FX's gritty crime drama, focused on the onset of the crack cocaine epidemic, will live on another year — the network announced earlier this week that Snowfall was renewed for Season 3. The show surrounds the characters of Franklin, Teddy, Lucia and Gustavo, all living in Los Angeles and all fostering a different relationship to the trials and dangers of the drug trade, and their journeys aren't stopping anytime soon.
"It has been great to see Snowfall’s audience and critical acclaim grow in its second season," said Eric Schrier, one of the presidents of original programming at FX Networks and FX Productions, said of the renewal, according to Deadline. "The creative team has done a fantastic job and we have high hopes for season three."
The show has been well-received — it has an 81 percent positive score among critics on Rotten Tomatoes, and an 86 percent positive score among regular audience members. When news of Snowfall's renewal hit the internet, fans were stoked, and obviously invested in its story. Some also hoped that the promise of more time would allow the plot time to breathe a bit more than it has this season. "Good news! I hope they can slow down the narrative pace a bit for the next season, Reddit user Imperial-Green wrote.
Interest in Snowfall hasn't waned into its second season, though — in fact, critics have praised the latest batch of episodes as an improvement over the debut season. The Atlantic's Sophie Gilbert pointed out both ups and downs in Season 2, but called it "infinitely improved" and said that in contrast to Season 1, it "no longer has to validate its characters’ ambitions quite so much, and the show is more persuasive for it."
Kayla Cobb of Decider went so far as to say that "Snowfall should have started with its second season," in the very first line of her review. "Snowfall has always had the potential to be a great crime drama, and in its second season it’s finally starting to achieve that," she continued.
The environment in which Snowfall takes place isn't for the faint of heart, and it could keep corrupting even its best characters as the story goes on into its third season. Damson Idris, who plays Franklin in the show, says that sadly, that's kind of the name of the game. "I said this the first season, as these challenges and these conflicts keep overwhelming him, and the more he fails, he's definitely gonna start losing his soul," the actor said in an interview with Newsweek ahead of Season 2. "The beautiful kid that we know is going to turn into the beastly monstrous man. That's what the drug game does."
Idris also said as the showrunners and cast get more accustomed to the roles they play, it's made for continuously intensified chemistry onset and on camera. "The beauty of Season 2—and you’ll see it from the very first episode—is there’s a heightened chemistry that has happened," he said in the same interview. "It was there in Season 1, but now I feel like it’s so ultimate, so to-the-tee that you actually forget that these people are acting. And that comes with improv. There are many times that we thought that we knew our characters so well that, 'No, our character wouldn’t say this.'" All signs point to Snowfall becoming surer and surer in its footing the longer it's able to continue its run. At least for now, FX seems keen to allow the drama to stretch its legs.
