SPOILERS: "Succession" is a masterclass in wanting what's just out of reach.
With more viewers than ever, the HBO drama's third season finally brings the show's core conflict to a head.
HBO’s hit drama Succession is almost so famous that it doesn’t need to be introduced. The internet—and newspapers, magazines, and talk shows—are saturated with content covering everything from the plot to the writing to the clothes the characters wear.
The show’s growing fame has spawned articles like this one in GQ, highlighting the ten best insults delivered by Roy family patriarch Logan (played by Brian Cox), to his children, employees, and enemies alike. It’s also generated a whole lot of power rankings and episode recap columns, including one of my favorite newsletters.
Over its three season run, we’ve seen praise from many and critiques from some, particularly this fall. The third season’s drama struck many viewers as a worse version of the previous seasons, and while this complaint should be at least partially answered by the end of the season, it’s a reasonable take none the less.
Recently, a highly discussed profile on Jeremy Strong (who plays Kendall, one of four Roy children) caused a flurry of internet arguments, to add even more logs to the fire already hot with countless “best of” articles, gif collections, and character highlights.
The Succession content-making process has taken over entire publishing cycles. The Ringer’s home page banner now includes a “Succession” tab up there with links to coverage of the NFL, the NBA, and the MCU. Maybe my laptop just isn’t large enough and the “more” section of the menu expands on a larger screen, but either way Succession has earned the number three spot next to two of the biggest sports leagues in the world.
We got… let’s see… one, two, three, four, five, six, seven articles or podcasts from The Ringer alone talking about the penultimate episode of season three. And in all fairness, there’s so much to talk about that many authors have done an excellent job simply by writing focused, precise essays on specific elements of the show.
One of the best developments from the show, aside from the fantastic acting up and down the ensemble cast, is the breakout of Nicholas Braun, who plays Greg “The Egg” Hirsch, the grandson of Logan’s estranged brother Ewan (James Cromwell). Braun is just one of the many actors who has found a way to shine in his role on the show, both when he’s getting a lot of playing time and when it shrinks in favor of other characters. And the rest of the cast does the same. It’s the team-wide performance in Succession that makes it worth watching, because every scene involves a character that sucks you in—with their goofiness, cruelty, kindness, and everything in between.
The Roys and the rest of the Succession gang give us a lot to absorb in every single episode. We definitely get some of the most colorful language to ever hit the screen from Kendall, his siblings Roman (Kieran Culkin), Siobhan/Shiv (Sarah Snook), and Connor (Alan Ruck) and the rest of the cast. Kendall’s use of metaphor is reliably hilarious, and everyone else has quips to hold their own.
This is above and beyond simply swearing a lot—you can watch The Sopranos or The Wire if you just want to hear someone say “fuck” and “shit” a lot. Succession takes insult and argument to new highs and lows, with flair and style unlike anything I’ve seen before.
What we almost never get from the show, on the other hand, is any sort of closure.
To be fair, what good tv show does give in to the desire for a neat little bow at the end? But what show-runner Jesse Armstrong (Peep Show) accomplishes in Succession is a masterful seduction of the audience, often against our better judgement. The writers consistently give us hope, over and over again, that at least one of the Roy children is either going to finally take over the company or (the much healthier option) break free from their father’s grip.
We know that Logan is going to find a way to fuck (no bleeping on HBO) his kids over and pit them against each other despite the fact that he is invariably the one pulling the strings and leading them along. We know that Kendall is going to struggle with the confluence of his addiction and his proximity to the throne, that Shiv wants more than anything to believe that her father would consider giving her the reigns to the empire, and that dear Roman just wants the occasional sign that he might be loved by one of the most brutal men on television.
But no matter how much one tries, the few morsels of naive optimism dangled for us to hang on to somehow make those disappointments even more brutal when they inevitably come. Shiv’s husband Tom (Matthew Macfayden) is my favorite character, and he knows more than most about how often we get let down in life.
This is far from being a criticism of the show. One of the best parts of Succession is how mercilessly it gives and takes from its protagonists, perpetually shifting the balance of power from character to character but never giving any one of them enough to actually ensure a victory—except of course for Logan, who never wastes his advantage as the incumbent head of the company.
Some characters, like cousin Greg, Tom, Waystar/Royco general counsel Gerri Kellman (J. Smith-Cameron), and top executives Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) and Karl Muller (David Rasche), are basically always hanging on for their lives. They, and Logan’s wife Marcia (Hiam Abbass) and ex-wife Caroline (Harriet Walter), rarely get enough political (or actual) capital to have any importance for the inner circle of the royal family.
But that makes their wins even more special, and it means that the character development they are permitted to go through and the schemes they are allowed to develop serve to draw us in to the larger dynamic and wonder how on earth a family of billionaires could possibly be effected by anyone but themselves and their economic peers.
Writer and critic Andy Greenwald, on The Ringer’s first recap, pointed out how Season 3 tells the tale of Logan watching each of his children continue to fumble their opportunities as the firm faces a series of existential threats. But the show lets us get lost in each of the children’s woes one by one, and it’s easy to forget that their father is ruthlessly evaluating their decisions at every turn, trying to decide who among them will get the chance to succeed him as leader of the family company. Logan, too, violent asshole that he is, also deals with opportunities coming and going regardless of what he wants or needs.
