Why I Hated The Succession Finale

It may be crude (although I think Roman would approve) but when I think of the Succession finale, my mind immediately goes to something called a “ruined *rga*m.” For the unaware, a ruined *rga*m is when a woman manipulates a man right to the edge of climax and then withdraws the source of stimulation, thereby denying him the pleasure of a happy ending. And, much like the frustration I imagine one feels when this is done in the bedroom, so too did Jesse Armstrong tease Kendall Roy’s ascension to the throne only to pull his hand away at the last second, depriving us of the release we so desperately craved.

The show’s ending was particularly frustrating because the rest of the show’s fourth season was outstanding. There were no wasted episodes, much less wasted scenes and the storytelling moved at an often frenetic pace. From Logan’s shocking death to a disputed presidential election, and the tug of war over GoJo’s attempted acquisition of Waystar, it was exceptional entertainment, and Kendall was at the center of it all. The tragic figure we had watched try, over and over, to reach the top rung of the ladder finally found his mojo. Whether it was his powerful eulogy at Logan’s funeral or his charismatic performance when pitching Living+, it appeared our number one boy would finally “win,” giving us the satisfying ending viewers (or at least *this* viewer) long sought.

Instead, Armstrong pulled a last second switcheroo by having Shiv, who had agreed to back Kendall and block the company’s sale, switch sides in a moment of boardroom skullduggery that landed her husband, Tom Wamgsgans, in the big chair.[1] There were two problems with this. One is superficial. The ending was lazy insofar as it recycled a plot line from Season One when Kendall attempted to remove Logan from power and was stymied by a single vote, except there it was Roman, not Shiv, who double crossed him. The other, and the focus of this essay, is more substantive. Simply put, the ending did not make sense within the universe Armstrong created.[2]

The show was called “Succession” not “Three Kids Don’t Know How To Share One Toy” which is basically how it ended. From the very first episode, the audience was conditioned to believe that one of Logan Roy’s children would, um, succeed him as head of Waystar – a point reinforced time and again. Most of that season (and season three) focused on Kendall’s attempt to force his way into leadership, the season two premiere included scenes where both Shiv and Roman pitched their vision of the company’s future hoping to be named their father’s successor[3], and the codicil to Logan’s will reflected his wish that Kendall take over upon his passing.[4] That one of the kids was in line to lead the company after Logan’s passing finds further support in the fact that when two non-family members – Rhea Jarrell and Gerri Kellman – held the CEO title, their reigns were incredibly short, with one leaving in disgust (Rhea) and the other dismissed as a mere place holder (Gerri).

Moreover, the show’s ethos emphasized the cutthroat environment Logan created. We were told, in various ways, that Logan gauged the mettle of his children either by how much abuse they could take[5] or which one could assert dominance over the other.[6] His leadership included sadistic games like “boar on the floor” and he explained to Kendall that business is like a knife fight in the mud. In other words, Ken, Shiv, and Roman were all raised to believe in a Darwinian worldview where the only objective is winning, regardless of what needs to be done to achieve that goal.

And Season Four (until the board room) affirmed that philosophy. While the kids were working together on a project after being expelled from Logan’s kingdom, once he died, the knives came out – as Logan had raised them to do. After Ken and Roman were named co-CEOs, Shiv immediately started plotting against them, looking for her own way to run the company by partnering behind their backs with Lukas. When Roman tapped out of the competition, incapable of processing the havoc he helped create with Mencken’s tainted victory, a final battle between Ken and Shiv was teed up, except when Greg’s handy intel confirmed that Lukas had no intention of appointing Shiv as Waystar CEO, her reaction was not to line up behind Kendall (and concede his win) but rather, to stab him in the back and support her husband, who she despised,[7] never mind the fact that at Logan’s memorial service, the kids agreed one of them should run the company. In other words, not only did Armstrong go against the show’s moral philosophy (winner take all), he did so in a way that was not even consistent with his own storyline!

This is particularly true because Kendall’s arc in season four so clearly reflected his growth into Logan’s logical successor. Prior to Logan’s death, there was always an air of insecurity around Kendall. He could get rattled easily in meetings and always seemed to be either second guessing his own decisions or thinking about how Logan would react to them. But after his father’s death, all that washed away. The old Kendall, who melted under the lights, was replaced by a new Kendall, self-assured in front of crowds whether he was pitching a retirement community, praising his father from the pulpit, or standing up to Lukas’s schoolyard taunts.

