The upcoming fourth season of the award-winning HBO series Succession will be its last.
The show’s creator and showrunner Jesse Armstrong confirmed its fate in an interview with The New Yorker. Armstrong said he spoke with a few members of the Succession writers’ room prior to working on the scripts for Season 4, asking how they should proceed with the series.
“I got together with a few of my fellow writers before we started the writing of season four, in about November, December 2021, and I sort of said, ‘Look, I think this maybe should be it. But what do you think?’” Armstrong recalled.
“And we played out various scenarios: We could do a couple of short seasons, or two more seasons,” he continued. “Or we could go on for ages and turn the show into something rather different, and be a more rangy, freewheeling kind of fun show, where there would be good weeks and bad weeks. Or we could do something a bit more muscular and complete, and go out sort of strong. And that was definitely always my preference.”
Armstrong said the decision to end the show after four seasons wasn’t even finalized by the time they started filming. However, Armstrong said he was up front with the cast about the possible direction of the series, telling them, “I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I think this is it.”
Once it was established that Season 4 would be the last, Armstrong had to determine when he would share that news with the public.
“I feel a responsibility to the viewership, and I personally wouldn’t like the feeling of, ‘Oh, that’s it, guys. That was the end,’” he said. “I wouldn’t like that in a show. I think I would like to know it is coming to an end.”
Season 4 of Succession premieres on March 26.