The added thrill of a series' last season is knowing that anything goes. Empires and marriages can crumble or rebuild, characters can disappear or return out of nowhere. The fourth and final instalment of Succession teases all those possibilities for the scheming media mogul Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his just-as-duplicitous children. All I can reveal without spoilers is that creator Jesse Armstrong has structured the season for maximum jaw-dropping effect. And that's just in the four episodes HBO made available to critics.
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They reflect the show's bold ambition, and suggest why it is more than just a popular television show. Succession has become a cultural touchstone, a shorthand reference for business manoeuvres, excessive wealth and family dysfunction. The deft combination of a business plot – detailed, savvy and often prescient – with sibling rivalries and love-hate parent-child relationships is the essential genius of the series. Its off-screen resonance is a major sign of its brilliance.
This season finds an ideal balance once more, capturing the emotion underneath the outsized lives of the Roy family as they flit around in private planes and wrangle over Logan's plan to sell old-school Waystar to a forward-looking media company, Gojo. The previous season ended with Kendall, Shiv and Roman conspiring to stop the sale, only to be outflanked because Shiv's husband gave Logan a heads-up. So, betrayals all around. The new season picks up 48 hours before the board of directors' vote on the sale, and we immediately wonder if that patricidal little trio, still trying to prevent it, can possibly hold together. They are headed for what Shiv calls "a coronation demolition derby".
As always, the writing and the plot glitter with precision and dark wit
One reason Succession is so alluring is that it's simply fun to watch villains – yet the Roys are villains with profound feelings we have come to understand. That allows the characters to be deep and unpredictable, and the show to be a family portrait rather than a good-evil morality play. Self-important Kendall (Jeremy Strong) is trying to take charge, and is as despicable as ever. If you think that's harsh, just wait. He is the most damaged of the children, which Strong allows us to see underneath Ken's annoying hubris. Shiv (Sarah Snook) has the most complicated, push-pull relationship with her father. Self-protection steers her every move, in her marriage to Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and in business. You never know which way she'll veer, but maybe she doesn't either. Roman (Kieran Culkin), who started out as a lightweight, has turned out to be valuable to Logan's business interests. He is also the most loving of the children, yet is conflicted between self-interest and loyalty to his father, whom he wants to trust. Culkin's dynamic, calibrated performance reveals all that without losing a bit of the sardonic edge that is Roman's signature. And the oldest son, Connor (Alan Ruck), remains a loose cannon with delusions of becoming US president. The neediness, anger and desire to be loved that is beneath all their alliances and deceptions has never been more apparent.
As always, the writing and the plot glitter with precision and dark wit. Waystar's future may hinge on whether a pencil mark on a piece of paper is meant to underline or cross out a few words. One scene unites the Roys in a karaoke bar. It's a private room in a karaoke bar, but still. It's enough to make Roman call it torture, saying, "This is Guantanamo level".
And the season includes sly callbacks to earlier episodes, creating a sense of coming full circle. It begins with a birthday party for Logan in his apartment, the same setting and occasion that introduced many of the characters in the series' very first episode, when the question of who might succeed him as head of the empire seemed imminent. Connor is the only one of the children at the celebration this time, but the others are not far from Logan's mind. Typically acerbic, he asks Tom, "Have you heard from the rats?"
Logan, of course, is the towering figure, constantly thought to be losing his touch only to outsmart his children. After all, he taught them how to play this game, and he is the master. He is brutal and cruel to them, but then they often seem so much worse than he is. Cox has become better and better at capturing Logan's rage, ruthless grip on power, distrust and increasing isolation. No wonder he is so magnetic yet inscrutable to his rivals.
Logan ties the series most firmly to the reality the show mirrors, and his character is the main reason Succession has become part of the off-screen cultural and political conversation. At the start, the series evoked questions about which mogul might have been the basis for Logan, possibly Rupert Murdoch or Sumner Redstone. Now the fictional Roys are reference points for those real-life family empires. A recent Esquire feature about a book detailing Redstone's messy legacy is headlined, The Sordid Family Saga that Makes Succession Look Tame. Two years ago, an article in The Telegraph was headlined How billionaire Sumner Redstone was a real-life Logan Roy.
The Murdoch echoes are stronger than ever now that a defamation lawsuit against his Fox News Channel has put his grip on The White House in the headlines, amidst allegations that Fox's coverage helped Donald Trump in the 2020 election and his later attempts to cast doubt on its results. On this season's Succession, Logan keeps his Fox-like fictional channel, ATN, out of the Waystar deal, retaining his hold on political power. Similar to the Fox allegations, ATN played a kingmaking role in the US presidency. Yet Succession doesn't endorse its characters' perspectives. The show is non-partisan, cynical about all politics, making it clear that money means more than ideology.
Armstrong and Cox have insisted that Logan is a mix of influences, but of course creators don't have to intend parallels. Sometimes a great show is so perceptive it just lands that way. "The thing about us is... we don't get embarrassed," Shiv said to a rival last season, a line that sums up a lot about how shrewdly Succession reflects the culture. "The US has entered an era of post-shame politics," is a headline from an NPR podcast this February, and an MSNBC political analyst, former US attorney Barbara McQuade, said in January, "We're living in a post-shame world". At times, Succession is so on point it barely seems like fiction.
★★★★★
Succession season four premieres on HBO Max on 26 March, and on Sky Atlantic and Now TV from 27 March.
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