Well, it was the unexpected TV death of the year, for starters. Just as Logan Roy – the media mogul who for three seasons had refused to let go of his billion-dollar company Waystar Royco – dominated his jostling adult children, Succession had always revolved around the vulpine snarl of the man who played Logan, Brian Cox. The big man had to be killed off so Succession could actually feature a succession, but without him, wouldn’t it be Lear without the king? Surely Cox would be kept on screen as long as possible?
Not so. The ruthless drama binned Cox after just three episodes of the fourth and final season. Hours of Coxless fare beckoned. Of course, showrunner Jesse Armstrong knew exactly what he was doing. He knew that while the cruel, profane, profoundly intimidating Logan had been a powerful avatar for an examination of how the richest 0.1% of corporate America act and think, his finest creations were those grownup kids: Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Roman (Kieran Culkin) and Shiv (Sarah Snook). Taking them out of Logan’s shadow meant Armstrong and his writers could slowly take them apart.
“You are not serious people,” Logan said to his brood at their final face-off, an instantly memeable put-down. As the grieving trio tried to gain control of Waystar by either securing or sabotaging a deal with unpredictable Scandinavian billionaire Lukas Matsson, they all ended up as losers. Matsson, a cross between Daniel Ek and a not-thick Elon Musk, roaringly well played by Alexander Skarsgård, represented a new class of plutocrat that was coming to eat the Roys alive.
Aside from showing us – with what always felt like cool accuracy – the penthouses, the country retreats and the lives lived in complete isolation from the real world, deliciously, the Succession conclusion coincided with reports that the Murdoch family had allegedly fought to stop each other contacting the show’s writers with suggested storylines. The series has taught us that top-level capitalism is a game, played by high achievers whose only goal is to make other high achievers squirm. Everything is a power play; sensing weakness and smelling bluffs are the keys to winning.
In Succession’s last season, it was more evident than ever that this is the ideal environment for the very finest filigree drama. Scene after brutal scene found ways to show that Kendall, Roman and Shiv were unable to overcome their essential flaws. As the show intensified its knack for turning every episode into the sort of devastating showdown that other dramas spend whole seasons working towards, the Roy siblings’ downfall had almost too many bravura character beats to count.
In one outstanding set piece at Logan’s funeral, Roman’s little-brother cockiness collapsed when he had to do a hard grownup thing and deliver a eulogy: Culkin’s embodiment of a pampered manchild with no emotional core, suddenly dissolving into toddler tears, was stunning. But Strong was superb too as Kendall, who replaced Roman at the funeral and improvised a brilliant speech defending his indefensible dad. Kendall is a talented operator, but his entitled view of himself as Logan’s natural successor doomed him to for ever be seen as a soft-bellied nepo baby. Succession found a definitive line for him to exclaim in the finale, when his lack of personal authority found him out and his insistence on his own importance finally, totally failed: “I am the eldest boy!”
In the season’s other classic episode, a presidential election night saw the siblings battle to decide Waystar’s influential news line. Shiv – the coolest, classiest Roy, whose effort to read Matsson’s emotions so nearly gave her victory, until it turned out she’d been played – looked on in horror when her liberalism proved no match for Roman’s amoral, Trumpish propaganda blitz. As Waystar ended up anointing a frightening proto-fascist and Shiv’s self-image as a kinder, gentler capitalist evaporated, Succession acquired a new political edge. As for Shiv herself, her wet snake of an ex-husband, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), became CEO of Matsson’s new Waystar purely by dint of being reliably pliable. That the Roys all finished the race some way behind a bog-standard office schemer was the perfect crowning ignominy.
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Roman, always the best at spotting a fake or a dud, delivered the final blow when he looked at himself, his brother and sister and said simply: “We’re bullshit.” For the Roys, it was a rare moment of self-aware clarity. As it left the stage, Succession proved that it knew its characters inside out.