This is a list of characters from the television series Weeds.
Nancy Botwin's family
Nancy Botwin
Nancy Botwin (Mary-Louise Parker, leading character)—also known as Lacey LaPlante (season two) and Nathalie Newman (season six)—was a PTA soccer mom until her husband, Judah, suddenly died of a heart attack. To maintain the upper middle-class lifestyle to which she was accustomed in the fictional town of Agrestic, Nancy entered the world of marijuana dealing. At the start, her regular clients include her accountant, her lawyer, and fellow suburban friends. However, as she expands and fights for survival, she is confronted with the violent realities of her business as she jockeys against competitors, gangs, and drug lords. Adding complications to the situation, are her sudden relationship with Peter Scottson, a DEA agent who discovers Nancy's business, but takes measures to ensure her safety. Peter grew increasingly hostile towards Nancy and is eventually killed. Eventually, Nancy works for a gangster named U-Turn. During one of her runs for him, she meets Guillermo, a Mexican drug trafficker, who offers her a chance to move up in the drug game. Nancy declines, but changes her mind when a huge fire spreads into the Agrestic town. Nancy takes advantage of the fire and burns down her house, ensuring that her family will be leaving and moving on.
At the start of season four, Nancy eagerly jumps at the chance to transport marijuana across the Mexican border for Guillermo, but she feels uneasy about other transporting duties, such smuggling heroin and child prostitutes. These qualms and other factors put her at odds with the "chain of command" within the drug cartel and lead to Nancy blatantly violating its rules. However, her insubordination leads to a romance with Esteban Reyes, a corrupt Mayor of Tijuana. Her attempt to shut down a tunnel almost leads to her death during the season four cliffhanger. Nancy takes a break from dealing in season five while building a relationship with Esteban, eventually giving birth to his only son. Complications arise with Esteban's boss Pilar Zuazo at the end of the fifth season, and the family is forced into living on the run from Esteban and his men, as well as the American and Mexican authorities. They visit Seattle, Washington, where Nancy learns how to make hashish, a concentrated form of marijuana, and sells it as a means of income during their trips to Montana and Michigan until Nancy and her family are discovered. The season six finale has the male Botwins on a plane to Europe, while Nancy goes through with Plan "C". This is her last possible solution, to keep Esteban away, in which she turns herself into the police, for the sake of her family.
After falsely pleading guilty to manslaughter, Nancy is sentenced to Danbury prison, where she maintains a romantic relationship with Zoya, her prison roommate. During season seven, after three years of lockup, Nancy is released to a halfway house in New York City. She immediately betrays Zoya by trading Zoya's stash of stolen grenades with Zoya's brother, Demetri, for an initial supply of weed. During the season, Andy, Doug, Silas, and Shane travel to New York, interested in seeing Nancy. She eventually rises from the lower end of the economic scale and is released from her halfway house, from which she continues to expand her drug business. She once again jockeys against the leading dealers in New York and rises to the top. The season seven finale follows her fighting for the custody of Esteban's child with Jill, her sister. They eventually agree to move in together in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. As the closing of escrow is finalized, Nancy and her family eat dinner peacefully, and Nancy then gives a toast to the family's future. Subsequently, an armed man, later identified as Tim Scottson, shoots Nancy in the head with his rifle. Nancy recovers from the gunshot in season eight. In the series finale, after a ten-year time jump, it is revealed that marijuana has been legalized, and Nancy owns several successful marijuana businesses.
At the beginning of the series, Nancy struggles to keep her drug dealing separate from her family life. However, Andy, Silas, and Shane find out about her dealing at different points in the series. While she is willing to risk life and limb for the love of her family, she also wants to protect them from the hazards of drugs and the drug trade. She is particularly hesitant to allow Silas to enter the business until her crisis with U-Turn forces her to allow Silas to deal. She also struggles to keep Shane isolated from the chaos.