Succession: Will it be Kendall, Shiv, Ronan – it’s not you Connor – who ascends the Roy throne?
Speculation is at fever pitch as to who will assume the Waystar throne and it certainly looks like it’ll be a Roy vs. Roy vs. Roy battle. See the theories and have your say.
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After four incredible and emotionally gruelling seasons, it’s time to bid farewell to our favourite toxic media family – The Roys – this week.
Show runner Jesse Armstrong saddened millions of fans when he confirmed in February that this fourth season of Succession would be its last.
And while the ending felt “natural,” Armstrong had nonetheless secretly hoped someone would talk him out of wrapping up the series.
“I hope people, when they see this season, will feel that it has a natural shape to it,” Armstrong told Variety at the Season 4 premiere.
“That’s how I pitched it to my writers’ room, kind of hoping I’d get argued out of it so we’d see a way to do more seasons, because I love working with these people. (But) I think there’s a feeling of completeness and rightness to the shape of the show.”
Armstrong had a clear vision in mind for the 90-minute spectacular titled “With Open Eyes”.
“I wavered on what were the best lines, the best way to express it – but that ending from the first draft is the one you’ll see when the episode comes out.”
Given that, and the fact the whole show has been written and constructed with such precision – from episode titles to season timelines – you’d be surprised if there were any loose ends after Monday’s finale.
Speculation is at fever pitch as to who will assume the Waystar throne and it certainly looks like it’s will be a Roy vs. Roy vs. Roy battle (and, sorry ConHeads – eldest son Connor is unlikely to be in that fight).
While the siblings started off the season united, in a mere fortnight (Season 4 is occurring on consecutive days in TV time) they’re back to where they were last series.
Whatever the outcome is, one thing’s for certain: The siblings have officially done irreparable damage to one another, and it’s unlikely that will be mended.
Here’s the most popular theories:
KENDALL GETS EVERYTHING HE WANTS
There’s much speculation that the on-and-off-again heir apparent (played by Jeremy Strong) will gain control and become CEO of Waystar RoyCo, but lose everything – such as his family and personal happiness – in the process. He would also control a company that needed to be bought out to survive, and is now just putting out fires every day.
OR KENDALL WILL DIE
There’s been a great deal of foreshadowing that Kendall might drown throughout the show. In season one, he drove a car while under the influence into a lake after Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) wedding, killing one of the waiters.
This secret has weighed on him ever since. Season three ended with Kendall confronting his past, arguing with Logan and telling his siblings about the incident – and prior to that he’s found almost catatonic floating in the swimming pool. Plus there’s the John Berryman depressing 1964 work – Dreamsong 29 that’s been threaded throughout the entire show.
The titles of all season finale episodes have been taken directly from that poem about one man’s reckoning with a dark secret he can’t entirely remember, and it ends with his suicide. If Kendall gets away with his own dark secret, it’d track with the show’s themes (they can keep getting away with it).
Or, if he’s exposed and ousted at the final board meeting, could the show conclude with his suicide, inevitably in a body of water; death after a rebirth?
ROMAN’S ATN ELECTION CALL DESTROYS WAYSTAR ROYCO
In episode eight, we saw the kings of ATN News essentially rig the US election, nominating Right-wing populist candidate Jeryd Mencken (Justin Kirk) as the winner.
Despite members of the production team warning top table that if they called the election result before the votes had been counted they’d face months of scrutiny and legal interrogations, they did it anyway.
We know the Roys don’t think the law is applicable to the rich and powerful, but it’s quite possible that episode – which Armstrong himself branded the most shocking of the season – could mark the ultimate demise of Waystar RoyCo. If the election fraud was leaked to the press, a black hole would consume the company’s share price.
MATSSON CUTS SHIV OUT
Shiv and Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) have been a little too close in Season 4 – not in a romantic way. But their collusions are dangerous – as Shiv told him at the funeral, some people think he’s just a puppet for her.
At the end of Episode 9, her future as a girlboss looked promising. Mencken has seemingly agreed to Matsson’s offer to win him over, placing her in a competitive position as the board meeting looms – but surely he doesn’t like being minimised in his own company?
What seems more likely, perhaps Matsson will choose his own puppet and leave Shiv in the lurch after getting what he wants.
SHIV AND TOM TAKE PGM
Remember at the start of Season 4 when Shiv and her brothers snatched Pierce straight off their father’s hands, all by saying the “biggest f – king number” – where’s that deal?
If Matsson shafts her, PGM could offer a way to the top: Shiv could leak the Swede’s dirty deeds and cause GoJo’s stock to collapse, allowing Pierce to initiate a hostile takeover … with Shiv at the top.
As for Tom (Matthew Macfadyen), he’s got a baby on the way with Shiv and likely no future at Waystar.
The show has planted several seeds that indicate they’ll get back together – pundits tip their kid will be a disaster, or the next President of the United States.
GREG COMES OUT ON TOP
Greg (Nicholas Braun), the prodigal cousin, has been playing the game well this season – he’s on everyone’s team, everywhere, all at once.
He’s won over Mattsson with his indifference over mass lay-offs at the tailgate party, and they’ve since been out socially together (drinking things that aren’t usually drinks).
At the funeral, Matsson greeted him by saying, “Hey, sexy.”
If Matsson is now in bed with Mencken, here’s how it could play out: Mencken agrees to a US CEO, but doesn’t want it to be Shiv because of her political leanings, nor does he want Roman (Kieran Culkin) after his weakness at the funeral, and Kendall wants too much control.
Matsson isn’t keen on Tom, so what about a frontman without any baggage – Greg.
Plus we know Grandpa Ewen (James Cromwell) has voting rights, and he hates Logan’s kids, so Greg the Egg could be the ultimate ruler.
