Succession, series 3 finale, review: no love lost in a devastating, killer conclusion

• Warning: spoilers below

Love. Good grief, of all the four-letter words for the finale to hinge on, Jesse Armstrong chose the one that matters least to Logan Roy (Brian Cox). And how ironic, too, that the finale to season three should be based around the most loveless wedding since, well, the last one involving any of the Roy clan.

Yes, this series of Succession (Sky Atlantic) has felt a little like waiting for the circus to come to town, with several stodgy, plate-spinning, speakerphone-based episodes making us impatient in the middle. But when the circus came – beginning with Kendall’s 40th – it brought all the jugglers, acrobats and lion tamers the Golden Age of Television could ever hope for. And clowns too, of course. Great, honking car-fulls of clowns.

The episode began with a rug-pull, with Logan reading his grandson Judith Kerr’s Mog. The final book, the one where Mog dies. Last week, we left Kendall – drunk, high, depressed – face down in a swimming pool. (Drowning? At a wedding? The Succession writers love a bit of dramatic irony.) “Your dad was OK, you know,” said Logan. Phew. Succession’s MVP lives.

But now what? Are we really supposed to care about Waystar Royco’s potential merger with a Swedish tech unicorn? Some flimflam with the Department of Justice? But it’s never about the business. It’s always about family and love (or, more accurately, the lack of). The great skill of Succession, is that it would work just as well set in a cornershop.

How painful to watch the penny drop, to see the moment the son realises there is no love in the father. Connor (Alan Ruck), the idiot half-brother, has always known. Kendall (Jeremy Strong) worked it out a while ago, while we saw the scales plummet from Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) eyes sometime in series two. But Roman (Kieran Culkin), the youngest, like a scolded (slime) puppy, has clung to his father’s velvet dressing gown, never giving up on the belief that daddy loved him.

In series one we heard how Logan once beat Roman with a slipper for ordering lobster at a restaurant. Here, we heard how Logan once beat Roman for trying to squirt him with a water pistol. The siblings have always played these moments for laughs, Roman accepting the blows as a consequence of his father’s love. But Logan is a tyrant.

On the shores of Lake Como, at the villa of Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgard), the CEO of 21st-century tech whizzkids Gojo, Logan was offered a new deal. Not a merger of equals this time, but a takeover. A warm, friendly, Swiss-clinic takeover where everyone wins, but a takeover nonetheless. And while the siblings were distracted at his ex-wife’s wedding, Logan made the deal. The business gone, the kids frozen out. There was something enjoyably Scooby Doo about Shiv, Kendall and Roman piling into the back of a 4x4 and hotfooting it to their father’s place, to unmask the baddie and stop the nefarious deal. And they would have gotten away with it too…

This was Succession at its best, filled with juicy morsels – the Roy siblings playing Monopoly; Willa’s grudging acceptance of Connor’s proposal (“How bad can it be?”); Cousin Greg pursuing the European countess, eighth in line to the throne of Luxembourg; Roman failing yet another test as he accepts the coffee while Logan and Lukas decline… But the whole shebang focused back exactly on what matters – the Roy siblings and their fates, each of them hamstrung, ultimately, by love. The role that Tom (Matthew Macfadyen, sheer brilliance) plays in the episode is so perfect that I wouldn’t want to give it away to anyone.

The show’s very DNA could be found in the exquisitely painful scene in which Kendall, slumped on the floor by the bins, spilled all to Shiv and Roman about the young waiter he “killed” at Shiv’s wedding. Other dramas would have placed this scene in a vineyard or an opulent ballroom or, at the very least, a nice-looking bathroom – we were at a millionaire’s wedding in a Tuscan villa, after all.

But Succession put them by the bins, with staff coming and going with black bin bags of – presumably – half-eaten vol au vents. That is the inescapable tragedy of the Roy children. Born billionaires, with the world at their feet, but they always see the bins, they always see the staff. They can never just enjoy their wealth.

All they have in their life is Waystar Royco and they were damned if they were letting daddy sell it from under them. “How do we feel about killing Dad?” asked Shiv, as the trio staged the 4x4 Putsch. “Mixed feelings?” Culkin has mainly played third fiddle throughout Succession, as first Snook, then Strong got the glossy magazine profiles, awards and oodles of hype. He has been – foul-mouthed, sexually weird, feckless – the comic relief, with viewers delighting in his twisted bond with sixtysomething exec Gerry.

Culkin has always played Roman as a man wearing his insides on the outside, a bundle of raw nerves, yet it was still heartbreaking to watch as he, first, accepted they must overthrow their father. And, second, when they discovered their father – via their mother! – had done the dirty on them, and Roman, truly, could not believe it. Logan had done a deal with their mother’s new husband, the grasping Peter, to ensure the divorce settlement changed and the children did not have the power on the company’s board they thought they had. Peter wanted access to parliament, Logan could give it to him. That was Logan’s leverage. What, asked Logan, was Roman’s? "Love," he said. He meant it too.