‘Succession’ Series Finale Review: Long Live The [???]

The series finale of HBO’s hit drama Succession ran the length of a feature film, back when they made movies that were only 90 minutes long. It wrapped up the story of the Roy family in ways both great and terrible. I’m not really entirely sure what to say about it all.

Everyone took part in predicting the ending. Who would succeed? Who would be the successor? What shape would this succession story take? These were the questions we were all asking from the very first episode of the show until now. The answer to these questions may please some and infuriate others. Such is the nature of the beast. I was right and wrong in my predictions, and I have things to say about that.

Spoilers and all that rot, follow.

We’ll get it right out of the way: Nobody actually takes the throne at the end of this episode other than Lukas Mattson. Everyone was predicting that Tom would become CEO and yes, Tom becomes CEO and it means nothing. “I don’t want a partner,” Lukas tells him. “I want a pain sponge.” Tom is a figurehead. Tom is just the useful idiot by the end of this, slapping one of Connor’s stickers onto Greg’s forehead and telling him he has “just enough capital” to keep him employed.

The Roy kids are all out. Kendall is devastated. Shiv is betrayed but still “can’t stomach” Kendall enough to allow him to become CEO. Roman is relieved. It’s over for Logan’s bloodline—a bloodline he himself despised because Kendall and Rava’s kids are adopted.

“I am the eldest boy!” Kendall shouts when Shiv decides she can’t, in good faith, support his move to retain control of Waystar RoyCo, regardless of whether or not Mattson betrayed her. It’s so pathetic, so absurd, so Kendall.

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I jotted down so many notes watching this episode. I would share them but I keep this space vulgarity-free and most of my notes include quotations of the Roy kids and their hangers-on swearing up a storm. But some series finale highlights include:

• Many references to eyes. The episode was titled ‘Eyes Wide Open’ and the Roy kids’ mother says she’s unnerved by eyes. She describes them as jelly rolling around in peoples’ heads. “Face eggs.” Later we hear the phrase “Harvesting eyeballs.”
• Shiv is “Joan of Waystar” lol.
• Alexander Skarsgård reminded me of his father, Stellan, so intensely when he growled “What a time to be alive” I could imagine him playing Luthan Rael in an Andor prequel show. He’s been so terrific on this show—as has the entire cast: Jeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook, Brian Cox, Matthew Macfadyen,Nicholas Braun etc. etc. etc. ad infitum
• Greg using his phone to translate what the Swedes are saying is actually brilliant and Greg is now perhaps the savviest of savvy survivors on this show. He made the right move and the wrong move at the same time and still came out on top.
• I loved the scenes with the Roy kids goofing around, licking the cheese. Shiv and Roman mocking Kendall. The whole smoothie sequence. It was nice and sincere and moving.
• Speaking of moving, when they go to Logan’s apartment and Connor gives them the rundown of how the claim process works and then they go watch that video, what an emotional moment! I never thought that Karl singing ‘Green Go The Rushes’ would bring tears to my eyes, but for whatever reason I was crying like a baby.

• So fascinating to see Logan in a different context, without Shiv and Kendall and Roman around, only Connor and Kerry and the Old Guard, all laughing and having a lovely time. What a window into another world.
• Moments earlier, Connor and Willa described their convenient long-distance relationship with him off to Slovenia for a diplomat post. Willa was getting the pad and she was glad! Then Shiv mentions that Mencken may not win, and Willa sad! I predicted that we would not find out the final election results, and we did not.
• “Much dearer to me than my treasure, the heiress declared ‘is my leisure’, for then I can screw, the whole Harvard crew, they’re slow but that lengthens the pleasure.” Gerri’s limerick that really unsettles Roman. Later, when she arrives at the corporate HQ, he almost loses it entirely.
• Kendall and Roman, at various points, hug and weep and fight and brawl. Brothers to the end.
• Shiv and Tom, after he succeeds:

“It’s all nothing,” Roman tells Kendall, when the jig is up. “We are bullshit.” Kendall won’t hear it. He denies everything. When Shiv tells him that he can’t be CEO because he killed someone—a brief moment of morality over ego—he lies and denies it, calling it a “forced memory.” Truly, he’s carpe-ing the diem. “It’s bits of glue and bits of shadow,” Roman says.

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Later, when it’s all said and done, and Mattson and GoJo win, as Tom walks in triumphant, Karl and Frank stand watching, grim, talking golden parachutes and their alternatives.

“We should have slit his throat in the cradle,” Frank says.

Maybe so. But it’s too late now.

Logan is dead. So are his kids.

Long live the king.

I predicted that Mattson would win and install someone other than Shiv as CEO. On both those counts, I was right. I was wrong because I thought he’d install someone else entirely. Tom got the top job instead, which I think was a little on the nose, but fine in the big scheme of things. It works dramatically, but doesn’t make that much sense from Mattson’s point of view. Surely someone so successful and savvy would have figureheads and stooges lined up already. No matter. It ticked off some dramatic boxes that I don’t mind seeing ticked.

This was a really powerful, overwhelming episode of TV, wrapping up one of the best episodes of any show I’ve ever seen in a profoundly satisfying way. I am honestly a bit overwhelmed at the moment. I could probably write 20 separate posts about this finale, yet at the same time I struggle to put into words exactly what it makes me feel in this lonely review. I will leave it at that for now.

I’ll just say this: Succession’s series finale was a pregnant cello, a meal fit for a king, the worst smoothie ever invented, and watching Greg bitch-slap Tom back made me laugh out loud. “Teamwork makes the dream work.”

“I love you but I cannot stomach you.”

“I am the eldest boy!”

What did you think? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.