There are three moments in the most recent season that demonstrate precisely how much Succession accomplishes.
Biodynamic wines and a broken marriage.
One, perhaps my favorite, takes place in the sixth episode (“What It Takes”), between Shiv and Tom at home in their beautiful Manhattan apartment. It brought me to tears laughing and moments later caused my heart to drop in pain, thanks to the perfectly uncomfortable chemistry that Snook and Macfayden have developed between their characters over more than four years working on the show.
First, as they’re shooting the shit, Tom brings out a bottle of wine, wrapped in white paper. He tells Shiv that it came from their own vineyard—one they’ve probably never seen in person—and explains that the wine is biodynamic, hence the “quite a bit of funk” he notices upon smelling his glass.
“You kinda have to meet it halfway, right,” he remarks after taking his first sip and puckering his entire face.
Shiv searches for adjectives, coming up with “earthy” and “Germanic,” and Tom tries “floral” (no), “sugary” (no), “vegetal” (maybe?), and settles on “quite agricultural,” which anyone who has tried biodynamic wine can confirm in a heartbeat. Tom finally gives in. “It’s not very nice, is it,” he admits, and then tries the next bottle, only to find it just the same as the first.
This might be too niche of a joke to have spent this much time on it, but it is just so accurate and well done that I think it deserves praise regardless of whether it landed with everyone who watched it.
But then the topic turns to the consequence of Waystar’s historic misdeeds. Tom is going to jail.
He wants to talk—with his wife, mind you—about the research he’s been doing on prison food, different facilities, and the like, and Shiv is frantically strategizing in her head, a thousand miles away. Tom notices, and she responds as if it’s his fault, complaining that he “always” wants to talk about his impending incarceration.
“I’m sorry, does the topic of my immanent imprisonment bore you?” Tom replies.
Shiv acts as if she doesn’t have the time or energy to engage with her husband’s emotions. But after seeing the havoc wreaked by Logan on all of his children, the real question is whether she would know how to in the first place. The Roy children are deeply emotionally stunted, evidenced by Shiv’s next move which is to try to get Tom to have sex with her and move on from the conversation. I think we know what doesn’t happen next.
Honorable mention for Tom and Shiv Scene of the Season goes to the sex scene in episode eight where Shiv requests some good old fashioned dirty talk. But more than being dirty, this talk is just mean, and she seems to love it. She tells Tom that he isn’t good enough for her, and he plays along. But when she says that he loves her even though she doesn’t love him, Macfayden’s face falls and you can feel the truth of her words weighing him down. Not exactly the sexiest of sexy talk.
It’s brilliant and devastating, and it’s the spiritual successor to last year’s beach scene.
2021’s hottest couple, and… dad.
Another, which became famous the moment it happened, comes when Roman accidentally sends an unsolicited dick pic—meant for the firm’s general counsel—to his father. I was a fan of the Roman-Gerri plot line, and I was kind of sad to see it end so abruptly, but it was probably worth it to see the face Culkin gifted us.
It would be bad enough just to send the picture to Logan, but to do so in a conference room actively being filled by Waystar executives is perhaps even more unfortunate.
Roman had spent so long trying to get his father to take him seriously, and even got to be the person to make the approach on an important acquisition this season. But all that promise vanished the moment Logan looked at his phone.
The lesson? Always double-check before you hit send. It takes a whole lot of work to build up a reputation, and only one errant dick pic to tear it all down.
A long-awaited confession.
I take it back—the Season 3 finale does give us one moment of closure that I don’t think anyone ever expected to come.
It had been more than two years—and I’m not sure how much Succession time—since Kendall’s car went into a lake with him and a waiter from his sister’s wedding on board. Only one of them had made it out of the lake. His father and his men in dark suits had covered it up on his behalf, but only Logan and those directly involved knew what had occurred.
Kendall’s responsibility for the young man’s death had weighed heavily on him ever since, leading him to seek new meaning as his father’s opponent rather than as his lackey. But all that ends up happening is Kendall in exile, unable to talk to his siblings about basically anything given that they will quickly share any personal or professional weaknesses with Logan.
Finally, Kendall admits the truth to Roman and Shiv. The three siblings really should be the closest confidants, having all been subject to the vicissitudes of their father’s temper for decades. But instead they’re almost always scheming, holding something back—whether it’s an advantage they’re waiting to exploit or a misstep they’re hoping to conceal.
Thanks to Logan’s penchant for spontaneously rescinding his affection, each of his children has learned to guard their secrets, to play everything close to the vest.
Getting a confession of what is most certainly a felony out of Kendall is a fantastic development in the fight for emotional intimacy amongst the Roy children, and all it took was a few accidental drownings.
In Season 4, which was confirmed by HBO just a few episodes into Season 3, we may finally get to see Kendall, Roman, and Shiv team up instead of wear each other down to be picked off one by one by Logan. Who knows what will happen then, but I can’t wait to find out.