*Warning: Contains spoilers for the Succession series finale.*
Despite all of Waystar Royco’s furious, dramatic, and humorous manoeuvring and plotting throughout the years, the situation in Succession never actually, meaningfully changed.
Logan Roy (Brian Cox) ran Waystar while his three children, Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin), and Siobhan (Sarah Snook), fought over who would fill his shoes.
Logan died abruptly with seven episodes remaining. Succession has admitted in the weeks before his death that its blend of corporate excitement, family drama, and sitcom stasis could only go so far before snapping.
The ending of this flawless series was obvious from the start: an entitled son denied his inheritance as his two brothers taunt him from the sidelines.
Because the backstabbing and betrayals were pointless and ludicrous while the terrible Roy father stood on his throne. Logan was king, leader of the eco-system that bubbled around him.
He was ubiquitous, no matter how much activity was going on around him – he always won, and order was always restored.
However, with his murder, the stakes were higher than ever, and anarchy prevailed. The Roy brothers waged war on one another.
In reaction, the show’s fan community drew battle lines.
Each spectator had a favourite sibling they wanted to ‘win’ by ending the series in Logan’s place.
But as the many characters in this series descended farther and deeper into their own cesspool, it became increasingly difficult to imagine fans squabbling over who would claim the exact chalice that had been poisoning them since day one.
Looking at Twitter between the final two episodes reminded me of how it felt to be on the ground during the closing weeks of another HBO behemoth, Game of Thrones.
After years of conflict, hardship, and tragedy, it didn’t really matter who sat on the Iron Throne. That coveted seat, and the illusion of the title ‘game,’ had already wreaked havoc on so many individuals.
The actual enemy – the fight for power, ‘the wheel’ – was the one opponent that could never be defeated, no matter how many Joffreys, Ramsays, or Night Kings were slaughtered. Even with Logan gone, the Roy siblings battled the same old struggles as if their father was still around.
So it was maddening when so many of the show’s fans remained yearning for someone, anybody, to ‘win,’ even after it was evident that no one could.
And, throughout the course of the previous 38 episodes, Succession made it quite apparent that Logan, as vile and terrifying as he was, was not the main antagonist, and there would never be a clear winner.
The ultimate adversary was always the capitalist framework, which ate away at everyone who went in front of the camera. The only ‘winners’ are the dead-eyed misogynist tech-bro Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) and Jeryd Mencken, a right-wing autocrat in waiting.
The Roy siblings sold practically all of their souls and then tore apart the shreds that remained, while Matsson and Mencken waited to strike with their billions of wealth and insatiable drive for power.
It’s always been evident to me that whatever titles and positions the Roys possessed at the end would be meaningless.
Logan, on the night before he died, looked his kids in the eyes and said, ‘I love you, but you are not serious people.’
That passage of conversation should have been enough to put an end to the squabbling among the Succession fans. However, unfortunately.
It’s not stupid to cheer for TV characters, no matter how damaged they are. But as Succession cycled through one Roy drama after another, it became evident just how bad they are – and why viewers who were unironically’stanning’ the individual Roy brothers and their many flunkeys and allies missed the point.
They’ve individually concealed sexual assault accusations, hidden proof of corporate manslaughter and extreme negligence, and humiliated poor families by dangling (and then ripping up) $1 million cheques in their faces during the course of the series.
This was emphasised even more in the climax, which provides more and more possibilities for the characters to debase themselves in order to gain more power.
And, as we’ve seen from the beginning, these desires corrupt more than just the main family.
When the GoJo owner makes vile, sexual comments about Shiv, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfayden) voluntarily cuckolds himself to Matsson. He’s so deep in the maze on his hungry search for greater influence and power that he gives his wife up as live bait (‘We’re both men’) to become the ‘American CEO’.
Matsson then recruits Tom on the condition that he become a ‘pain sponge’.
And Cousin Greg, who is constantly scheming and planning and living the life of a Disgusting Brother, has spent the whole season selling his soul to any devil who will pay.
To some extent, it succeeds, but then Tom labels him a “piece of s**t,” and Matsson reduces him to the status of court jester. It deflates Greg’s story and identifies him as a corporate stooge. He was always a parasite, as Kendall accurately identified in season three.
Then there are the Roys themselves. Shiv condemns herself to a hate-filled marriage of convenience with Tom after selling off her brothers.
With the Waystar sale completed, Roman may appear to be the happiest of the siblings, but he’s only a phone call away from a series of sexual misconduct trials if Gerri ever wakes up on the wrong side of the bed.
Ken, too. Ken, Jesus Christ.
Reduced to yelling out that he’s ‘the eldest boy’ like a petulant adolescent, an ex-wife and daughter who want nothing from him. No true friends, no father, no legacy – a shattered and hollow life of entitlement.
Succession left its most devastating punch for last, after witnessing the brothers temporarily act like the innocent children they once were, joking and gleefully repeating their childhood games in the dark of night (a ‘Meal Fit for a King’ smoothie sounds horrifying).
It distorted that previously maintained picture of the Roys as small children one last time. Kendall bullies his younger brother to get his way, resulting in a tense fight scenario that unfolds in full, embarrassing view of their colleagues. After all, they never truly grew up.
Shiv’s eulogy from Logan’s funeral repeated in my head as the Roys resumed their pitiful battle, clutching at each other’s hair: ‘We used to play outside his office… he was so terrible… He’d shout at us to be quiet since what he was doing in there was so crucial. We couldn’t fathom what it was – presidents, kings, and queens.’
I believe those are the Roy siblings sans their father. Squabbling, entitled children, always on the periphery of what is truly essential.
And what was the point of it all? The Roys may be more wealthy than they were before, but they have nothing else.
The sum of their unending battles and frantic pursuit for acceptance results in them eventually turning over their legacy, and the fate of a nation, to Matsson and Mencken, two of the worst persons to ever appear on this show. And that’s saying a lot.
The Roys are the most pitiful TV characters I’ve ever encountered.
Clearly the result of their father’s maltreatment (and his scorn for the luxurious lifestyles he established for them), they were doomed from the start because they were blinded by greed, ego, and infantile competitiveness, so immersed in the game of capitalism.
They were, in the end, not serious individuals.
