so... Succession ended. [spoilers]

Hi everyone, I’m a bit late to the chase - but I just finished Succession and I wanted to share my thoughts about it. I’ve been talking about it a lot with friends, and we were all very struck by how restrained the finale was. Especially when compared to the season three finale, which felt like the show had almost reached its dramatic peak, this one felt quite striped back. But it felt like an incredibly refreshing approach to a format that seems to be hopelessly afflicted with “bigger and better than ever” disease. I think showrunners are learning from the shitfire that was the Game of Thrones finale and realizing that endings which follow the logical conclusions of a story are much more satisfying than an ending which tries to pull the rug out from under you in an effort to keep you entertained. And this finale really did feel like the perfect conclusion to what was an incredibly depressing, yet effervescent series.

For me, every character seemed to reach their natural end. Beginning with Kendall - the number one boy, whose final thwarting by his siblings was absolutely brutal to watch. In a way, I think the writers were trying to hone in at the final hour that Kendall is based in falsehoods. His desperate barking about being “the eldest boy” when we know that’s not true. The revelation that neither of his children are biological (I’m not sure if we already knew this about Iverson, but it came as news to me). In any normal loving family would never even be up for discussion, but with the Roys impotence is a sign of weakness, of phoniness. Even when he walks back his confession about killing the waiter after Shiv ruthlessly brings it up again, it signals to his siblings that he can’t be trusted. He will always be a child playing the grown up’s game. I was very anxious that Kendall would take his own life at the end, but I’m glad they didn’t include it. It was much more powerful instead to have his father’s bodyguard stalking behind - a symbol of his father’s enduring oppression of him.

Roman is the one who reveals the information about Kendall’s impotence, and I thought this was incredibly well done since the seeds about Roman being willing to ‘go there’ were planted much earlier (having Sophie and Iverson followed in season three during his power trip). Roman’s arc this season was, in a way, the most dramatic for me. The writers had been hinting since the first season that Roman was the sibling to suffer the most physical abuse as a child (although we don’t know much about Connor’s upbringing, which sounds quite tragic as well). Roman is extremely comfortable conflating his family with sex, they are all aware of and comment frequently on his trouble performing and sexual interests (Logan literally says “I know you want to fuck your mom” in season 2), and he is the child to most outwardly grieve their father’s death. At the start, we’re led to believe Roman is a bit of a sociopath, and thus in a way maybe most suited (psychologically, not technically) for the job. But as he begins to unravel as the seasons go on and especially in season four, it’s clear that he has ~too much empathy~ to take on the role. This is a sentiment that’s remarked upon to his face by Kendall (who, ironically, thinks himself to be cold and calculating enough to do it). He is a character who has proven to everyone that he is capable of being, and almost willing to be, dominated. Kendall calls him a “cuck”, and in an earlier scene shoves Roman’s wounded head into his shoulder in a show of dominance. One of my friends thinks that, when Roman looks in the mirror and says, “I don’t look that bad” it suggests that Kendall had convinced him, or he had convinced himself, that he could never be photographed as CEO because of how bad he looked. And Kendall making the wound worse was a bid to keep him submissive. The entire time I thought the hug was incredibly bizarre, and kept asking why Roman wouldn’t pull away. But maybe it was a sign of defeat, or an attempt to force himself away from the pull of power.

Shiv’s conclusion was a bummer. I really didn’t like Shiv as a character for almost the entire run of the show, mainly because I found her to be morally unrighteous and quite un-self aware, despite being perhaps the least capable of empathy out of the siblings. Of course, this is by design, but to use her own words, I couldn’t stomach her. I think she’s impeccably written though. Out of the siblings, I think it’s clearest how Shiv has been destroyed by their parents. Her mother being coldest with her, perhaps seeing too much of herself in Shiv. And her father relegating her to her gender, regardless of how much he favours her over her brothers. It was upsetting to see her get in the car with Tom at the end, essentially subordinated to a man yet again - or ‘put in her place’. But to me her ending was marginally more hopeful than the others, because it seems she secured a future for her child (should Tom be able to keep his position as CEO, which is dubious). One thing that stuck out to me is the moment between Tom and Hugo after Tom is announced as leader. Hugo tries to brown nose with Tom, and Tom immediately asks where Carolina is. Earlier in the episode, we saw Carolina ask Shiv to get rid of Hugo. We also see Shiv affirm that they’ll be keeping Gerri on as well. I think the moment between Tom and Hugo was suggestive of a conversation that may have happened between Shiv and Tom after she finds out that he’s being named (as well as Tom telling her he ordered a car for them). Tom is seen here potentially pledging to honour Shiv’s wishes by keeping all the established women at the top. This made me re-read the entire boardroom scene - which at first came across as a spontaneous decision on Shiv’s part to abandon her brother. I think she wagered her bets a bit before the vote, and decided she was safer with reliable, boring Tom than she was with her more or less manic brother. But in doing so, she sealed the same fate that her mother had, however many years before.

