This post contains spoilers for the Succession series finale, obviously.
Succession came to a close Sunday night after four excellent seasons. And it stuck the landing, which is to say it ended with pretty much no one happy (except for a handful of lifelong corporate sharks who probably aren’t good people either). Not even the person ultimately named as Logan Roy’s successor, Matthew Macfadyen’s Tom Wambsgans, could be said to have a bright future. But it had to be Tom, as creator Jesse Armstrong explained in a making-of featurette that ran on Max after the last episode.
“The idea of Tom being the eventual successor, that had been something that I thought was the right ending for quite a while now,” Armstrong said about Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) naming the U.S. CEO of his to-be-merged company. “Even though he’s not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet — his power comes from Matsson. Those figures that drift upwards and make themselves amenable to powerful people are around.”
In the featurette, Armonstrong also explained what he thought would happen to the other characters on the show. Roman (Kieran Culkin), he said, “ends up exactly where he started,” which is to say he’s rich but powerless.
“He is that guy still,” Armstrong said. “And he maybe easily could have been a playboy jerk with some slightly nasty instincts, and some quite funny jokes. He could’ve stayed in a bar, being that guy. And this has been a bit of a detour in his life, I would say.”
Shiv, however, is “still in play,” but in a rather terrifying, frozen emotionally barren place.” By throwing Kendall (Jeremy Strong) under the bus and staying in a loveless marriage to GoJo’s new American CEO, she got what Armstrong describes as a “kind of non-victory, non-defeat.”
And then there’s Kendall. Losing out on succeeding his father, Armstrong said, “will never stop being the central event of his life, the central days of his life, central couple of years of his life.” Where could he go next? “Maybe he could go on and start a company, or do a thing. But the chances of him achieving the sort of corporate status that his dad achieved are very low. And I think that will mark his whole life.”
But at least before stuff went down, all three siblings had some fun with a truly disgusting smoothie.
(Via Variety)