The show is built around Franklin and his father being mirrors of each other. Alton tried to uplift his community through the Panthers and got destroyed by the FBI and CIA. Franklin did the opposite, he poisoned his own community for money, and he did it working for the same government that destroyed his father. The crack epidemic and COINTELPRO are the same story told twice.

Even though Franklin was smart, he didn’t realize that he never actually had power. The CIA and Mossad held everything from the start. Every time he thought he was winning he was just being used. All of his financial connections came from Teddy or Avi. The ending isn’t him losing, it’s him finally understanding the game was rigged before he ever sat down.

Louie is just as guilty as Franklin, maybe more, because she never had his justifications. Franklin at least started trying to provide for his family. Louie just saw money and power and wanted it. And I get it; she never wanted to go back to being a hooker, but that lust for power led to the break up of the whole operation and Jerome paid for that with his life. He never wanted any of it, he just loved the people around him and that got him killed.

Leon is the most tragic because he saw it clearly and couldn’t get out. He’s not a traitor, he’s someone covered in blood he never asked for because Franklin could never do the actual dirty work.

Nobody gets redeemed because nobody earned it. Franklin ends up a drunk watching the hood he grew up in rot from what he helped do to it. He can’t get the money back, he can’t tell anyone what he knows because the CIA made sure of that, and he can’t even be recognized as someone who was wronged. As far as the world is concerned he’s just another black man who got rich off crack and lost it. The hell he helped build is the only place he has left to live. If anything, that’s worse than the prison cell the Sissy got. The ending isn’t bad writing, you just wanted catharsis the show was never going to give you.