The show was still compelling, and the dialogue was, as ever, a snappy, nihilistic delight (when Shiv reveals to her brothers that she’s pregnant, Roman responds, without missing a beat, “Is it mine?”). (Such familial alliances have always been more important than any political ones brokered by the characters, though the Roy siblings do throw their weight behind different Presidential candidates, with Kendall and Roman supporting Jeryd Mencken, a Trumpian figure who might destroy the country, and, more important, the Matsson deal.) All of these ins and outs made for a viewing experience that could sometimes feel like jogging in place for a moment too long, as we waited for the light to change. Shiv and Roman Kendall, Roman, and Shiv vs. After Logan’s death, Kendall and Roman, the company’s interim co-C.E.O.s, decide that they’d rather stay in charge forever, and their resulting schemes to sink the Matsson deal, which felt almost “ Nathan for You”-like in absurdity and scale, led to every possible permutation of power struggle: Kendall and Roman vs. But, even following the pivotal episode in which the patriarch croaks on his private jet after suffering a pulmonary embolism (Logan forwent his compression socks to “look hot” for his mistress, as Tom recounts to Greg), each episode was once again chock-full of constant reversals and counter-reversals, hinging mainly on which of the siblings were on board, at any given moment, with a deal teed up by Logan, to sell Waystar Royco to the Swedish tech mogul Lukas Matsson, and thereby cede at least some control of the company. Logan’s death, in the season’s third episode, seemed to create the proper circumstances for this shift. It had long become clear that the characters were not going to develop of their own volition, and that some external force would have to force the issue. I must admit that, as the final season unfolded, I began to feel as if I might have had enough of the Roys. And, while Armstrong’s decision may have come with an initial jolt of disappointment (how rare is it, these days, for a show to go out during its prime?), there was something noble in the choice to put the characters out of their misery and bring their toxic cycle to an end, forcing the series to truly become the drama that its establishing premise offered. In an interview with The New Yorker’s Rebecca Mead, he reminded us that there’s “a promise” in the show’s title-an epic resolution apparent in its own name-even if this had become somewhat obscured by the series’ endless baits and switches. For most of the show, this approach worked fantastically well, foregrounding the relentless game of musical chairs that the Roy kids were playing-an eternal wrangle for a seat of power that, at their father’s yank, was always just slightly out of butt’s reach.īut Armstrong surprised everyone-including members of his own cast-when he announced, earlier this year, that “Succession” ’s fourth season would be its last. When I reviewed the third season of “Succession,” created by the British comedy writer Jesse Armstrong, I argued that the show should be enjoyed not as a propulsive drama but as something closer to a sitcom: a near-static, tragicomic tableau in which characters rarely change, and situations end up repeating themselves with only very modest variations. America, or at least the part of it that watches “Succession,” was holding its breath, waiting to see which of these abhorrent characters would emerge the victor. And then there were the wild cards: Shiv’s estranged brownnosing husband, Tom Wambsgans (+2000), and the bumbling beanpole Cousin Greg (+5000). Connor, the eldest Roy child, perennially discounted but never fully dismissed, came in next, with +1400 odds. Shiv, Logan’s tough-as-nails-but-constantly-shafted daughter, was the front-runner, with +250 odds, followed closely by her older brother Kendall, once the tortured heir apparent, with +300 odds, and more distantly by the swaggery weakling Roman, Logan’s youngest son, with +800 odds. of Waystar Royco, the Murdochian media conglomerate established by the late Logan Roy which his adult children have spent the past four seasons of the show fighting over. A couple of days before the series finale of HBO’s “Succession,” DraftKings, an online-betting platform, drew up hypothetical odds for the next C.E.O.
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