SPOILER ALERT: This story contains spoilers for the series finale of “Succession.”
It was never going to be a happy ending.
But for a while on Sunday night, “Succession” dangled the possibility of something approximating one: the Roy children united against Lukas Mattson’s takeover of their late father’s media empire, son Kendall anointed CEO by mutual agreement, finally fulfilling the promise of being Logan Roy’s “number one boy.”
It was snatched away, though; of course it was.
“Succession” returned to its sweet spot of familial betrayal — this tragic show about a wounded, bitter man and his damaged children — in a 90-minute series finale that kept us guessing and engaged until the end.
When it came time for the board to vote on the deal to sell the Waystar Royco conglomerate to Swede Mattson’s GoJo tech company, it was six for and six against, with Shiv Roy (Sarah Snook) the tiebreaker. And she broke her word to her brothers Kendall (Jeremy Strong) and Roman (Kieran Culkin), and voted yes.
There was no longer a Roy at the head of Waystar Royco, the company that the fearsome Logan Roy (Brian Cox) had created. Shiv’s husband, Tom Wambsgans, the “hick,” as she’d called him in a vicious argument just days before, was the new CEO.
It was a final devastating twist in a show that was full of them from start to finish.
The episode began, as it ended, with the siblings divided. Shiv had sided with Mattson against her brothers on the assumption he would make her CEO of the new GoJo-led Waystar. She and Kendall were busy trying to lock down board votes, equally confident they had enough to carry the day.
Roman? He was missing in action.
We last saw him after his father’s funeral, lying in the street, having been assaulted while baiting a crowd of left-wing protesters, but he turned up alive and relatively well, albeit with a forehead full of stitches, at his mother’s home in the Caribbean.
Naturally, both Ken and Shiv flew there to try to lock down his vote, although Roman seemed to have lost the stomach for the fight.
It was a betrayal by Mattson that brought the siblings back together.
He no longer wanted the pregnant Shiv as CEO, partly because he felt a Roy wasn’t necessary to smooth his way politically; partly because he wanted to have sex with Shiv and “I can’t deal with the mess of that.”
That decision, conveyed to Kendall by cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun) — who, in a nice comic touch, awkwardly used a Swedish translation app to eavesdrop on a conversation — persuaded the kids to band together to stop the sale. And it took some convincing but, during a late night swim, Roman and Shiv finally agreed to anoint Ken as CEO.
They seemed happy with the decision, giddy even. So what changed?
Shiv learned that Mattson had offered the CEO job to Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) because, as Mattson crassly put it, “if I can have anyone in the world why don’t I get the guy who put the baby inside her instead of the baby lady?”
When Shiv bolted out of the boardroom during the vote, Kendall and Roman on her heels, she told them she might have changed her mind.
No amount of grovelling by Ken could sway her. “I am like a cog built to fit only one machine. It’s the only thing I know how to do,” he pleaded. In fact, we learned his father had promised a seven-year-old Kendall the job during a trip to a candy store.
“I don’t think you’d be good at it,” Shiv replied. And anybody watching the last four seasons knew she was right.
And that wasn’t the worst of it. Shiv threw Kendall’s Season 3 confession — about the waiter he killed in Season 1 when he drove a car into an English lake — in his face. Ken and Roman got into a physical fight — in full view of board members — after Roman cast doubt on the parentage of Ken’s children and whether they were part of the family’s “real” bloodline. (It wasn’t the only violence. Tom hit Greg after learning that he had tipped off the kids to Shiv’s demotion and Greg hit him back, although he was back to being Tom’s lackey by the end of the episode.)
By the time Kendall had gathered his wits and tried to adjourn the board meeting, Shiv had already voted and the company was sold.
There’s a symmetry to the fact that Tom came out on top in the end. It was his betrayal that kept his wife and her brothers from scuttling the GoJo deal in the Season 3 finale, effectively cutting them out of the empire and making Tom Logan’s heir apparent.
Even in death, Logan’s power was unassailable. The deal he had been on his way to clinch when he died on his private plane went ahead; the man who had helped him keep it alive got the crown.
“Logan mark II, only this time he’s f-king sexy,” was how Mattson put it.
The kids will get even richer from the sale, yet more money cushioning the blow to their egos.
Shiv repositioned herself as Tom’s wife, although it’s unlikely to be a happy reunion given the icy way they held hands on the car ride home. Ken took a walk, trailed by Colin — he couldn’t keep his father’s job, but he got to keep his bodyguard — and stared morosely out at the Hudson River. Roman went for a drink, smiling to himself over his martini.
Roman, never the smartest sibling, got it right in the end. In a clear echo of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” speech about life being a tale “told by an idiot, full of sound and fury. Signifying nothing,” Roman told Kendall: “We are bulls-t. It’s all f-king nothing. I’m telling you this because I know it.”
It doesn’t matter how rich or powerful you are — you’re going to die someday perhaps, like Logan, ingloriously in a bathroom, and all the earthly accolades will be pointless.
For all the praises heaped on “Succession,” the 13 Emmy Awards with more sure to follow, the show’s greatest achievement over its 39 episodes was to get us to care about nothing.
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