Sarah Snook in the final episode of Succession. Photo / HBO
Sarah Snook in the final episode of Succession. Photo / HBO
This review contains spoilers.
There was, in the end, no joy for the Roys. The backstabbing siblings exited Succession much as they had entered four seasons ago: broken, brittle brats, fuelled by entitlement and consumed by spectacular daddy issues.
Kendall, Shiv and Roman had gone into the concluding series of Jesse Armstrong’s boardroom blockbuster, desperate to stop creepy tech mogul Lukas Matsson walking away with the family silver. But walk away with Waystar Royco he did in an epic last episode that revisited all of Succession’s strengths and a few of its weaknesses. This wasn’t one of those finales that pulls the rug away and leaves you speechless. Instead, Succession was playing the hits with an enthusiasm that sometimes verged on hysterical.
Betrayal has been the show’s recurring theme from the outset. Up to his death Logan Roy repeatedly double-crossed his kids by leading them to believe they would inherit his media empire – though, in his heart, he knew they weren’t up to the job. History was repeated as Shiv (Sarah Snook) garrotted heir apparent Kendall (Jeremy Strong) when the Matsson deal went to a final boardroom vote.
She had already been knifed by Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård), who changed his mind about making her the company’s US figurehead – telling her estranged husband Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) that Shiv essentially was too much her own woman. Matsson didn’t want someone who knew their mind. He needed a lackey – a part Tom was born to play.
If there has been a flaw with this final season, it is that Succession has been eating its own tail slightly. The show has several go-to scenes: the siblings scurrying to the phones to outfox one another, Tom and Shiv trying to kiss and make up while secretly plotting, Matsson glowing like a sociopathic Sun King. Those were the notes show-runner Armstrong hit again and again this year. Succession is a masterful TV – but, by the finale, there was a sense of having seen and heard it all before.
Shiv betrayed Kendall – but didn’t she already pull that treacherous rabbit out of the hat several episodes ago when quietly agreeing to side with Matsson and vote for the takeover? And yes, how strange to see the usually flailing Tom pull himself together and side with Matsson. Or it would have been had he not previously sold out Shiv and the siblings to Logan at the end of series three.
Still, perfect finales are difficult to pull off, and Armstrong came close. Despite the 90-minute run-time, the instalment clipped by and had some breathtaking moments. When Shiv wise-cracked about killing Kendall at their mother’s retreat in Barbados, there was a heartbeat when you wondered whether she was joking (perhaps she wondered too). Instead, she bonded with Kendall and Roman – after the Roys had learned, via Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun), that Matsson was going to exclude Shiv from the new regime.
The Roys’ downfall was ultimately rooted in Shiv’s inability to share Kendall and Roman’s delusions. True, she was blinded by her own ambition to succeed her late father. Yet she also saw too clearly that Kendall was the emptiest suit in a show filled with ghastly parodies of functional human beings.
Matthew Macfadyen as Tom. Photo / HBO
One of Succession’s greatest strengths has been its willingness to leave space for ambiguity. Before his death, it was unclear whether Logan was taking advantage of the vulnerable Roman – or whether he wanted his son to become his closest ally. Perhaps both were true at once.
In the finale, the same dynamic was at work with Shiv when she flunked out of the boardroom meeting at which Kendall expected to be named CEO. She wanted the job – and knew she was better suited. At the same time, she understood what a disaster Kendall would be as CEO.
“I don’t think you’d be good this,” she said – and meant it. She brought up the drowned waiter from series one, and Kendall flatly denied involvement in the death. He couldn’t sell the lie, just as he could never sell himself as his father’s successor.
Victory, in the end, went to Tom. Betrayed romantically by Shiv, he calmly and cooly extracted the worst possible revenge and took up Matsson’s offer to be the new head of Waystar. She had lived in her father’s shadow, and now the sun was blocked by the man she had settled for and whom she had never viewed as an equal. The unhappy couple drove away, their sham marriage even more hollowed out. Elsewhere, a broken Roman drank alone. And Kendall sat on a bench, staring at the waves.
The Roy siblings in the finale of Succession. Photo / HBO
Succession had started as a comedy as much as a drama. There were laughs in the final episode: such as when the Roy’s ghastly mother, Lady Caroline (Harriet Walter), described eyes as “face-eggs”. But as the closing credits approached, all humour drained away.
It wasn’t quite as Shakespearean as we may have hoped for – too many reheated betrayals – and the show suffered from the absence of Brian Cox’s molten Logan (he did get a farewell bow when Logan popped up briefly in a home movie). But if this wasn’t a mind-blowing finale brimming with bombshells, it was a satisfyingly devastating closing act. From Mattson to Tom, everyone was a winner. Except for the Roys – the poor little rich kids for whom life was, in the end, revealed to be one long succession of disappointments.
The finale of Succession is available now on Neon.
