Shiv’s pregnancy is actually integral to her Succession story

The Succession fandom is small but vocal and fiercely committed to the show. On platforms like Twitter and Tumblr, fans of the show analyze trailers frame by frame and discuss their hopes and dreams for the characters. Despite being a show about ruthless capitalists, some of whom supported a fascist presidential candidate, the way all the characters are so hurt by their abusive father makes it easy for the audience to empathize with them. In fandom spaces, which are typically predominantly female, fans of Siobhan Roy, played by Sarah Snook, are especially protective of her. And sometimes that kind of fandom is expressed in a counterintuitive way, like a general frustration that the character turned out to be pregnant early in the season.

Opinions range from the perfectly rational fear that pregnancy will sideline the character to the less rational view that pregnancy storylines are inherently misogynistic. I’ve seen fans call it “shoehorn” and “lazy,” and have generally dismissed it as unnecessary. Complicating matters is that people who work on the show have said that the pregnancy storyline wasn’t conceived until late in the writing process of this season. because of Snook’s own real pregnancy. Some have even gone so far as to say that having a pregnancy storyline for a female character is sexist at all, and that writing one for Shiv Jesse Armstrong and the other writers of Succession itself sexist. But Shiv has always experienced misogyny on the show – in many ways, her experience in the story was about trying unsuccessfully to crack through the glass ceiling.

On some level, it’s understandable that some fans are sticking their necks out over Shiv’s pregnancy, given how pregnant characters and actresses have been treated on television in the past. For I love LucyWhen Lucille Ball refused to hide her pregnancy on set, it was basically forbidden to talk about or even hint at pregnancy on television. The idea that even a married couple would have sex was considered too outrageous. On I love Lucy, Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, who also played her on-screen husband Ricky Ricardo, scripted her pregnancy instead of having the actress sit behind countertops and tables to hide her body. Since then, televised pregnancies have usually gone one of two ways: either the production changes to accommodate an actress suddenly wearing baggy clothes, like Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Seinfeld‘s third season, or the pregnancy is somehow written into the plot, like with Nana Visitor in it Star Trek: Deep Space Nine becoming the magical surrogate for another character’s baby.

There is a secret, third, terrible option: shorten the season or take the actress off the show. In The X files, when Gillian Anderson was pregnant during the second season, the character Dana Scully was kidnapped for several episodes. When Sarah Jessica Parker found out she was pregnant then Sex and the city was filming its fifth season, the season was shortened from 13 to eight episodes. And even if a pregnancy storyline is written into a show because of an actress’ pregnancy, that doesn’t always mean the storyline will be one with dignity. Charisma Carpenter got pregnant while shooting Joss Whedon’s Angeland she has repeatedly said that Whedon was not only mad at her, but blamed her for “sabotaging” the season finale. The following season, after she gave birth, Whedon fired her.

Against this background, the fear that the writers of Succession will sideline their one major female character is justified because of how badly pregnant women have been burned on screen before. But Shiv’s pregnancy, and her uncertainty about it, feels like whole new territory for how pregnant women are portrayed on television.

Snook’s portrayal of Siobhan Roy, the only daughter of media magnate Logan Roy and supposedly the “smartest,” is like watching someone swing from a flying trapeze. When she goes to the next bar, she’s about to fall flat on her face. Sometimes she falls. But when she succeeds in carrying out a plan, or outsmarting her two older brothers, she doesn’t break a sweat. Snook’s work in this season was notable regardless of when Jesse Armstrong and the other writers decided that Shiv would be pregnant; when you watch her face in an episode, you always get the sense that she’s processing two or three different feelings at once.

Photo: David M. Russell/HBO

Photo: Claudette Barius/HBO

Misogyny has always been an important aspect of Shiv’s experience in the world, and one that the show wasn’t shy about highlighting. When Logan privately tells her he wants her to be the next CEO but doesn’t publicly announce it, you know the unspoken reason must be his outspoken sexism. When Shiv rejects her brother Kendall’s offer to join him in going against their father, he yells at her that Logan thinks she “counts double because she’s a girl”, and that “it’s your teats that are your only worth to give”. Her ability to tolerate sexist behavior, from her sexist father and then from Lukas Mattsson, a tech who sends frozen blocks of blood to his former lover, is seen as a value in the highly toxic world in which she seeks to increase her power. But it’s also a constant threat to her – not only to be seen as a woman, but to be treated as a woman.

That’s why her marriage to Tom Wambsgans, played by Matthew Macfadyen, has always been rocky. She resists all his attempts to create a more equitable power dynamic in their relationship – she needs to have at least one man she can hang out with in her life. When Tom might go to jail over a corporate scandal, he starts begging her to have his child and even starts tracking her period so he can learn when she’s most fertile. Despite all his attempts to win her over and start a family, she ends up being even more cruel to him and finally tells him that she doesn’t love him.

For a character like that to become pregnant by a man she loves and hates is not only delightful drama, but an encapsulation of what Siobhan Roy has been trying to navigate throughout the show. She wants to be more than just now a woman; she wants to be considered on a level playing field like her two brothers. But the phrase she uses when she learns that Tom sabotaged her efforts to find a divorce lawyer says it all: she’s “mowed.” Despite all the work she’s done, she’s treated the same way the men in her life always treat women: expendable, unimportant, unintelligent.

Photo: David M. Russell/HBO

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, especially when you consider how much of her own integrity Shiv has given up to navigate the corporate world. She was once a staffer for progressive presidential candidates; now she talks women into coming forward with rape allegations. You can absolutely tell this story without Shiv getting pregnant, but her pregnancy adds extra suspense to these scenes, providing additional context for what the show is saying about legacy and parenting. The show is about the pain that reverberates around a family – why should Shiv be left out of that dynamic?

It is unclear so far whether or not Shiv wants this baby, but she somehow seems to know that it is her duty to the family to create a legacy. Since she hasn’t experienced maternal love, she doesn’t really know how to express it either – last season her mother told her she should have had dogs instead of children. When Kendall tells her in intimate conversation that “maybe the poison is dripping through,” maybe the way our dad treated us means we’ll abuse our kids too, and if Shiv is pregnant, the show actually gets more inclusive of her emotional struggles. She’s quietly experiencing a kind of pressure her brother will never have to face – the uniquely sexist pressure to carry a child when you don’t want to. The idea of ​​the poison trickling through their veins is more relevant to her than to him.

It’s also refreshing that under the many pressures in her life, Shiv’s pregnancy isn’t portrayed as the most important thing in her world. While not every woman wants to be pregnant and have a child, women get pregnant all the time. It’s normal enough that it sometimes feels weird to me how little pregnancy is featured on TV shows. Shiv fans don’t want her to be defined by her femininity, and neither does Shiv. Her pregnancy in this season is a demonstration of the weaknesses of her constant attempts to gain power in a patriarchal system. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, or how right you are, or how smart you are, you can always become “Mommy”.