The Drop Creator Maps Out Multi-Season Arc Tracing the Music Industry's Corrosive Pull

The first season of FX's Snowfall spinoff The Drop: A Snowfall Saga ended with its central characters seemingly in control of their futures, but showrunner Malcolm Spellman says that appearance is misleading. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, he described the finale as "just the beginning" of the family's entanglement with a music business that does not put artists first.

In the closing episodes, record label executives that Wanda (Gail Bean) and Lamar (Asante Blackk) had been eager to work with turn sinister. After Keith (Hanad Abdi), a close friend of Artillery (Simmie "Buddy" Sims III) and Dara (Aleyse Shannon), is murdered, the executives try to turn his death into free publicity. They then rush out an album by Artillery and Lamar, replacing some of the material with other artists and turning it into a compilation.

Spellman said what viewers saw in those last three episodes will be "completely normal all throughout season two." The show has not yet been renewed, and he said he has not heard from FX about its prospects. He added that he is "not worried" and believes community feedback shows the series is a hit.

He already has a larger plan in mind, stretching across seasons two and three. In his telling, money and gangs eventually ruin the story from within and without. He argued that record executives decided it was easier to profit from violence and gang culture than from conscious hip-hop, and that the labels damaged an entire branch of the genre over the following 30 years. He wants to show how cynical and inescapable that decision making was.

Spellman said Wanda and Lamar ending the season on their own should not be read as independence. Going independent "wasn't really a thing then," he said, and the labels will keep "all the leverage." Rap was not yet on mainstream radio, he noted, a change he tied to Dr. Dre and The Chronic, so the characters have no other option. He also said that at the time of the story, 1991, gangster rap was beginning to overtake conscious rap, something he described as by design of the labels.

At the heart of the show, Spellman said, is a makeshift family that includes Artillery. "The music business destroys families, and this family will spend its entire existence in this show trying to survive," he said. Lamar's story will be tied to his mother's, and after tasting what the industry offers, he returns home, apologizes and retreats to the family and culture that saved him. Spellman compared him to the prodigal son mentioned by Pastor Rodney (Wren T. Brown), more mature and less selfish, though that trait will always remain.

Leon (Isaiah John) also ends the season in a new place. He joins the scheme against DG (Brandon Mychal Smith), shoots and kills Deon (Quincy Chad), and is packing up the legal clinic. Spellman said Leon first had to go through redemption and mourning for what happened in the original Snowfall. Big Daddy (Mykelti Williamson) then frees him with a story about violence being part of the world. By picking up the gun, Spellman said, Leon is ready to enter the music business and protect his family, though doing so is "killing him."

On Leon and Wanda as a couple, Spellman called them the heart of the show and said "will they or won't they" should be a major question every season. Season one, he said, created real stakes by making it feel as though Leon is done with her, so that they must fight for their love in season two. Their story is based on his own and his wife's, and he said the series will end with a wedding.

Spellman also said the songs released alongside the series have been received with enthusiasm. He described the moment as "a private party for Black folk" before the mainstream audience arrives, and said he recently visited San Quentin, where he claimed prisons across the country are locked in on the show. All episodes of the first season are now streaming on Hulu.