Tom was my favourite character throughout the series. I think Matthew McFadyen brought such an amazing balance of comedy and tragedy to the role. He felt like a breath of fresh air in scenes where the siblings, so self-obsessed and fast-talking, were relentlessly talking shop. In many ways it felt like Tom was the son Logan wished he had. It was intentionally unclear during Logan’s UTI breakdown how lucid Logan was, but perhaps it was out of an unconscious closeness with Tom that he asked him to bring him to the washroom so many times (there was a tenderness between them in that scene that you never feel between Logan and his kids in similar moments where Logan is physically vulnerable). Tom has worked his way into his position, and we see him actually doing his job in almost every episode of the show - something that can really be said for the siblings. He also has a working class background, and thus real life experience that makes him a bit more similar to Logan than any of Logan’s kids. Of course, he’s also a bit of a buffoon and has no discernable skills - but that works well for him here, as Mattson’s lackey. I also wondered for a moment why he decided to keep Greg around after Greg’s betrayal, but quickly remembered that Greg is Tom’s emotional vessel. Without Greg, Tom, a person capable of regular human emotions unlike the other characters, would be utterly alone. I saw someone refer to Tom as “The People’s Princess” and you know what… it’s true.

I spent the entirety of season one wishing Logan had died in the first episode, and the second half of season four missing him dearly. “He was a brute” as Kendall says in his eulogy, but I started to grow fond of Logan as the series went on, especially near the end when he begins to ruminate about the meaning of life (something he has never wavered on) and begins to actually questions the operations of his company - without his kids around he can no longer dig his heels in the mud, and actually takes the time to look inward at the operations. His relationships with the different women in his life, Marcia, Raya, and Kerry were especially fascinating. Logan seemed to approach them with a genuine fondness - and they all seemed to return the affection in earnest (Kerry most shockingly). We watched him brutalize and humiliate his children for the entire series, but when he sits them down in the karaoke bar and says, “You’re not serious people,” you can’t help but side with him. His kids are truly incompetent. Unlike Logan, who built the company and thus his own way to power (however sleazily he did it), his kids have spent the majority of their time clamouring to usurp him. Every single one of them believes themselves deserving of the top spot, but none of them take the time to build a vision or ideology about what their leadership will look like. I think the Mencken candidacy proves that, with all three of them siding with him - Roman having no ideology to begin with, and Kendall and Shiv abandoning theirs if it means getting to the top. Logan has no political ideology either - as they say many times in the series his only ideology is money - but he created a leadership structure that worked, and that brought the company to success. The same cannot be said for the kids, whose thirst for power (having never had it nor worked for it themselves) ends up inhibiting them from being truly worthy of the role. As Roman says after the siblings’ final squabble, “We’re nothing.”

But this is the true pitfall of extreme generational wealth. To become as hideously successful as Logan, you have to be a narcissist - and you have to lack empathy. And these traits made Logan a sadistic terror of a father. The question lingering on my mind after what was an extremely nihilistic finale, was whether Logan ever really loved his kids. I think he did. But his only language was power - and that is what he communicated to his children. They could have all the money in the world, but riches mean a life with your father’s boot on your neck. At the end, all of the kids end up back where they started. Kendall is ejected from the big seat and searching for a lifeline, Shiv is “the wife” of a company man, and Roman is all alone. But, away from their father’s company, I wonder if they’ve rubbed off the bootprint and may finally be happy. I know Connor is… maybe.

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Thanks for reading - and I'd love to hear your thoughts about the finale in the comments! There are so many layers to this show and its finale, and I couldn't possibly fit it all in. But so excited to hear your takes!

Some updates: this month's video is in the works, we've finished the script! Hannah and I are also working on season three of the podcast - we have a special pre-season episode coming out about ChatGPT and the WGA strike! Excited to bring you all some new content soon!