The Succession Finale is Perfectly Upsetting and Here's Why...

Might start doing more essays in the future because they’re fun and sometimes things need to be said! edit: Also I say the convo with Logan is in episode 2 of this season but it's actually the first episode of this season lol.

I've rewatched it twice and the most fascinating part of the finale IMO is the moment Kendall finally got to sit in his dad's chair and he instantly kicked his feet up on the desk. The vibe from the other two siblings changed immediately and I believe that's the exact moment you can pinpoint when Shiv changed her mind on how she was going to vote.

That smile that Roman manages at the end is hiding deep, deep sorrow. Kieran needs an Emmy and everything else for this season.

Actually Tom’s success does show a kind of meritocracy. The Roy kids assume they will succeed by making clever plays, because they think that’s what Logan did. That’s their idealised free market meritocracy. But Tom assumes, more accurately, that he will succeed by making sacrifices - something the Roys are incapable of choosing to do because they’ve always had their cake and eaten it too. The Roy kids see their father’s ruthlessness but don’t understand what he sacrificed to live that way, but Tom does. In this sense he’s more like Logan than any of Logan’s kids.

Reminds me of the quote “ some people are so poor all they have is money”

Tom admitted to Shiv that his goal was the money, the nice clothes, the nice living. It may be shallow but I think of all of them Tom ends up the most satisfied, while being Mattson’s “pain sponge”.

She chose Tom out of spite, there was no calculation. Kendal put his feet up on the table and acted like an asshole, that was the end of him. She doesn't love Tom, but she can't live without him, during the entire fourth season they built a new dynamic, a dynamic where Tom hits back and Shiv returns for more pain, because the pain she experiences in that relationship seems to her to be the only real thing, a real emotion.

I was shocked by the ending. I knew that Kendall wouldn’t get it in the end…. I really thought it would be Shiv — but that would have been too simple. The writers hit it out of the park — the most profound ending possible. This show deserves all of the awards.

It's almost like the only way Logan's children "succeed" him are in somehow managing to become even more amplified versions of his own traits/personality. The disloyalty, the pride, the arrogance, the cruelty.... His children chased after him and all became worse for it.

Anyone who successfully jumped multiple socioeconomic classes to have a real seat at the table won the whole damn lot in my book.

Great analysis, the only thing I didn't get the same idea about was that they were after the position for status. I think the siblings always wanted their father's approval because that would mean he loved them, becoming CEO would have meant they were good enough for Logan, and that was the real triumph.

Not to mention that Tom groomed Greg and saw an opportunity to polish his oafishness to his advantage. Greg's relationship with Matsson wasn't going to make or break the CEO choice but he has been very helpful to Tom.

Watching the show again after the final episode, you really see everything differently, you see how Tom was always calculated, he truly loved Greg he's the only family that treated him well. Connor definitely won. He did his own thing and failed but on his own terms. I think Roman and shiv ended up exactly where they started, Roman back to a playboy, shiv back begging for a powerful man's approval. The tragedy is even though Kendall was the only option the siblings would rather lose than let Kendall take logans place. Even in death Logan got what he wanted.

No, Tom actually loved Shiv. He was the only one coming from two parents still married. He wanted her to have his babies if he died, and hoped she would want that too. He was ambitious, yes, but he did love her, until she broke it all.

Shiv's distant behavior reminds me of a part of a poem by Daniel Beaty called Run Black Man run. "The sins of the father will visit the son. When life gets tough, the abandoned run."

Logan Roy was his children’s superpower. When he died, they became vulnerable. They never realized it.

Great vid! Idk about the Roman hypothesis though. I think the fact that he orders a martini at the end is a nod to Gerri who drinks martinis. He feels alone and longing for connection to the closest thing he had to family/a mother, which was Gerri. I think the end shows all three of the siblings just ending up alone in their own particular ways. I think you nailed the other two though. Kendall ending up like Logan, and Shiv ending up like her mom.

Kendall is in the middle of his life but he’s already at the end?!?! 👏🏼

This is an exceptional overview of the Succession Finale. The impotent hand hold foreshadowed the hollow future. Sad. Poignant. Disturbing.

9:25 "But, Tom. He ate sh*t and did he was told." When I tell you I laughed so freaking hard, I laughed. I was not expecting that line. 😂