In addition to his public facing glow up, Kendall was also deft at working angles behind the scenes. When the company snoops learned that Lukas’s subscriber numbers were made up, it is Kendall who sweet talks Ebba into revealing other unsavory things about him. On the PR front, Kendall leveraged embarrassing information on Hugo to get him to dirty up Logan (post-mortem and off-the-record) with reporters, simultaneously giving Kendall a more positive public image. He also recruited Colin to join his inner circle, knowing it is invaluable to have an enforcer who can also keep his mouth shut. Time and again we got confirmation that Kendall embodied Logan’s dark energy and people took notice, be it the Waystar brain trust or the President-elect of these United States. In short, Kendall did all the things within the universe Jesse Armstrong created to “win” but instead of giving him that victory, the writers decided that Shiv would deny him the job because she could not have it.[8] Huh?

Defenders of the finale might argue that Logan was dismissive of his children and none was qualified to take his seat. Indeed, the last time he saw them face to face, he ridiculed them as not being serious people, to which I would respond in two ways. First, ok, but if Logan thought so little of his children, why did he keep handing them high level positions within his company?! But more seriously, his analysis was both ungenerous and inaccurate and also ignored his own failings as a leader. To be sure, as business executives, the three had their failings. Kendall overpaid for Vaulter, the satellite launch Roman led literally went kablooey, and Shiv sat by quietly when her father decided to cut Ken loose and make him take the fall for the cruise line debacle knowing it was her husband who was at least partly to blame.

But for all the ink that was spilled writing about Succession, you would be hard pressed to find anything with the title “Are We Sure Logan Roy Is Good At His Job?” It was a question that was never grappled with because of the force of his personality and ability to best his rivals (not to mention the narrative requirement that everyone else have a ring to chase), but if you get past the gruff insults and bullying behavior, you realize that Logan Roy was not that good at his job and it was his kids (the ones he claimed were not serious people) who bailed him out over and over again, all in service of showing they were capable of succeeding him!

Consider that almost every crisis at Waystar is triggered by some dumb decision Logan makes, starting at the beginning of Season One with Logan not telling Kendall (his supposed heir apparent) about a clause in the company’s debt agreement allowing its lenders to call in their notes if the company’s stock drops below a certain level. When Logan fell ill and the stock price tumbled, Ken solved this problem by bringing in Sandy and Stewy in exchange for board seats and the purchase of a minority stake in the company. Logan may have been unhappy with Ken’s decision, but was he really in a position to question it?

In Season Two, Logan’s deal for PGM is scuttled because the cruise line scandal is exposed. We learn that the person responsible for preying on cruise line employees sexually was a guy named Lester McLintock, one of Logan’s “wolf pack” cronies who the kids knew as “Mo” (“mo-lester”) and whose conduct was an open secret within the company.[9] It is left to the kids to clean up the mess. Roman is sent to Turkey in search of a sovereign wealth fund deal that would take the company private while Kendall and Shiv do damage control in Washington, D.C.; the former, by giving a full-throated defense of his father in front of a Senate Committee hearing and the latter by talking a female whistleblower out of testifying. Their efforts stop the bleeding, but the thanks Ken is given for protecting his father is Logan’s demand he take the blame for a problem not of his doing.[10] Of course, none of this would have been needed had Logan fired Mo long ago instead of sweeping his crimes under the rug. That fact notwithstanding, Logan also had the option of stepping down as Chair and CEO of the company in the wake of the scandal but threw Ken under the bus instead.

Logan’s penchant for secrecy involving his health would also come back to bite him in Season Three when Sandy and Stewy’s takeover bid[11] came up for a vote before the shareholders. During the meeting, Logan forgets to take medication for his urinary tract infection, causing him to become delirious. Shiv again steps into the breach to hammer out a settlement with Sandi Furness when it looks like the shareholder vote will not go the family’s way, yet Logan criticizes his daughter’s actions like an arsonist complaining that the fire fighter did not douse the flames correctly. In short, when the company was in trouble because of one of Logan’s bad decisions, it was his supposedly inept children who cleaned up the mess.

These defensive moves are in addition to the affirmative ones the kids made at various points to further their father’s objectives. For example, when things looked iffy with Nan Pierce, Kendall got the deal over the finish line by befriending Naomi Pierce and convincing her to vote for it. He is also the first one to see the benefit of Waystar’s acquisition of GoJo and Roman is the one who connects with Lukas at Ken’s birthday party to build a relationship with the enigmatic Swede. Long story short, the idea that the kids were failures while their father was some master of the universe is belied by the events in series itself. Logan’s screw ups were as bad (if not worse) than anything the kids did and the kids constantly swooped in to save the day when he did screw up, yet the idea they were ill-equipped to succeed him somehow become show canon.[12] 

Another defense of the show’s ending might be that Logan viewed his kids as privileged and not having had to work for their success. “Make your own pile” he spits at them at the end of Season Three when he casts them out into the wilderness. Contrast the Roy children with Lukas, who we are led to believe built GoJo from scratch (and perhaps someone in whom Logan saw a little of his younger self), and Tom, a Midwesterner who does not come from money. Aren’t those two more simpatico with Logan’s view that success is earned not inherited? Perhaps, but do either of these men hold up to closer scrutiny?

