ANALYSIS | Succession series finale a superb, dramatic whirlwind ...

Jenna Benchetrit · CBC News

· Posted: May 29, 2023 1:10 AM EDT | Last Updated: 1 hour ago

Spoiler alert: This article includes plot details from the series finale of the HBO drama series Succession.

Succession was never really concerned with who would succeed Logan Roy as CEO of Waystar Royco.

It was a front for the more compelling question of who would become Logan (Brian Cox) just enough to fill the terrible void he left, to be able to strike fear through people's hearts the way that he could, to push away all of the love and desire for closeness in favour of power.

Kendall Roy's fate in Sunday evening's superb series finale, a 90-minute whirlwind of whiplash-inducing double-crossing and familial calamity, is in many ways an inversion of his father's. While Logan had been destined since the show's 2018 pilot for death — it's in the title, after all — so too has Kendall (Jeremy Strong, in the performance of a lifetime), a man so irrevocably chained to his father's image that he wants to kill himself doing the job that killed his dad or else die.

The show's through line of wealth corrupting family and taking precedent over love, loyalty and morality boiled over during the finale's climactic scene, in which Siobhan 'Shiv' Roy (Sarah Snook) decides that she won't humour Kendall's frenzied quest to screw the GoJo deal, taking back her board vote during one stunning last betrayal.

During the show's climactic scene, Kendall — who, throughout four seasons, has yelled things like 'f-ck the patriarchy!' whenever it best suited him — barks back his defence that he should have the crown because he's the eldest boy, while Roman Roy (Kieran Culkin) venomously retorts that Kendall's adopted children are illegitimate and not part of the Roy bloodline.

That the Roys are so tied to the idea of holding onto wealth and company control for the sake of their future children — symbols of intergenerational power, but not much else — while denying them love, safety and protection is Logan's ultimate legacy. It's something that we've seen Kendall perpetually repeat in his relationship to his own kids, two characters we hardly ever see because people who aren't in the orbit of Succession's central characters are simply not shown.

When, mid-episode, Roman and Shiv agree — and those agreements are always fleeting — that they'll acquiesce to Kendall's longheld ambition to lead the company and give him the board votes to block an acquisition of Waystar by the media streaming platform GoJo, Roman sums up the futility of their years-long battle for control of the company, the poison apple from which Kendall so badly wants a bite: "It's haunted and cursed and nothing will ever go right, but enjoy your bauble."

For a family that is constantly weighing the share value of bloodlines, it feels fitting that the final strings should be pulled almost entirely by outsiders: Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgard), the irreverent Swedish tech bro; Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk), the neo-Nazi president of Roy creation; and Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), an interloper who successfully infiltrated the family to be close to its money, a guy who basks in moral decay like it's holy water.

Where to even begin with Tom and Shiv, Succession's cursed romance? Shiv's destiny amounts, in her own mind and sense of self, to castration — bested by a husband that she always believed was her inferior, after being used and discarded by the puppet master Mattson. Her marriage to Tom is bitterly captured in a final shot of them in his car, her hand resting limp and dead on his with no sign of life.

The final shot of the episode is of Kendall looking out onto the water, a repeating motif that we've come to understand is an association of his relationship with death: the young waiter who haunts him died in the water, while Ken himself appeared to be drowning during the show's season two finale. When he finds out his father is dead, he's stuck on a boat.

Here, he's left almost completely alone, isolated from his brothers and sister, his children and ex-wife, his friends and business associates. The only person who trails him is Colin, his father's security detail, best pal and constant shadow.

The Succession finale wasn't about tying up every loose end or offering a neat ending for each of its players. Other finales like Six Feet Under have done that well, but it can be a thankless task. Here, each character's fate is sealed in a way that completes the trajectory this show has paved for them: Roman is left only with his nihilism, a pathetic worm just as Gerri foretold; Shiv — ouch — is simply the CEO's pregnant wife; and Kendall has become all of the worst parts of his father without any of the empire to show for it.