Spoilers beneath.
Ever since Succession’s fourth season debuted in March, followers have been “pre-grieving” the finale, to borrow a time period from Roman Roy. We knew upfront that HBO’s most prestigious status drama was coming to an finish. Trailers and posters proudly marketed it as “The Closing Season.” And now, as of Sunday night time, it’s actually over: Patriarch Logan Roy, who pitted his youngsters in opposition to one another like gladiators in a battle to manage the household empire, is entombed in a $5 million mausoleum. Kendall, Logan’s inheritor not-so-apparent, misplaced the vote to dam a deal after Shiv, true to her identify, stabbed him within the again. Consequently, Waystar Royco wound up within the palms of GoJo, an “all the pieces app” run by billionaire Swede Lukas Matsson with Tom Wambsgans as his puppet “ache sponge” CEO.
The Roy children have formally fucked off. And we, the viewers, are inconsolable, observing our TV screens and questioning if they’re in there.
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Amid an ever-widening hole between the wealthy and the poor (and rising calls to “eat the wealthy”), loads of American tv reveals have taken intention on the 1 %. With choices like Succession, The White Lotus, and Massive Little Lies, HBO has turned skewering the ultrarich right into a enterprise mannequin. However no person has accomplished it fairly like Succession, which has received 13 Emmys to this point, with extra more likely to come. Past the important acclaim, the present has electrified followers in unprecedented methods, significantly should you take into account that it was a intellectual drama most frequently in comparison with King Lear. But, when critics marvel which of the Roy youngsters goes to “win a kiss from daddy” in any given week, they’re quoting a YouTube remix of the present’s theme track that went viral 4 years in the past. Every character has developed its personal rabid fandom, circulating memes and TikTok fancams: Kendall and Greg are each babygirl; Shiv was Mom earlier than it was even revealed that she was pregnant. Beware the Conheads and the Roman Girlies. And mazel tov to the Wambsgans Stans.
What was it about this present? Sure, the writing crackled off the web page and the actors, even those enjoying smaller roles (Rava and Jess: I see you), left all of it on the sector each week. Succession was nothing if not topical: plotlines, just like the election of a neofascist propped up by a right-wing information group, bore an eerie resemblance to some information occasions, and appeared to foretell others. “Roman Roy” trended on Twitter following the explosion of certainly one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets in April as a result of it was foreshadowed by a fictional rocket-launch debacle within the present’s first season. The identical month, the Princess of Wales was known as out within the press for carrying a “ludicrously capacious” purse on a current go to to Birmingham, echoing Tom’s description of the Burberry tote carried by Greg’s date within the season four premiere. When Tucker Carlson was fired by Fox Information, followers recommended his substitute needs to be Kerry, Logan’s assistant-slash-girlfriend (a.okay.a. “Chuckles the Clown”).
However the actual purpose Succession has made such a permanent cultural impression has much less to do with the writers’ expertise for predicting the information than it has to do with the final phrases Logan Roy ever uttered to his youngsters: “I really like you, however you aren’t critical individuals.”
To Logan, being a critical individual meant being like him, a self-made man who overcame nice odds—who “constructed and acted,” as Kendall put it in his eulogy—to bend the world to his will. His youngsters, against this, had been a bunch of nepo infants cruising round in a Bentley clown automobile fueled by their insatiable thirst for approval from somebody ill-equipped to provide it. (Whether or not Logan had any accountability for this state of affairs by no means appeared to happen to him.)
Kendall (Jeremy Sturdy) and Logan Roy (Brian Cox) with the household in Succession season 2.
However right here’s the factor: We cherished the Roy children exactly as a result of they weren’t critical individuals. With out their father as their lighthouse, they flailed round, plotting and scheming, making an attempt to determine what “L to the OG” would do, however by no means fairly getting it proper. We had been in a position to snort at their incompetence—“You thought you had been dad. You tried to dad it,” Kendall tells Roman within the penultimate episode—whereas empathizing with their want to be seen. That’s the high-wire act that creator Jesse Armstrong, whose earlier reveals had been comedies, managed to drag off. As a result of Succession could have trafficked in weighty themes, the actors’ emotional performances could have often moved us to tears. However at its core, it was a critical present about unserious individuals, a comedy skulking round in a “stealth wealth” Loro Piana swimsuit.
Like most comedic characters, the Roy children didn’t evolve or change, regardless of all they’d been by means of. After we see Kendall within the final body of the finale, we all know he’s nonetheless a junkie, staring on the water and pondering of his subsequent repair. Shiv, again at Tom’s facet, remains to be quietly working all of the angles. Nihilistic Roman is alone along with his martini, bandaged however struggling to really feel something in any respect. Connor, bless his coronary heart, is the final word failson, having spent round $100 million to turn into the putative Ambassador to Slovenia. And it’s not simply the person characters. The writers additionally nurtured the event of unlikely duos that delighted us each week: Gerri and Roman titillated with their sexual banter; “Disgusting Brothers” Tom and Greg discovered themselves locked in a codependent relationship that followers set to Taylor Swift songs; the old-guard “energy couple” Frank and Karl, Waystar Royco’s vice-chairman and CFO, respectively, stole scenes with their caustic observations, musing within the finale that they need to have “slit [Tom’s] throat within the cradle.” After the credit rolled, what remained had been the meme-worthy artistic insults, the zingers and the bodily comedy. Who amongst us can ever neglect Tom pelting Greg with water bottles in Season 2, or Shiv slicing free on the dance flooring in Season 3? Anybody up for a recreation of “boar on the ground”?
Kieran Culkin and J. Smith Cameron as Roman and Gerri.
Finally, Succession was a narrative about how capitalism is consuming American democracy. The Roy children, cossetted in luxurious and insulated from the results of their selections, are the final individuals who needs to be working a enterprise so highly effective that it will probably swing a presidential election. But, all too usually the nepo infants are the one ones accessible for these jobs. A lot for the American perfect of a meritocracy the place voters, not companies, select their leaders, and the place expertise issues greater than cash and household connections. Selecting to finish the collection with the Roy dynasty dropping management, with the boardroom win going to a turtlenecked technocrat whose self-described philosophy is “privateness, pussy, pasta,” reminds us that the choice could also be even worse. However most significantly, within the immortal phrases of Jeremy Sturdy, it made sense, dramaturgically.
Rachel Dodes is a New York-based tradition author and contributor to Esquire.