Start with Tom. He may come from humble beginnings, but a middle class upbringing is not the sole qualification to take over as CEO. Regardless, Tom did not “earn” his pile any more than the Roy kids. He benefitted from a similar form of nepotism by dint of his dating and then marrying Shiv because he literally had zero executive skill! Among his failings? He orchestrated a ham-handed attempt to destroy evidence of the cruise line scandal, gave such poor testimony in front of the Senate he was referred to as a “smirking block of feta cheese[13],” used his own underling as a human foot stool, outsourced the firing of hundreds of ATN employees to Greg, and could not even meet the low bar of getting a proper slogan for the channel. If there was a “failson” in the group, it was him! Even more, while he would have been the logical person to take the fall for the cruise line scandal, Shiv saved him from the chopping block. In fact, Tom’s defining trait was loyalty (not necessarily a bad thing) to Logan, not a high level of business acumen and yet, in the dog-eat-dog world Jesse Armstrong created, we are supposed to believe that the actual qualities most valuable in getting to the top are blind subservience and mediocre job performance?  Sorry, not buying it.

As for Lukas, you will never convince me Waystar was better off in his hands. For one thing, as Kendall noted, Lukas did not understand Waystar’s business. Lukas wanted to convert one of the company’s primary sources of revenue – ATN – into a “Bloomberg grey” channel that would presumably just barf out news about Wall Street (hardly a ratings generator!) Such a decision would have been particularly stupid considering GoJo was going to need all the money it could get to service the debt it surely took out to buy Waystar, not to mention the company’s stock was going to take a hit over its inflated subscriber numbers.[14] Speaking of subscriber numbers, do we really think a guy who did that is going to be a good steward of an even bigger company? And, like Kendall, Lukas is (at a minimum) a recreational drug user who gets high with his employees, but unlike Kendall, Lukas also sexually harasses his underlings, opening him (and the company) up to significant liability (not to mention lots and lots of bad PR). Finally, much of his public image is built on a lie that he is some genius computer coder, which, if exposed, might also damage his company’s brand. Put differently, Lukas engages in wonky business practices, treats his employees terribly, and is not the tech genius his minions portray him to be, and yet, this guy is somehow more worthy of “winning” in the end? Again, not buying it.

The final argument in support of the ending is the most basic and the one Shiv relied on: Ken was responsible for the death of another human being and that ipso facto disqualified him from leading the company. Now I will admit, there is something to be said for this, although I think we can all agree Ken did feel remorse for his actions. But within the Succession universe, there are a couple of other problems with this argument.

First, Shiv was every bit as amoral as everyone else on the show. She knew about the Dodds incident all the way back at Chiantishire and it did not stop her from teaming up with Ken and Roman, first to try and block the sale of Waystar and then, when that failed, working together to buy Pierce. If she was so offended by Ken’s actions, why did she suddenly get religion at the eleventh hour? It is not like Shiv had some shiny moral compass guiding her. To take one example, the first time Shiv talks one-on-one with Lukas, he’s snorting cocaine and telling her about how he sent frozen blood bricks to his communications director after their relationship ended. Shiv’s reaction was to provide crisis consulting on how to make the problem go away, not concern over Lukas’s abhorrent behavior.

Second, Shiv understood the value of blackmail. To go back to the cruise line scandal, Shiv used information about it not once but twice during the series to her advantage. The first time, she was working for Gil Eavis and threatened to use it against Waystar if ATN did not stop attacking Eavis on air. The second time was when she convinced Kara not to testify in front of the Senate by offering her money to stay silent. In neither case did Shiv care one bit about the women Mo assaulted or the Waystar employees whose deaths were never investigated.[15] No, she just cared about using incriminating information to her advantage. Since it is clear she 1) knew how to blackmail people and 2) was not afraid to do so, why would she back her estranged husband and a guy who snubbed her twice instead of her brother, who she had enormous leverage over? The chances that Shiv would have any meaningful role in a GoJo-led Waystar were zero, but all she needed to do was threaten to go public with what she knew about Kendall’s role in Andrew Dodds’s death and he would have had no choice but to put her in a senior role in the company. In other words, why bother spending 39 episodes drilling into our heads that these are the rules by which your universe operates only to decide in the second-to-last-scene of the entire series that they no longer apply? It just does not make sense.

