Photo by Pixabay
***Spoilers below*** If you have not watched the final season or the season finale of HBO’s hit drama, Succession, leave now. You’ve been warned!
I know I’m late to the Succession obsession, but, like so many others, I watched with anticipation the season and show finale this past Sunday. Even before that final episode hit, I was reading every hot-take theory and watching every TikTok plotting out who would actually win and take over Waystar Royco. Would it be the eccentric Swedish tech billionaire, Lukas Matsson? Or would it be one of the damaged Roy children, absolutely rudderless after the death of their patriarch and emotional deadweight father, Logan Roy?
The final episode, which put a fake crown on someone who wasn’t a real part of the Roy family and which saw a tech giant finally swallow up the old-world news conglomerate was a perfect ending to what was to me, honestly, a perfect show. There have been perfect seasons for other shows for me; recently that was season 1 of Russian Doll and season 2 of Fleabag. But each one of Succession’s four seasons was so well written, directed, and acted. Somehow the writers and actors made me despise and yet also empathize with these broken characters over the course of the show. Even though they are filthy rich billionaires, the old trope that money can’t buy you happiness was played out in every broken promise, every failed relationship, and every ragged hope that was trodden upon.
After finishing the show finale, I had the urge to rewatch the show from the beginning, and I’m glad I did. The themes that echoed throughout each season are introduced in the very first episode. And, in some ways, the episode represents the mirror image of what happened to the family and the company in the show finale.
“Celebration” is the very first episode, and here we’re introduced to the major players in the Roy family saga. Logan is introduced to us in a befuddled daze, peeing on the floor of his new apartment because he’s forgotten where he is. In a way, he walks through the apartment in the dark like a ghost. And his presence still lingers like a ghost in the final episode, the star of a “virtual dinner” with him when Connor plays an old video of him to the kids.
Kendall is introduced as a weirdly uptight white dude who’s listening to rap music about New York City right before he walks in to shit-talk the CEO of Vaulter, a new media startup that he eventually brokers the overpriced deal to buy (in a move that is the bookend image of Matsson and tech company GoJo finally sealing the deal to buy out the legacy media company in the final episode). He’s in a celebratory mood because he’s anticipating his father’s upcoming public announcement of him as successor. Of course, that mood is dashed to bits as it is in the show finale.
In episode one, we also meet Roman, the youngest boy, in a cloud of sage from the business alchemist he’s brought in to get rid of the “bad juju” in the office. He says that he’s actually relieved that it won’t be him succeeding his father since he’s happy to be out of here. “This place was essentially a cage to me.” A quote that puts the look of happiness he has when he sips his final martini after the sale has gone through and freed him from the cage of the family business in the final episode. None of this is real to him as he says in episode 1, “Look at all this fuckin' bullshit! Mm, yes, mm, very serious, mm.” He repeats this line in the final episode in his epic fight with Kendall over the final board votes to reject the GoJo deal: “I'm fucking bullshit. She's bullshit. It's all fucking nothing, man.”
When we meet Siobhan, or Shiv, she’s talking political strategy on the phone with someone she may or may not be having an affair with. Meanwhile, she can’t be bothered to give Tom, her partner, any real strategy on giving her father a gift other than telling him her father won’t like anything he gets, just make sure it’s expensive. And she denies her father the only real gift that he really wants, her signature on paperwork that will give his second wife, Marcia, more power in the company. Of course, it’s also Shiv who denies Kendall in that finale episode the gift that he has wanted all of his life, which was to take over his father’s business.
Rewatching these two episodes and seeing each of these major characters twist and turn through four seasons and yet ultimately be unable to escape from their final broken fate was just such a satisfying television watching experience.
I’ve already written about how I support the writer’s strike. And this show is the ultimate example of why you should as well. The writing on Succession was absolutely brilliant. The show really could only have ended the way that it did, an utter tragedy that had each of the children acting completely in character and exactly as they were introduced in that initial episode.
What are your thoughts on this brilliant show? Share them in the comments below.
留言