THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR THE MOST RECENT EPISODE OF SUCCESSION. READ AT YOUR OWN PERIL!
The terms of Season 4 of Succession seemed pretty well established. The “kids,” as they are perpetually known (despite being grown-ass adults), were united (sort of) against their father, the ruthless media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox).
There were questions: Would Roman (Kieran Culkin) break from his siblings and team up with Logan?
Would Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Shiv (Sarah Snook) convince Roman to go against their father on the Mattson deal?
Could Shiv and Tom (Matthew Macfayden) possibly repair their severed relationship?
Just how disgusting are the Disgusting Brothers?
And so on.
And episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding,” started out on familiar turf. Logan asked Roman to fire Gerri (J. Smith Cameron), a bit of unnecessary nastiness that was so him.
Connor stomped around the luxury cruise ship that would host his weddings guests, complaining about an unfortunate cake, but mostly worrying that no one, including his bride-to-be, really loved him.
The “kids” were still huddling, contemplating deals and Logan was flying off to Sweden to broker that Mattson deal. (Yes, casually missing his eldest son’s wedding.)
And then a phone call came in. It was Tom, calling from the plane. The connection was shaky at first. It was hard for Roman to understand what he was saying.
Logan had collapsed? It was bad? They were doing chest compressions?
What followed was absolute chaos, as Roman and Kendall, and eventually Shiv tried to figure what the hell was happening on that plane. They were disoriented, panicking, uncertain.
And, in one of the series’ most brilliant gambits, so were we.
Had Logan really collapsed? Was it possibly a test, or a trick? A way to prove to his children that they did really love him, that they didn’t want to betray him after all? Or was it perhaps just the cruelest of jokes? A monstrous joke, to be sure, but could we really put it past Logan Roy?
In a sly move, the showrunners didn’t show us Logan’s body. Just a body being tended to. Only toward the end of the episode did we finally see Logan’s motionless head on the plane’s floor.
And the reality sunk in—for us and for the Roy siblings.
Logan Roy was really dead. (Calling the episode “Connor’s Wedding” was another ingenious misdirection. Not “Logan’s Run” or “Long Live the King.” Something benign and seemingly knowable.)
What’s remarkable about this episode was how it managed to sneak up on us. The whole show, after all, has been about Logan’s death. In the show’s first episodes, he was frail, on the brink of incapacity. Later in the series, he nearly passes out while walking around an investor’s villa with Kendall. In another episode, he seems to have dementia, brought on by a urinary tract infection.
He was, in fact, always on the brink of death.
And yet despite this fact—Logan Roy has seemed invincible. Towering. Unstoppable. A man who always got the last laugh, the winning deal, the kill shot.
But in this life, of course, no one really gets the last laugh. Even the most powerful and mighty of men will eventually die. Reduced to a sack being dragged out of a private jet.
The acting in this episode was nothing short of sublime. Succession has been known to task its actors with extremely complex and contradictory emotions, often in the same scene—and never more so than in this episode. Denial. Fear. Grief. Useless hope. But also, anger. Anger at their father—anger at their unresolved feelings, that could now never be resolved. As Kendall said to his father, who no doubt could no longer hear him: I love you. But I don’t forgive you.
And now, the season we thought we understood, we thought we had a firm grip on, has suddenly been upended.
All those questions we thought the show would answer have been replaced by new ones—mostly, who will lead Waystar RoyCo? Will it be one of the kids or one of the ever-grasping executives? Will Gerri have the last laugh? Will Tom Wambsgans, of all freaking people, get to run the show (doubtful)? Will it be Mattson’s young CEO (Alexander Skarsgård), who has a touch of Logan Roy in him? Will Succession pull a Game of Thrones and throw us a hilariously irritating curveball, like somehow putting Greg (Nicholas Braun) in charge?
One things for sure—the alliance among the siblings, such as it was, will be fractured, and quickly. There’s no way this doesn’t get ugly fast.
Another thing: I will miss Roy’s brilliantly malevolent presence at the center of the show—and Brian Cox’s peerless depiction of him. He was a monster, but he was a fascinating monster—and an entertaining one too. By the end of his life, he didn’t have much. A sad birthday party filled with people he hated. The betrayal of his children. A rapidly changing world he didn’t like or understand. In episode one of Season 4, he brought his limousine driver to a diner and had a sad birthday meal where they discussed the afterlife. (Another giant hint that we all just…ignored.) “You’re my best friend,” he told the mostly taciturn driver. A tragic moment for sure—a king who had everything and nothing all at the same time.
By the end of Connor’s wedding, the kids are all processing their grief, but also scheming for the future—how can they not? There’s a multi-billion-dollar business on the line.
As Logan’s body is hauled into the ambulance, the limo driver looks on sadly. He’s the only one whose grief is pure.