In the end, maybe none of this matters and maybe that was the point. GoJo’s acquisition of Waystar would likely make Kendall, Shiv, and Roman billionaires[16] who would never want for anything (at least financially) for the rest of their lives. Instead, each is left staring into the middle distance, wrestling with the same questions as the rest of us – Who Am I and What Do I Want To Do With My Life? In other words, all the time we spend with these characters was supposed to tell us that money can’t buy happiness. No kidding.  

If you’re interested in what an alternate, post-finale ending might look like, check out:

Succession– Six Months Later (Kendall’s Revenge)

If you want to read my episode-by-episode recaps, they can be found here

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[1] While Tom did become head of Waystar, he would lead a subsidiary of GoJo with little actual power.

[2] The closest analogy I can think of is when Greg Daniels toyed with having Pam and Jim divorce in the final season of The Office only to back down mid-season in the face of massive fan backlash to the increasing tension in the Halpert marriage and introduction of the dreaded character “Brian the Boom Guy.” Instead, Armstrong went for an ending akin to making Bran – an important, but not central character – king at the end of Game of Thrones instead of one of the two logical choices, Jon or Dani.

[3] Indeed, the whole premise of The Summer Palace was Logan’s desire to name a successor, which he did (sort of)  – Siobhan.

[4] Yes, I know, the ambiguous pen mark could be read as an underline or a strike through, but the point, confirmed by Frank Vernon, was that sometime in the not too distant past, Logan memorialized his wish that Kendall succeed him.

[5] In Chiantishire, Caroline commented to Shiv that Logan liked treating his children like dogs and seeing how many times he could kick them and have them come running back to him.

[6] In Prague, Connor observed that Logan’s parenting philosophy was akin to pitting two dogs (again with the dogs!) against one another and then sending the weaker one off.

[7] This decision might have made sense if Shiv and Tom were happily married, but they were separated and had, less than a week before, the kind of empty-the-tank fight that couples have on the way to divorce.

[8] We will get into why Shiv’s decision making did not make sense within the show universe in more depth later, but suffice to say, her choice was particularly inexplicable considering the fact that Lukas snubbed her not once but twice (while also hiding the fact GoJo had lied about its subscriber numbers) and she and Tom were estranged. And if you claim Shiv could have been resentful about Kendall’s decision to side with Roman and call the election for Mencken, consider that 1) Tom was in on the decision too; and 2) when she met Mencken at Logan’s wake, she made clear she was willing to put aside her personal political views now that he was going to be President to allay any concerns about her leading the company.

[9] In addition to Mo’s conduct, there is a separate thread of the scandal involving mysterious deaths of cruise line employees that were never investigated because “no real person” was involved.

[10] Not only was this move incredibly selfish, it belied the fact that Ken had, per whistleblower James Weisel, cleaned up the cruise line while he was running the company. Talk about no good deed going unpunished!

[11] Another outgrowth of Logan’s poor choices. His decision to go back on his word and wrest control of the company back from Kendall in Season One resulted in Ken teaming up with Sandy and Stewy and making an unsolicited offer to buy it.

[12] It is also worth noting that the kids sniff out Logan’s plan to make another run at PGM and outbid him for the company.

[13] Due in part to the revelation that Tom sent Greg the same email (“you can’t make a tomelet without cracking a few Gregs”) *sixty seven* times in one day.

[14] While I understand TV is not real life, that the writers introduced this land mine into the story and then, in the very next episode, were like “never mind, no one thinks this is a big deal” did not sit well with me. Any company caught doing such a thing would not only see an immediate, and negative hit to its stock price (which would be particularly concerning here where a deal was on the precipice of being finalized) but an SEC investigation as well. Moreover, because the kids’ wealth was tied up in Waystar stock, depending on how the acquisition was structured, they could have taken a significant financial hit if, for example, those shares were going to be converted into shares of GoJo just as all this bad news breaks.

[15] This also reinforces the first point. Shiv is not some beacon of virtue, and excused and defended all manner of sleazy behavior by other people if it meant it helped her get ahead. That she was some beacon of virtue who could not stomach the idea of Kendall taking over based solely on the Dodds incident rings particularly hollow.

[16] I base this off the value (roughly $2 billion) Logan placed on Kendall’s shares of the family trust and am assuming Shiv and Roman had the same amount. Too Much Birthday; but see fn. 14 supra.