This article contains heavy spoilers for the current season of “Succession.”
If there is one thing HBO knows how to do, it’s create TV that we won’t be able to stop talking about. They did just that with Sunday night’s episode of “Succession.”
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We’re only on episode three of the current (and last) season of the acclaimed TV show, and wow, did they shock fans and truly do the unthinkable.
If you haven’t watched episode three of season four, do yourself a favor and stop reading this article, but if you made it to see our forgotten son, Conor, get married to his bride Willa, let’s talk about this instantly iconic episode.
When the Roy family goes to a wedding, good things never happen, and it’s safe to say that the absolutely worst thing that could happen to this family, happened on the day of Conor’s wedding. I knew something catastrophic was going to happen, but I had no idea it was going to be the last time we’d see Logan Roy on our TV screens.
We’re set up to believe that all of these other bad things are going to go down during the wedding, and HBO decided to subvert our expectations and kill the main character of the show. It honestly felt like watching “The Red Wedding” episode from “Game of Thrones.” It was that shocking.
The show is called “Succession,” so I guess I shouldn’t have been that shocked that Logan Roy would die at some point during the show, but I always assumed it would happen at the very end of the series, if it’d happen at all. Then I was reminded that Logan Roy is King Lear, so it had to end for him in tragedy.
There were so many things that made this episode one of the best episode’s of TV I have ever watched, but the decision to kill Logan early on in the episode, and then watch his children and confidents deal with the fallout was masterful.
Emmys should be awarded to the actors who play all of Logan Roy’s children for this episode, but especially to Kieran Culkin, who broke my heart with his performance as Roman. While his other siblings are accepting the fact that their father had a heart attack on an airplane, Roman is in so much denial that he thinks that it’s a good thing they’re still doing chest compressions on his father.
What really amazes me is how I can feel so much empathy for a family that is truly so awful. Not only are their businesses practices terrible, but they way they treat each other is abhorrent. Yet I still couldn’t help but feel something as Kendall, Roman and Shiv said their goodbyes to their father, knowing full well that he was already dead on the other end of the line. We are never prepared for these types of tragedies, and I was glued to the TV watching them process their emotions in real time.
Another moment that wrecked me was Kendall and Shiv holding hands before going to tell their older brother, Conor, the bad news. For a moment, everything about the family business was wiped away, and they could just be siblings again, dealing with the unimaginable.
Logan’s death also expertly sets up the rest of the season for us. Now that he can no longer choose someone to run the company, it will be a fight to death between Kendall, Roman and Shiv. It also leaves some huge unanswered questions. Will the deal with GoJo happen? Will there be any surprises in Logan’s will? Is Tom going to cut his way to the top? What’s going to happen to Greg?
I knew that the final season of “Succession” was going to be one for the books, but it will now forever go down as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, and it’s in thanks to Sunday night’s episode. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this season shakes out, but I will truly miss Logan Roy. He was a monster, but man was he entertaining to watch.