There are going to be spoilers about the third episode of Succession Season 4. So please don’t progress further unless you have seen “Connor’s Wedding”.
The title of this episode is misleading. Yes, there is a wedding, and yes, it is the wedding of Connor (the disappointment and the ignored eldest son of Logan Roy) to his beau Willa, who is at least honest about her position as a gold digger in the family. It might serve us right to say that at the end of Succession, Connor and Willa might have the closest thing to a sustainable, healthy relationship in that world.
Because awful people occupy the world of Succession, their character traits are signified by intricate dialogue and inscrutable and harsh insults that are florid in their profanity. The sibling trio of Roman, Kendall, and Shiv are only capable of expressing love or any sort of affection through insults and backstabbing, and even their father, Logan Roy, expects “roasting” him as the ultimate form of entertainment. A test of mettle and character as it stands, with all of the mellifluousness stemming from the cadence and delivery of a “, Fuck off” or “Buckle Up, Fucklehead,” or something as elegant as “Cornfed Basic from Hockey Town,” or something as hilarious and simple as Roman leaving a voicemail to his father, asking whether it’s a test, and closing off with “That’s all I want to know, Are You a Cunt?”
That would be the last thing Roman ever speaks to his father, the last message delivered, and a searing form of guilt that Roman would have to carry, his fear that the voicemail is the reason why his father is dead.
Because, yes, the king is dead. Logan Roy goes out ignominiously, with nary a final speech, a pivotal death scene, or an important moment in the penultimate episode of this season or the series finale. It is an inevitability that was bound to happen because it is a recurring Sword of Damocles that has been hanging over the head of the show since the first episode. It’s in the name of the show itself.
It’s the suddenness, though, that is jarring, at least from a television perspective. It happens in the third episode of the final season, with a full season of the story still to be told. The cynic in me believes it is to shake things up, to keep a fresh and vital tone. But what makes the ignominy and suddenness of this death so great is the reflection of its reality.
Death isn’t flowery, it isn’t cinematic, and it isn’t a soliloquy-driven moment of final reflection before a human leaves the mortal coil. It is inarticulate, it is silent, it is filled with regrets and unfinished planning, and like the quick and sudden nature of the episode hitting the viewers with the subversion, the characters too feel it, their lives upended. And the death captured is also symbolic of the modern times we inhabit, where the final moments with a person are only shared via phone call, where the phone is kept near a person’s ear as his loved ones deliver their final eulogies, scrambling their thoughts to deliver something articulate and poetic.
The tragedy and the beauty of it all is the empathy depicted towards these awful people, the Roy siblings. Even in death, the siblings don’t have anything nice to say about their father. Their reactions are instantly revealing, a persistent “fuck you” present amidst their messy articulations. Shiv’s reaction as her carapace slowly floats away, and she blurts out, “No, I don’t want that,” is one of the most honest thoughts heard from any of the characters.
The nakedness of these characters – how hollow they truly are once removed from their armor of privilege and wealth – is revealed in their black hilarity. Ken trying to wrest a sense of control by ordering Frank in the plane to talk to the pilot and bring in “heart doctors” is like a child flailing to make sense of the world. Roman, on the other hand, consistently remarks that they still don’t know whether he is truly gone until a doctor sees the body, which is a character-specific choice. For all his chutzpah and his impish behavior, Roman Roy is still a little kid at his core.
A kid who wants his father to love him, a kid who wants to work with his siblings together but also stay the apple of his father’s eye. It’s also Kendall’s reaction, which is fascinating. Kendall, the personification of “disappointment” for his father, is also the only sibling among the three who had brushes with death. He killed the waiter at the end of Season 1 and almost died at the end of Season 2. Thus, his remark about being careful with their reactions as they are liable to be misrepresented feels characteristically cold, yet shows the potentiality of Kendall as being as ruthless, if not more, than his father.
Because death is always a crucible, it is one of those moments of life that a person of wealth and privilege cannot buy their way out of. They have to go through it, and now the key question that arises is again the reflection of reality, which the show, as well as the characters within the show, have to answer. With their central conflict gone, who are the siblings now?
The trio of Kendall, Shiv, and Roman have been mercurial even at their entrepreneurial best. All of their business decisions struck as a result of getting back at their father, and their personalities were molded as a result of an overbearing presence and a lack of humane love from their father. Logan Roy’s weakest moments, where he had been prone to making mistakes, had been because he loved his children, as misguided as his love might come off as.
But now the king, the shark, the alpha male, and the immovable pillar, Logan Roy, is gone. And the unpredictability of the world of succession has only amplified because now greed will take over. Now moves will be charted, backstabbing will increase, and the siblings will have to resume their wily, mercurial methods. However, now that their father is gone, if the show is going to be a reflection of reality as it was this week, the characters, too, must change.
The change could be significant, or the change could be incremental. It could be aesthetic, or it could be profound. But it is a crucible that each of these characters would have to go through, and no amount of florid articulation would help them bypass it. But their shared goal of sticking together as a way to get back at their father is now gone, and as the road to the proverbial throne is wide open, we will see the siblings more divided now than ever before.
In it all, perhaps the healthiest and truest moment of interaction is Connor’s reaction to Shiv informing him of his father’s demise: “Oh man, he never liked me.” It is fitting that among the Roy siblings, he is the only one with the self-awareness and clarity to understand the equation he shared with his father, while the other three, the “proverbial successors,” are still confused as to the relationship they shared with their father.
Perhaps that is what death does—destroys the myths of the father, the appearance of the herculean pillar, the man who could do no wrong. Death is the ultimate equalizer, making us realize the humanity and frailty of it all. At the end of the day, we are all just blowing in the wind.
