Small moment of malice hints at a dark ending for Succession

A small moment in the most recent episode of TV’s best show is our best clue yet for how it will end. The other one happened last season.

Is Succession heading towards a tragic ending? Two scenes may hold the key. Picture: Binge/Foxtel/HBO

This is your spoiler warning. If you haven’t seen the fourth episode of Succession’s final season, go away and watch it before reading any further.

The spoilers shall commence immediately after our traditional cascading wall of “f*** offs”, courtesy of Logan Roy, who cares deeply about your viewing experience and would not wish unwanted spoilers upon the worst of his enemies. Not even Kendall.

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Go.

and watch.

the episode.

So, Logan and Kendall. There’s a scene deep in season three whose significance came into clearer focus after this week’s episode: the dinner in Italy. Ken sitting across from his father, his hated idol, and practically begging to be excised from the family.

Ken no longer thinks himself capable of beating Logan, and wants to escape his orbit (albeit with a two billion dollar payout and a “chunky” asset). The key part is why he thinks that. In conceding defeat, he clings to the moral high ground.

“There are things you’re able to do that I can’t, maybe,” he says.

“You’ve won because you’re corrupt, and so is the world. I’m better than you. You know, I hate to say this, because I love you, but you’re kind of ... evil.

“Let me out, OK? Pay up and let me out. I don’t want to be you. I’m a good guy.”

Logan responds to this by bringing up Ken’s worst secret: his complicity in the drug-fuelled death of the waiter at Shiv’s wedding.

“I’m better than you,” Ken repeats.

“Sure,” says his father.

Logan’s tetchiness escalates as the scene progresses. Is he getting defensive? Most people would take offence at being called evil. No, it feels more like frustration. The actor who plays him, Brian Cox, explained it well last year.

“I think Logan believes that Kendall’s assessment of himself is illusory. It’s not real, it’s not based on anything palpable. It’s based on effect as opposed to deep down reality,” said Cox.

What is the “deep down reality” here? Is Kendall “a good guy”, is he truly “better” than Logan, or is he doomed to become the monster he pretends to despise?

“I’m better than you.” Picture: Binge/Foxtel/HBO

“Sure.” Picture: Binge/Foxtel/HBO

Succession has always defied prediction. Entering the final season, none of us had any real idea how it would end: with one of the siblings at the head of Waystar Royco? Tom scheming his way to the job? Ken, Roman and Shiv finally breaking free and discovering their own paths? Greg revealing himself to be the bumbling puppetmaster?

Four episodes in, I finally have my first working theory, and it is not cheerful: a pyrrhic victory for Kendall. A foundation has been laid for the eldest of the core trio to betray his siblings and destroy nearly everything he cares about in pursuit of his father’s crown.

To steal another HBO drama’s phrase, Ken may burn everything down, only to find himself ruling as king of the ashes.

The most recent episode, which happens a day after Logan’s sudden death, orbits around the discovery of a sheet of paper in the Roy patriarch’s safe, which identifies Kendall as Logan’s preferred successor. His name has been underlined or crossed out, it’s unclear which.

That ambiguity is deliberate (the writers created multiple versions of the prop and chose the most exquisitely indecipherable) and ultimately doesn’t matter. Whether Ken sees validation or rejection on that page, it motivates him to re-enter the fight.

Underlined or crossed out? Picture: Binge/Foxtel/HBO

Frank, who is arguably as much of a father figure for Ken as Logan, and a more caring one, recognises the danger.

“Ken, you’ve got stuff cooking. You seem so well. You really want back in?” he asks.

Should something horrible unfold from here, this intensifies the tragedy: Ken and the other kids were so nearly free. They were working together as something resembling a functioning, loving family. Happiness seemed possible. Until that sheet of paper emerged.

The episode ends with a small but ominous moment of malice, as Ken bullies the hapless Hugo into secretly cooking up a smear campaign against Logan’s memory.

Earlier, Hugo had come to Ken for help, implying he’d revealed Logan’s death to his daughter before it was publicly announced – information she then used to profit financially. A smirking Ken is abusing that trust for his own advantage.

It’s what Logan would do. It’s what Logan did do, holding the waiter’s death and subsequent cover-up over Ken in an effort to keep him leashed.

The smear campaign is also what Logan would do, and what he did do when he told Shiv to publish a public letter hammering Ken as a drug addict and absentee father last season.

“It’s what he would do,” Ken tells Hugo.

Oh dear. Picture: Binge/Foxtel/HBO

And here’s what Logan told Ken at a key moment back in season two: “You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer.”

This is Ken the killer, the ruthless manipulator, the son his father wanted. He’s gone from “I don’t want to be dad” to “It’s what dad would do”. The score treats the moment as a triumph when it’s really a tragedy.

“Part of what Succession is, is Kendall’s burning, almost incomprehensible desire to replace his father,” one of the show’s writers, Lucy Prebble, told HBO’s official podcast.

“On a deep level, I think there’s an anger (towards Logan) there. But also, on the other side of that same coin, Kendall’s often driven by this idea of, ‘It’s what dad would do.’

“He says that a lot, partly because he wants to be like his father, but also because there’s an aggression underneath it. ‘I’m only doing what he would have done.’ It is a way of excusing himself and of lessening his sense of guilt.

“What it allows him to do is go, ‘Actually dad was a ruthless son of a bitch, and he was proud of that, and in this moment if I’m a ruthless son of a bitch, he can’t blame me, nobody can blame me.’ So he gets to hide his personal anger underneath this business decision.

“And that is a Logan trait.”

When the season is done, one suspects, we’ll look back on the Italian dinner as a sad and pivotal moment. If Logan had granted his son’s wish, and Kendall had moved on with his life, there could have been something like a happy ending. The conclusion that looms instead is worth dreading.

New episodes of Succession release on Foxtel and Binge every Monday

Twitter: @SamClench