Logan Roy Convinced Us He Could Not Fall
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Spoilers below.
It’s a bird—no, it’s a plane...and it’s Superman, falling. The shocking epicenter of Succession season 4, episode 3, “Connor’s Wedding,” is perhaps the greatest trick creator Jesse Armstrong could pull in the show’s fourth and final season, though of course killing off the ever-looming patriarch in a series called Succession is no trick at all. It’s right there in plain text. Armstrong and his collaborators have been teasing this inevitability—and yes, it was always inevitable—for multiple seasons. Logan Roy had health issues. Logan Roy was 84. Logan Roy could not escape the slow creep of mortality; even he knew that, given the “fucking suspicions” about the afterlife he expressed to “best pal” Colin earlier in the season. The brilliance of Succession is that it convinced the audience not of what Logan himself thought, but of what his children believed: The man was superhuman. He was invincible. When “Connor’s Wedding” delivered the news of Logan’s death without so much as a lingering close-up on Brian Cox’s face, every viewer at home felt as unmoored and bamboozled as his kids.
We know what we expect from the episode as it begins: Logan skips out on his eldest son’s wedding and jets off to Sweden to smooth over Matsson’s ruffled feathers, leaving Roman to drop a stink bomb in Gerri’s purse. Roman—still in whatever lingering psychosexual spell over Gerri which he refuses to sort out in therapy—very much does not want to do this. But he does, because he wants to be the “serious person” his father does not believe him to be. He wants to be the Chosen One. So he tells Gerri that Logan’s cutting her loose, that the Waystar RoyCo family will soon no longer be hers. It’s a betrayal, such an ugly one that even when Roman practically begs for her sympathy later, after Logan’s death, all Gerri can manage is a taut “Okay” and “The room’s all yours.”
Even after this uncomfortable conversation, the episode remains light on its feet, tossing in classic Succession barbs about Connor’s aversion to Victoria sponge cake (a.k.a “looney cake”) and Greg’s attempts at flirtation (“journalism, taking quotes and kicking asses!”). Then the floor shatters beneath it. The descent begins.
Roman answers a call from Tom, who wastes no time changing everything: “Your dad is very sick.” Logan has suffered some sort of cardiac arrest while in the airport bathroom (an incident with, in reality, a less than 50 percent recovery rate and a much lower long-term survival rate). Roman and Kendall drop into immediate emergency mode, but when have they ever had to handle a real emergency? They flail and stutter for what feels like hours as the seconds creep by, too absorbed in their panic to recognize that neither their sister nor their eldest brother is with them as their father’s heart stops. Tom hovers the phone near Logan’s ear as the flight attendant attempts chest compressions, but Roman has absolutely no foundation for the emotional maturity this requires. “You did a good job,” he tells his dying dad, only to violently flinch from the sound of his own voice. “No, I don’t—I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do that,” he says, volleying the phone to Kendall like it’s a live bomb. To his credit, Kendall maintains his honesty: “I don’t know. I can’t—I can’t forgive you. But it’s, uh, it’s okay. And—and I love you.”
Kendall runs off to find Shiv, who doesn’t grasp the gravity of what’s happening until Roman reveals, “They think he’s gone.” In between sobbing, shaky breaths, she tries to convince herself that Logan might be listening to her voice, but she can’t ignore the suspicion she’s being tricked, as always, by Logan’s specter. “Are you just being nice to me?” she asks her estranged husband, practically whispering now. “Is he gone?” She attempts her own final words, even calling Logan “Daddy” in one of several gut-wrenching line deliveries the episode so perfectly squeezes from its cast.
Finally, Kendall and Shiv link hands and bring Connor into the fray. He’s no more equipped to handle it than they are. (“He never even liked me,” are his first words upon hearing the news, before expressing his regret that he never made his father proud.) The kids, truly united for perhaps the final time, try to offload and deny and settle as Logan’s team, still in the air, start “coordinating a response.” Logan’s death is not just a family incident; it’s a market one. Karl, Karolina, Frank, and Tom—minus Kerry, apparently clawing to the last vestiges of her sanity—make plans to draft a statement. Tom gets Greg on the phone to execute one last grunt job, which includes deleting a computer folder labeled “Logistics.”
When the kids catch wind of the statement, they’re forced to swallow reality like a chunk of ice. They can’t take any time to breathe, or they’ll be left unguarded. The war for Waystar has started already, and the optics matter. They can’t ask for the plane to circle while they sort out what to do next. As Kendall observes, “What we do today will always be what we did the day our father died. So, let’s grieve and whatever, but—” his eyes flash to Roman, “—not do anything that restricts our future freedom of movement.”
Both Connor’s wedding boat and Logan’s plane make a U-turn, and the groups converge on the airstrip. Karolina gets out a statement. Shiv delivers one to the press through a low monotone, almost a growl. She leaves the airport with Tom; Roman walks with his father’s corpse to the ambulance; Kendall watches, weeping, from afar. Only Connor gets a reprieve from this cataclysm, having shared a conversation with his bride in which they’re finally upfront about what they need to be happy together. They’re married in front of a tiny group of family and friends, a singular moment of joy in an otherwise devastating episode.
Meanwhile, Logan will haunt the remaining story like a black hole, sucking all that remains into its center. Succession convinced us that Logan would not, could not, lose—at least not until the final moments of such an acclaimed series. That’s what the typical order of television form instructs us: This death should be the climax, and the climax doesn’t happen in a season’s third episode. But that’s where we, like the kids, were wrong. Logan could always fall, at any time and in any manner. But the “American titan” doesn’t need to be present to be felt. That’s his real power, and the genius of Armstrong’s creative endeavor here: Logan was neither invincible nor omnipotent, but he was everywhere. Exorcising him, not defeating him, will be the hardest thing his children ever attempt to do.
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