SPOILERS: Succession pulls the trigger on game-changing moment

SPOILERS. Succession just released one of the finest hours of TV ever made. It is a masterpiece. And it is game-changing.

SPOILER WARNING

ALSO, SERIOUSLY, SPOILER WARNING – This article contains significant plot details from episode three of Succession’s fourth season. And this is a doozy, you’ll want to experience the reveal as intended.

If you don’t want spoilers, f**k off now.

FINAL SPOILER WARNING – We’re not kidding, everything is up for grabs and if you get pissy, you only have yourself to blame.

Final chance to bounce out if you don’t want spoilers.

The king is dead. Succession creator Jesse Armstrong fulfilled his promise when he said that the show’s story is in the title – that for there to be a succession, someone had to succeed. For someone to succeed, Logan had to die.

Like every emperor before him, the larger-than-life patriarch Logan Roy proved all too fallible and human in the end, taken down by that which binds us all, the fragility of our bodies in defying our will to outlast. The fight for immortality is, ultimately, futile.

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It wasn’t sudden and it wasn’t even TV dramatic, but it was momentous. It was also one of the finest hours of TV ever crafted, a tour de force in writing, directing and performances.

You probably spent at least half the episode with your jaw hanging open, unable to process what you were watching. We were all like Roman, disbelieving, wondering if it wasn’t a test of loyalty or strength.

It says a lot about how Logan traumatised his children in life that in death, one of them thought it was possible their father concocted the scenario to manipulate them into love.

But you’d be lying if you didn’t wonder, at first, if it wasn’t some test. If this professed death wasn’t a fake-out.

Episode three is a masterpiece.

It was so cleverly staged, splitting the scene between Logan dying on his private jet while his children are on a boat, experiencing the whole thing over the phone.

That we didn’t see Logan clutching his heart and collapsing tracks with how Kendall, Roman and Shiv found out, in bits and pieces. To see his death would have been too final, too definitive. And when it’s not definitive for his children, it couldn’t be for us.

We only saw parts of Logan’s blurred body at the corner of the frame. We saw a chest, a shadow, the flight attendant doing chest impressions.

It’s only when Shiv’s voice broke when she said “Daddy”, that we saw even the top of his face from a low horizontal angle, looking pale and passive. Far from the firecracker he was in life.

We never saw a full camera pan of Logan’s body because finality is satisfying, even in the most horrendous of circumstances. And the Succession filmmakers aren’t interested in giving you satisfaction for most of the episode.

Emotional trauma is discombobulating, and if his children are all over the place, then so too will be the audience.

Tom gave small details on how it happened – Logan was short of breath and went into the bathroom, where he was found unresponsive. His death had been telegraphed since the first season, and his ill health had come up over the years.

The king is dead.

Succession has always excelled in making the audience care deeply about these characters when they prove, over and again, that they’re awful humans. But even awful humans are human, and when the characters are this well-written and performed, they’re relatable.

This episode really hit home that despite all their privilege and bad behaviour, the Roy kids are still someone’s son and someone’s daughter. And when s**t goes down, it’s painful. All the money in the world doesn’t insulate you from losing family.

You only have to listen to Kendall, Roman and Shiv’s messages to their father when they thought he was dying. They achingly told them they loved him, even if they couldn’t forgive him.

Or when Connor’s first reaction was to voice, “Oh man, he never even liked me”.

But love doesn’t require forgiveness, love is not a binary. It’s murky and illogical and it can be deeply hurtful.

Now the king is dead, but unlike Lear, his successors are still alive, and they will be coming for all the pieces of his kingdom.

Succession is on Binge and Foxtel with new episodes available on Mondays at 11am AEST

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Originally published as SPOILERS: Succession pulls the trigger on game-changing moment