NOTHING CHANGES
Armstrong also wrote Peep Show, which has one of the best, but bleakest, conclusions of any sitcom. So it’s not likely to be a happy, fairytale ending.
One of the most depressing predictions is that the GoJo deal is ruined, they give up on trying to buy PGN, and everything stays pretty much the same as it always has been. Logan’s legacy of cruelty and his insatiable appetite for power is successfully passed down to all three (again, sorry Connor) of his children and they just keep on keeping on.
Succession, Monday, 10am, Binge
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY OF FAREWELLS
Succession joins a number of TV shows which will air their final episodes this week – from.
Ted Lasso and Barry to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
While a pitch-perfect series finale can seal a show’s place in the pantheon of TV greatness, it’s pretty hard to nail.
Many have been universally despised, while others are simply divisive – works of arguable genius that nonetheless alienated large portions of their fanbase.
Here are some of The Good, The Bad and The downright Ugly of finales ever put to screen.
The Good
PARKS AND RECREATION
When your show is a TV ray of sunshine, there’s really only one way to end: by deftly chronicling their happily ever afters. From the Jill and Joe Biden guest appearances that took viewers into a world where Leslie (Amy Poehler) becomes Indiana’s state governor to perpetual butt of jokes Jerry/Garry getting the last laugh by living to 100 as Pawnee’s mayor, it was a heartwarming farewell.
FLEABAG
There is something particularly gratifying about an ending that is truly an ending. After two seasons, Fleabag was firmly finished.
In the final moments, Fleabag broke the fourth wall one last time to see off the viewers for good, walking away with a gentle shake of the head.
Just before that, though, it let us in on one last conversation at a bus stop, as Fleabag and the Hot Priest waited for a bus that never came: “I love you.” “It’ll pass.”
VEEP
If Seinfeld had one of the all-time worst finales, Julia Louis-Dreyfus at least struck finale gold with Veep, in which she starred as Selina Meyer, the titular Vice President who schemes and cons her way into the presidency not once, but twice.
Ultimately, she finds herself alone in the Oval Office. From sending Gary to jail to her unhinged rant about her time as Vice President to the moment where coverage of Selina’s funeral is interrupted to report on the death of Tom Hanks, the finale stayed completely faithful to the dark, hilarious tone of the entire series.
MAD MEN
After years of build-up, the series finale finds Don no longer able to escape his demons. Plagued by the secret that his name isn’t actually Don Draper and suffering from a crippling case of alcoholism, he vanishes.
However, right when it seems that all hope might be lost, the show cuts to him looking tanned and healthy, meditating at a cliffside retreat in California, briefly smirking before the scene cuts to Coca-Cola’s famous “I want to buy the world a Coke” ad campaign.
By insinuating that Don used his time to spiritually reflect in order to create one of the biggest capitalist campaigns ever, the show wraps everything up while staying true to itself, giving a perfect send-off to this unique series.
BREAKING BAD
One of the later episodes of the fifth and final season, Ozymandias, is its most celebrated, but the finale, holds its own.
As he remains on the run from the DEA, Walt makes sure that his family is taken care of, even managing to say goodbye to his wife and children and freeing Jesse from captivity before entering his lab one last time, succumbing to his wounds just as the police arrive.
A happy ending with a tragic twist is exactly what Breaking Bad had been building to the entire time.
The Bad
THE SOPRANOS
The Sopranos prompted widespread outrage when it closed with an enigmatic, open-ended finale that left viewers to make up their own minds as to what actually happened.
Many assumed it depicted the final moments of central character Tony Soprano who, after leading one of New York’s most feared Italian mobs, got what was coming to him.
THE X-FILES
Another series that entered decline long before its let-down of a finale, The X-Files promised big things with the return of David Duchovny’s Fox Mulder.
It was a shoddy end for one of TV’s great sci-fi series: a confounding, often dull hour that lapsed into trite TV tropes.
“The most imaginative show on television has finally reached the limits of its imagination,” wrote The New York Times after the episode’s airing.
The Ugly
DEXTER
This footloose serial killer character sailed off into the eye of Hurricane Katrina, in a finale which was pretty much universally loathed by every fan of the Dexter series.
By the time Dexter’s final season rolled around, some fans were glad to wash their hands of the serial killer drama.
Killing off his sister Debra with as little fanfare as possible, the finale then saw Dexter drive his boat into the storm, presumably to his own death.
Although that was bad enough, the show’s post-credits sequence revealed Dexter is, in fact, alive and well, working as a logger in the middle of who knows where.
It has since been salvaged somewhat by the 2021’s 10-part Dexter: New Blood.
KILLING EVE
Would the dwindling number of devotees who kept faith with Killing Eve be rewarded for their loyalty?
They would not. By season four, what remained of the show’s appeal was only sustained by the brilliance of Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer’s lead performances and the chemistry of their characters Eve and Villanelle.
However implausible, all we wanted was for this odd couple to stumble off into the sunset together.
But not only was Killing Eve’s brutal ending clunky, it was just downright, mean-spirited, too with Villanelle shot and falling into the Thames, leaving Eve to scream as the words The End filled the screen.
GAME OF THRONES
The bigger they come, the harder they fall – and in the world of TV, Thrones was a titan.
The hit fantasy series was plagued with all manner of problems throughout its eighth and final season, culminating in an over-hyped finale that was met with something resembling a collective shrug.
The decision to award the coveted seat on the Iron Throne to the unlikely Bran Stark was far from Thrones’ only problem.
And many fans were left feeling like their best-loved characters had been betrayed by the show’s notoriously trigger-happy creators.
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