This past weekend was full of huge TV finales, particularly on the cable side of things. HBO delivered the Season 2 conclusion for Somebody Somewhere, which was preceded by the respective series finales for Bill Hader’s adored Barry and the awards magnet Succession. The latter finally delivered an answer for the show’s title, and the finale featured some of the best lines on TV of any weekend, with fans split on how successful the swan song was. But you know who isn’t wading through those particular internet debates? Known TV enthusiast and horror mastermind Stephen King.
As one of Twitter’s more outspoken pop culture cornerstones, King has lavished praise on many TV shows over the years, with Peacock’s Poker Face being a 2023 highlight for the genre enthusiast. (With “pulp” being the genre of choice in that case.) But here we are, two days after Succession’s fourth-season capper, and the bestselling author took to Twitter to share not a tribute but a mini-roast of HBO’s critical darling, as seen below.
NYTimes headline: SUCCESSION is over. Why did we care?Here’s a newsflash for you: A lot of us didn’t.May 30, 2023
Tell us how you really feel, Stephen King! Clearly, the author did not think it to be worth his time to join the masses in following the Roy family’s journey surrounding the legacy of their media company Waystar Royco. Which, in some ways, does make a lot of sense. Whenever King isn’t spotlighting under-the-radar horror novelists and heaping praise on whatever he happened to be watching — he was a big fan of DC’s upcoming blockbuster The Flash — his Twitter feed tends to populate with political posts and opinions.
Considering Logan Roy and other characters’ existences are based in part on real-life moguls, business heads and politicians. Somebody who abhors dealing with that kind of content in their daily lives doesn’t always love diving into that kind of material as escapism, even if it’s on a fictional scale. And I can imagine a lot of the hyper-batshit situations that played out in Succession would ruffle more than a few of King’s feathers.
Now, does that mean King had to be so direct as to point out that people such as himself don’t care about Succession? It maybe seems a little unnecessarily soapbox-y in place of something more wittily snarky or dismissive. Not entirely out of character, but a pretty pointed jab for someone who doesn’t seem to have any high-falutin rivalries going with creator Jesse Armstrong.
Would I understand it better if King had followed up by saying he was too busy watching Showtime’s Yellowjackets to watch Succession? Definitely. The horror drama’s super-twisty Season 2 finale aired at the same time on Sunday night, and would have been a good attention-grabber, since he definitely praised that show in the past. But no, I guess this is just King straight up not giving a shit about Kendall, Shiv and Roman’s constant shit-talk on the HBO drama.
For what it’s worth, Stephen King has shared up-and-down opinions about some of his own projects and adaptations in the past, with his take on CBS’ Under the Dome remaining a highlight amongst all of his reflections.
