'Succession' Was 74 Minutes Long, But I Am Not Remotely Satisfied
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Here we are, the penultimate Succession episode. Going in, the question remained: Will an Elon Musk-type guy crumble their father's media company, or will the Roy siblings continue to run their family empire into the ground themselves? And then we almost came closer to finding out in the extra long, 74-minute episode. That meant 14 more minutes than usual of back-stabbing, venomous whispering, and just generally treating everyone who doesn't have the last name of Roy with complete contempt—but very little by way of actual plot development. Are the Roy siblings simply too far gone? Most definitely.
The proof is provided early, where people are rioting outside of ATN the morning after the election because the Roys preemptively called the presidential election for a far-right candidate, Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk). Not great! Kendall (Jeremy Strong) feels bad about it, but not too bad. After all, Mencken is going to shoot down the GoJo deal and "save the company." It's complicated, and honestly, not the most exciting thing Succession has going for it. Still, the Roys are willing to sully their family's reputation on it. They've long put WayStar RoyCo over their personal happiness, conflating the two for one and the same. In their fantasy endgame, they can spend the rest of their days firing people en masse over Zoom and waving their money in the air. "I am king, bow down to me," Roman (Kieran Culkin) says to himself in the mirror. Wahoo?
On his way to the funeral, Kendall goes monster mode on his family. He's helping to elect this universe's Donald Trump and now his family wants to get out of town? He tells Rava, his estranged wife, that she's "too online" and that he's going to "get an emergency court order" to stop her from leaving the city with the kids. He's even considering divorce and prepping himself for custody hearings. The marbles are not just lost, they are crushed to bits. When his assistant informs him that she wants to leave as well, he screams that "everybody's being fucking dumb!"
En route to the service, Shiv (Sarah Snook), newly on the outs (again) with her siblings, finally reveals to her brothers that she's pregnant. Roman responds, in jest, with comments like "Is it mine?" and "If I see you breast-feeding, I am gonna have to jerk off." Gross, man. Kendall calls for a "funeral truce," asking for "today to just be today." But just like I predicted last episode, no one is going to truly take this occasion to quit being petty to process their grief. Not even Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun)! He wants Roman to introduce him to Mencken. Sad.
Elsewhere, Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) is spiraling because he's numero uno on the kill list as the President of ATN. Marcia (Hiam Abbass) and Karolina (Dagmara Dominczyk) hold hands, Roman makes Freudian incest joke No. 2 of the episode, and Shiv once again buries herself ever deeper into the mud by trying to convince Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) to name her as the domestic CEO. Still banking on the tech billionaire, she schemes to have Matsson convince Mencken to keep the deal. Mencken doesn't like that WayStar RoyCo would be selling to a guy out of the country. Also, he made an agreement with Kendall and Roman to block the deal for positive coverage on ATN. As a solve, Shiv suggests that naming her as the U.S. CEO would keep the company "American"—though it's kind of a semantic loophole. Whatever it takes to win.
As we eventually learn, the point of those extra 14 minutes was to accommodate everyone making a speech at the funeral. We start with Ewan Roy (James Cromwell), who speaks about getting stranded in a U-boat before abruptly transitioning to disdain. He describes Logan as an evil figure who, "darkened the skies a little, closed men's hearts, and fed that dark flame." Sorry everyone, dad was not a good guy. Next, Roman breaks down on the podium after seeing the casket. The eulogy he practiced to perfection? Not possible. Kendall speaks in his place, propping up his father's success as a businessman. Citing the company, the money, and the "great geysers of life," he paints Logan as a man who chose "comfort" over everything. To accomplish great wealth, he just needed to be cold, cunning, and ruthless. Even Shiv summons some final words about how her father certainly tried his best, sort of. Whether the Roy siblings truly believe any of what they said is known only to them.
After the funeral, Roman runs into the protest, calls the demonstrators morons, and gets his face rocked. It's very self destructive, but I guess everyone grieves differently. After all, Kendall, on his high horse, had just mocked him for thinking that he could be just like their father. "You thought you were dad, and you fucked it," Kendall tells Roman about his younger brother breaking down before his eulogy.
Unfortunately, that's sort of...it. Sure, we got the full Logan Roy sendoff that we didn't get from his off-screen death in Episode Three, but we didn't get much as to what happens from here. There was a Kendall/Roman/Mencken alliance and now there's a (maybe?) Shiv/Matsson/Mencken alliance. Rough. What happened to going "reverse viking?" Kendall decides for the who-knows-how-many-th time since this series debuted that he wants to be solo CEO and rule the world. ("Woof, woof.") HBO is known for jam-packed second-to-last-episodes, but while the Roy siblings may have closure, I don't. I still can't imagine how this will end. GoJo deal blocked, company ours, end credits? I have a secret (now public!) wish for the Roy family to all kill each other Hamlet-style. Maybe they still could. Try and get in a good place before next Sunday, dear reader, because we're in for the series finale of Succession. Breathe deep.
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