‘Succession’ series finale: Sarah Snook says goodbye to Shiv, announces the birth of her child

The following post contains spoilers about the series finale of “Succession.”

Unlike her onscreen brother Jeremy Strong, “Succession” star Sarah Snook hasn’t yet sat down with journalists to discuss the HBO drama’s shocking series finale. But Snook, a top contender in the Emmys Best Drama Actress category this year, is perhaps just a tad busy at the moment. As she revealed on Instagram following the “Succession” finale, Snook recently gave birth to her first child with husband Dave Lawson.

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“I just watched the final episode of the final season of something that has changed my life. And now, my life has changed again,” Snook wrote on Instagram. “Thank you for all the love and support.”

In her caption, Snook wrote that it was “hard to express” what “Succession” meant to her life and career.

“The places I got to go, the immense talent I got to work with…it breaks my heart that it is all over. But my heart had to be this full of all the memories, good times, challenges, and triumphs, to be able to break at all…so that makes me grateful,” she wrote. “To have been blessed to join this crazy adventure of a show will be a career highlight, which will no doubt be hard to top. I am so, so proud and humbled by everyone’s hard work season after season: we all set the bar high for each other, then exceeded it and excelled, in every department. The friendships, the scripts, the locations, the one-liners, the early mornings, the last-minute changes, all the highs and lows: I’m going to miss it all. The people of this show are a talented bunch, and I’m proud to have worked alongside them, it’s the people I will miss most of all.”

In the series finale, Snook’s Shiv lived up to her name in the closing moments, stabbing her brother Kendall (Strong) in the back during a fateful board vote that would have put Kendall in charge of Waystar Royco. The tragic ending – something Strong called an “extinction-level event” for Kendall in his post-show interviews – likely irreparably damaged the siblings’ uneasy relationship, but kept Shiv close to her father’s former company. As a result of her vote, Shiv’s estranged husband and the father of her unborn child, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen), was put in charge as U.S. CEO following the Waystar sale to tech giant GoJo. The series ends with Tom and Shiv riding silently in a limo and barely holding hands, their relationship in a worse spot than ever before.

“Shiv is still in play, I’d say, in a rather terrifying frozen, emotionally barren place,” creator Jesse Armstrong said following the finale. “But she has got this kind of non-victory, non-defeat. I mean, there’s gonna be some movement there, there’s still a lot of that game to play out. But that’s where we leave it. And it feels like it’s going to be hard to progress for them [Shiv and Tom] emotionally, given the things they’ve said to each other.”

Speaking to Vanity Fair in an interview published Monday, Macfadyen likewise said the relationship between Shiv and Tom was likely broken for good. But the actor found Armstrong’s writing – in particular, the stage direction for their final limo ride – to be quite remarkable.

“It felt like two Roman emperors. Jesse described it as being ‘two bombs being transported’ in the stage directions, which I thought was lovely,” Macfadyen said.

In interviews conducted before the season, Snook said she would have loved to do another season of the show. “I would have probably been game to do a Season 5. But that’s also born of loving the job that I do, with the cast that I get to work with, and the crew, and the creatives,” she said in an interview with Collider. “It’s been the best job I’ve ever done, so why would I want it to end? But I also understand, logically and very smartly, Jesse has decided to end this with Season 4, going out on a high when, in some ways, it’s almost perfect. It hasn’t had too many slides. It hasn’t become a parody of itself. People still love the show. It’s a pretty bold move, and you’ve gotta respect that.”

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