Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has explained why he knew that the show’s “eventual successor” was the “right ending for quite a while now”.
***Warning: this article contains major spoilers for the season four finale of Succession***
After a long four-season journey of Machiavellian drama, HBO’s unrivalled satire (which airs on Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK) has come to an end with a dark-horse winner.
While much had been argued for a potential Roman (Kieran Culkin), Kendall (Jeremy Strong) or Shiv (Sarah Snook) triumph, less had been said about a Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) win.
And yet, the series finale went in an unexpected direction, crowning Tom the “winner” of Succession, aka the new CEO of Waystar Royco.
Although this decision may have come as a shock to many who felt it was too similar to what happened last season, Armstrong said he knew “the idea of Tom being the eventual successor” was “the right ending for quite a while”.
During the post-episode feature, “Controlling the Narrative”, Armstrong explained that “even though [Tom’s] not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet”, he’s one of “those figures that drift upwards and make themselves amenable to powerful people who are around”.
“His power comes from Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård),” the creator said.
This idea is planted in Matsson’s mind early on in the episode when he’s speaking with Shiv about Tom’s future with the company, and she accidentally says that her husband would “honestly suck the biggest d*** in the room”.
Read here for a more in-depth explanation of what happened in the final scenes.
As for the Roy siblings’ futures, Armstrong said: “I thought about all their stories. You know, they don’t end. They will carry on.
“But it’s sort of where this show loses interest in them because they’ve lost what they wanted, which was to succeed – which, you know, was this prize that their father held out.”
He continued: “In a reductive, brutal way, Roman ends up exactly where he started.
“Shiv is still in play, I’d say, in a rather terrifying, frozen, emotionally barren place.
“For Kendall, this will never stop being the central event of his life, the central days of his life, central couple of years of his life. Maybe he could go on and start a company, or do a thing. But the chances of him achieving the sort of corporate status that his dad achieved are very low. And I think that will mark his whole life.”
