From the very first moments, Succession threatened to become the story of how an excessively egotistical son – with much less talent, wit and venom than his father – could one day take over a media empire and grow into the role or be swallowed up by it. It felt like too obvious a metaphor for the Murdoch family, and obsessed with drawing real-world parallels wherever possible. That version of Successionseems like a bait-and-switch since the first-season finale, however, when it became clear that Logan would continue to wield power, both in the world and in the family, for at least a few more years — and that Kendall (Jeremy Strong) would never really able to come out of his father’s shadow.
What replaced it was a much better ensemble show about a deeply disturbed family trying to outlive each other without ever tripping out of their positions way up on a world unlike ours at all. But with the death of patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) finally coming to fruition, Succession‘s fourth season went back to where it all started: the exact same dynamic that started it.
Finally, Succession leaned into the innate tragedy of his siblings. Shiv (Sarah Snook) votes for the GoJo deal, cementing her own relationship with power and putting Kendall and Roman (Kieran Culkin) on the line. It’s a move that feels calculating and winning and completely at odds with the sibling bond we saw earlier this season. But the show’s writers decided that the divisions of the Roy siblings would always win them out in the end. And this deal is their father’s final revenge: an event that would shatter their relationship forever. But Logan and his successor weren’t always everything Succession used to be.
From the moment Logan died, Succession‘s second and third seasons felt like they didn’t matter anymore. All of the bonding, fighting, tempering, and sibling backstabbing that happened in those two years flew out the window in favor of the old dynamic the show introduced us to in Season 1.
Shiv constantly tries to place herself as close to power as possible without ever actually exercising it herself, eternally just a few steps to the side of the people who matter most, exactly where her father always placed her. Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) is power hungry and more than willing to completely humble himself to elevate himself from his humble roots, and is utterly unable to separate his love for Siobhan from the power that her family and name afford him . Roman is the asshole who desperately wants to be his father in terms of power and position without the competence, guts or patience to push things through, and all that is left behind is a void, a nothing he can do nothing about. into staring. Then there’s Kendall, forever the kid groomed for greatness from adolescence, always missing the voices of confidence from the people who mean the most to him – and having no idea how to see reality or life beyond that.
None of this is to say that these ideas are wrong, bad, or even uninteresting; they’re just not the ideas the show has been trying to convey to viewers for the past two years. Since season 2, Succession has suggested that Logan and WayStar may not be the ultimate monolith of the media that Logan and his accomplices like to frame them. With the rise of technology from streaming to startups, Logan’s way of doing business seemed outdated and the driving force behind the show came from watching three (sometimes four) siblings trying to escape the wake created by the company of their father in his agony. There were glimpses of what their dynamic might look like without him: acting crazy on a yacht, or taking care of each other during small scenes at big weddings. While Cox’s seismic achievements created an inescapable gravitational field that each Roy kept pulling back for their own reasons.
But with Logan gone, the show itself seemed to be caught up in the black hole he left behind. Instead of escaping, everyone became desperate to fill the power vacuum, just as they were when Logan seemed to be on his deathbed in season 1, having not learned a single lesson in the meantime.
Now it’s true that the Roy kids are often not the teaching type (after all, Logan certainly didn’t raise them), but character stagnation doesn’t make for good TV, especially if the show surrounding those characters doesn’t really support their lack of growth.
By the end of Season 3, Roman and Shiv had both become skilled businessmen with a hard-won trust in each other and their brother after the family civil war. However, after a few episodes in the fourth season, they had both returned to their Season 1 selves: Roman was impulsive and volatile, firing people at will and changing his mind moments later. Far from the independent streak she’s had for the past two seasons, Shiv goes from finally feeling like she could earn power to supporting Mattson and doing everything she can to bask in the glow of authority. Even Kendall, who seemed to learn two seasons in a row that he wasn’t and didn’t need to be his father, spends season 4 fluttering between the can-do, Jay-Z blasting near-CEO he begins the series as and the petulant child who thinks he is his father’s business acumen is his birthright.
Photo: Claudette Barius/HBO
Photo: David M. Russell/HBO
An argument can be made that the reason for this regression is that the version of these kids we saw in the first episodes of Season 1 is the truest version of them: when the cards were on the table and Dad was dying, their true selves came out. The problem with that is that it’s not the most interesting take on any of the Roy kids, and the series seemed to learn that the hard way as it progressed to a killer Season 1 ending and stronger second and third seasons.
Watching the Roy siblings find ways to work with each other and discovering that all three of them were the only solid ground in each other’s lives over the course of seasons 2 and 3, the glue that laced corporate jargon, profanity chatter, held together. and upside down fantasy world that Succession built so successfully. But Season 4 returns the siblings to their most feuding and power-hungry versions. Theirs may be a tragedy from the start, but the nature of their tragic bond felt like it had moved to a more real and penetrating place than whoever got company at the end of the day.
In the core, Succession is and has always been the show it told us it was: a story about who took control of a media empire when the legendary giant who built it eventually died. In other words, it was a show about winning a job. And for that story, this ending was great; WayStar Royco is now nothing but a throne to sit on in name only. It’s a bloated media empire controlled by a mildly interested billionaire who wants a doll for all the world to see. But for Tom, the eventual winner, the shine of the crown is enough of a distraction from the strings to not matter. The shame is that the best version of the show was the one that remembered how little this job mattered. At least for two seasons Succession managed to be something more than just big business.