version of his life where none of this happens.
Chart and notes cover the complete series — six seasons, sixty episodes, 2017–2023, ending with “The Struggle” — so spoilers run to the finale; † marks characters dead by the end. Facts checked against the Snowfall wiki rather than memory. Portraits are stills from that wiki, cropped and served from this site. Franklin and Veronique's son is never named on screen and has no image, so his card carries a monogram. Cissy is alive at the end of the series but imprisoned, and Louie is alive and in hiding — neither is marked with a dagger.