Everyone is expendable. Even top dogs, who have the benefit of consoling themselves with massive exit packages. Some CEOs hang on longer than most, but not forever — retirement or death comes for us all — which is why, when money and power and legacies are in play, you need a plan of succession. The rich comedic conceit of “Succession” has always been rooted in one irascible billionaire’s inability to do this simple task: Name your replacement.
The fourth and final season of the HBO series opens by tacitly asking if any of that matters, now that patriarch Logan Roy is selling off his media empire. It seems like a done deal, but you never know with this crowd. Either way, when Logan broke the news of his intentions last season, it shattered the hopes and sweaty, incompetent dreams of his three youngest children, and the show picks back up in the aftermath, with battle lines drawn.
On one side you have Logan (Brian Cox), his afterthought of a son Connor (Alan Ruck), opportunistic son-in-law Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) and gangly hanger-on Cousin Greg (Nicholas Braun). On the other, it’s the blustering, floundering, justifiably paranoid energy of siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin), who are plotting a rival media startup.
