That’s enough finales now, thanks. Not one but four well-loved TV shows dropped their last ever episodes in the past week. Last Friday, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel took her farewell bow on Amazon. On Monday, it was an HBO double-whammy of Succession and Barry. Today the final whistle blows on Apple’s breakout hit Ted Lasso. Although Jason Sudeikis’s folksy football coach has by this point morphed into a cross between Ned Flanders and a “live laugh love” fridge magnet, so that one came as a ding-dong-diddly relief.
It’s Succession that everyone’s been talking about, and rightly so. Jesse Armstrong’s super-rich saga not only stuck the landing but its masterly 88-minute swansong, With Open Eyes, immediately entered the pantheon of great TV finales. Probably spitting F-bombs aboard a private jet as it did so.
TV endings tend to broadly fall into four categories. There are the damp squibs such as Seinfeld, Line of Duty, Dexter, Lost, Girls, Ozark and, most glaringly obvious, Game of Thrones – legacy-tarnishing travesties that cause fans such outrage they end up offering to crowdfund remakes (despite their total lack of production experience). There are the far happier, well-judged wrap-ups that craft something beguiling and beautiful, bringing what went before to a pitch-perfect climax. Think Mad Men, Six Feet Under, Blackadder, Better Call Saul, The Americans, The Leftovers and, in a double miracle, both versions of The Office. Then come those finales that pull off a head-spinning plot twist or narrative switcheroo: the likes of I May Destroy You, Battlestar Galactica, St Elsewhere, Twin Peaks or Fleabag.
Finally there are the feel-bad finales – ones that either kill off their protagonists in the closing frames or leave viewers utterly bereft in other ways. These include Breaking Bad, Boardwalk Empire, Killing Eve, Mare of Easttown, The Wire and Catastrophe. The ultimate, of course, is the ambiguous cut-to-black of The Sopranos, which managed to be a soggy “is that it?” squib and to make millions think their TVs had gone on the blink at an inopportune moment. No amount of Carmela’s baked ziti could comfort-feed those feelings.
Brutally magnificent Succession managed to straddle the last two categories. Tom Wambsgans’ coronation as Waystar CEO took most viewers by surprise, so can be loosely classed as a twist. Yet within Armstrong’s fictional universe, it made total sense.
If his fellow “Disgusting Brother”, lanky lummox Cousin Greg, had bumbled his way to power as plenty had predicted, many wouldn’t have believed their “face eggs”. Tom’s triumph was chillingly plausible and remained true to the show’s spirit. It spoke to real-world themes of venal ambition, corporate corruption and moral vacuums positioning themselves in proximity to power, failing upwards and yes-manning themselves into senior positions. (See basically the entire government for the past decade.)
En route, Armstrong and his all-star writers’ room manipulated our emotions expertly. We were teased with the tantalising prospect of a triumphant ending, when the Roy siblings briefly united behind elder brother Kendall’s leadership and it looked as if they might just pull off a boardroom coup. Temporarily freeing the trio from mutual rivalry, this resulted in the happiest family scenes ever seen on the show. The “sibs” goofed around in their mum’s Caribbean kitchen like overgrown teens, teasing one another, doing daft voices and committing puerile sex acts on hunks of artisanal cheese.
Later came another scene of sibling bonding, clutching each other supportively as they tearfully watched a home video of fearsome patriarch Logan in a rare relaxed mood. Even as they strode into Waystar Royco’s steel-and-glass HQ for that fateful board vote, they were walking in step.
Yet this was Succession, so the good vibes clearly couldn’t last. With half-an-hour and several narrative knife-wounds still to go, it was always doomed to end in crippling tragedy. Cue that feel-bad final act as all three Roy siblings fell from their dizzying skyscraper back down to earth.
Triggered by the sight of his lost love Gerri and how he’d generally “fucked it”, Roman tumbled back into his pit of grief and self-loathing. Shiv, in name and nature, alienated her big brother by delivering the final blow to his dad-shaped dreams. She was reduced to being the backseat queen to puffed-up king Tom – half of the hand-hold that broke the internet. It ended most excruciatingly for Kendall, whose entire life had been defined by the prospect of following in his fearsome father’s footsteps. Now he never will. We left him alone, gazing mournfully at the Hudson river, wondering whether he should jump in.
It had devastating emotional impact but was by no means unremittingly bleak. Along the way, we had warmly uplifting sibling scenes, two bouts of amusingly crap fisticuffs and plenty of quotable quickfire zingers – from “murder admin” to “sticker perambulation circuits”, from “frozen nobbies” to “gummy fish”, from “played you like a pregnant cello” to “the incredible fuck brother bandwagon”.
As a family drama about flawed human beings, it was near-perfect. As a pitch-black satire about business bellends, it was peerless. Succession ended with a flourish, not a shrug – fully satisfying with a sense of closure but just open-ended enough to leave room for imagined futures. Half-King Lear, half-Hamlet; all killer, no filler. A biblical parable meets a Greek tragedy with a well-thumbed copy of Roget’s Profanisaurus in its pocket.
Exquisite agony, enormo-laughs and all-round excellence made Succession one of the greatest ever TV dramas. Its finale has now surely shot into the all-time top five endings, right up there alongside Six Feet Under, The Americans, Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It’s above HBO forerunners The Sopranos and The Wire. And several Westeros kingdoms ahead of Game of Thrones, with Bran bloody Stark as a sort of rubbish Tom Wambsgans.
TV finales are notoriously tough to pull off. You can’t do everything and can’t please everyone. With fans already sad to see their favourites go, they’re often poised to pick holes in how it ended. Succession managed to dodge the pitfalls and hit the highs. It sprang surprises while retaining its internal logic. It delivered both delicious comedy and devastating drama in one impeccably performed package.
It’s a feat only a handful of other shows from the peak TV era have pulled off. For that, it should be lauded. Expect another bunch of Emmys and a well-deserved career boost for everyone involved. Now, for one last time – join me in growling it like Logan Roy himself – fuck off.
