Succession season 1-4 spoilers below
Things are sort of back to usual in episode five, which is a relief after the rollercoaster that was episodes three and four.
And by back to usual we mean we’re treated to an episode in which everyone starts at the Waystar Royco offices, and then goes on a trip – this time to GoJo founder Lukas Matsson’s “annual retreat” in Norway.
The fallout from Logan’s death is still very unresolved, and all those new plotlines that episode four unleashed (Marcia, Shiv’s pregnancy, Kerry’s marriage arrangements, Greg’s name in pencil, to name a few) remain unanswered. Instead, in episode five, everyone is one hundred per cent focused on the GoJo deal, the result of which will decide the fate of everyone else in the show. So off we go.
The motley crew head to Norway
Part five opens with Kendall listening to Jay Z’s Takeover in a car as he’s being taken to the Waystar Royco offices. When he arrives there’s Hugo and a load of new cronies. This is it. This is the moment he’s been waiting for his whole life. Up they go to the offices, where Roman is already waiting for him. Everyone claps, Kendall glances over to his father’s office and his empty chair. This is really it.
Everyone’s worried about the GoJo deal. Roman calls Shiv in; the cronies are dismissed. Karl and Gerri pop by to try and give Kendall and Roman some last-minute advice because the CEOs are heading to Norway by themselves to do the deal at Matsson’s fancy retreat.
Then an email arrives, from Matsson’s people. They want everyone there, not just Roman and Kendall, and they’ve provided a helpful list of all the faces they want to see. It’s an odd move this early in the process, apparently, but not unprecendented. It’s a good way for GoJo’s people to be able to check out and meet Waystar Roycos people, so they can decide whether this is a team they can work with; who they want to keep on after the acquisition, and who they want to chuck.
So as with the potential PGM buyout in season two, everyone needs to be on their best behaviour. Remember how that went?
The plan
On the plane, Roman and Kendall are reading papers to make sure they know as much as possible about the deal. The plan is to get a couple of extra dollars per share and then sell. Logan’s cronies are particularly keen on this plan – they just want their packages so they can retire in extreme comfort.
Kendal and Roman tell Shiv that they can cut Tom out/ destroy him if she wants, but to their surprise she just sort of mutters and excuses herself. She then walks to the other end of the plane, passing Tom and giving him a very strange look. I think we know who Shiv thinks the father of her child is, folks.
Meanwhile, the Waystar Royco lead boffins are all freaking out, reading the profiles of their equavalents in Matsson’s camp. Everyone in his team seems to be an ex-olympian-venture-capitalist-Fullbright-scholar of some sort, and they’re all incredibly young. Gerri is the only one who isn’t perturbed. Sure they’re smart, she says, but they’re also European, softened by their sick days and their socialism. Team Roy grew up in America. And spent years working alongside Logan. They’re going to be fine.
Matsson’s being Matsson
The Norwegian retreat is located high in the mountains and the views are gorgeous. The buildings seem to be made of mostly glass with a touch of wood here and there; in the evening everyone sits on leather Hans J. Wegner-style chairs, drinking whiskey, and they’re all wearing leather, padded coats, and cashmere jumpers in soft browns and greens. It’s the hygge high life.
Matsson’s people meeting the Roy team is, as you can imagine, a real treat. Matsson’s team are indeed insanely young, beautiful, and aloof in a steely but friendly way that the Americans can’t read. Matsson isn’t there yet, obviously. When he does eventually turn up, he’s wearing a hooded rain jacket with the hood up. Why did you bring all your cronies? He says. Couldn’t you come here on your own? There’s a moment of extreme awkwardness, but then he says he’s just joking. Wow, hilarious. A brilliant comic.
The kids are being the kids
It’s straight onto the deal, as Matsson isn’t here to mess around. He wants to talk, but just to Kendall and Roman. He launches straight into it: he wants to go ahead with the deal, but he wants ATN too. He’ll pay 187 per share, 50/50 cash/stock. Kendall and Roman said on the way to Norway that anything over 146/147 was a deal they’d accept, so really, it’s an amazing offer. It’s now all about whether they are willing to sell ATN, their dad’s baby.
There is lots of light argy-bargy and taunting between Waystar Royco’s team and Matsson’s team in the lulls between the main discussions about the deal as everyone stands outside, drinking from flasks, discussing global politics (Matsson asks Tom what he thinks will happen to France, with everything that’s happening there – Tom says that America doesn’t give a crap about France. They have their own Paris, he says, and if it burns down, they’ll build another one).
There are also several woodland meetings, some between Shiv, Kendall and Roman, some between just the two boys. At the first, they’re still talking about Logan’s deal. The brothers don’t want to sell ATN; Shiv thinks it’s a toxic asset – “Let’s keep one of his old sweaters,” she says, “Less racist.”
But then – shock (or maybe, it isn’t actually a shock at all) – in one of these clandestine chats, when Shiv isn’t present, Kendall suddenly says he wants out of the deal completely. He says to Roman that he’s enjoying running Waystar Royco, and that he doesn’t think Matsson understands the business and will break up their dad’s legacy into small parts and end up destroying it. (This is indeed Matsson’s plan, he tells the Roys during the retreat that he “sees a way back” with ATN. They say to his face that they’re concerned about his fit and his vision.)
Well, Roman doesn’t take much persuading. He agrees with Kendall. They decide to tank the deal but they have to be clever about how they go about it so the board don’t get a whiff of their plan and vote against them. They also want Waystar Royco’s stock to stay high (it’s gone back up by ten per cent since that awful 20 per cent drop after the news of Logan’s death went public). How will they navigate this?
A revelation
Shiv and Matsson end up in one of the glass rooms together in the evening. “I get into things and then I don’t have very good boundaries,” he says. It’s intimate and you can’t tell if something romantic is going to happen – there’s that sharpness in the air – but it doesn’t.
Instead, Matsson, who is drinking something strong, and sniffing something white, asks Shiv what she thinks of Ebba, one of his cronies, whose role is the equivalent of Karolina’s in his company. Shiv says she doesn’t know. Matsson says Ebba “won’t let him in”.
He then tells a mad story about how he has got himself “in a pickle” because he was dating this girl, and they had a “nasty friendly joke about what [he] shouldn’t do”, and, well, he ended up sending half a litre of his blood to this girl as a frozen brick. And then he sent another and then another and then another, and another. And well, the girl is Ebba.
Oh, says Shiv. Matsson says he’ll just deny it, right? Call bull***t and just “lawyer it out”. Shiv says that might be difficult given just how much of Matsson’s blood Ebba now has. Deniability will be tricky what with, you know, DNA.
Shiv says that her people will be able to help Matsson, and tells him not to fire Ebba. It’s important that this news doesn’t get out, as once the deal goes through and the American media starts researching Matsson, this sort of thing will make him out to be a total weirdo (erm...) and it could make the stock price drop.
Shiv keeps the information to herself for the rest of the episode. That feels like a bargaining brick.
And a fight on a mountain
Just before the final deal discussion, which is taking place between Kendall, Matsson and Roman on the top of a mountain, Connor sends Roman a picture of Logan’s body. It’s because he’s organising what his father should be wearing in his casket while everyone else is in Norway, and Marcia has turned up and is trying to get Logan to wear a kilt. After Connor called his siblings they said that he can send them a picture of the final look if he wants.
But the photo is sent at the absolute worst time, literally minutes before the final meet. It really affects Roman – Kendall chooses not to see it – just as he needs to be his least emotional and most level-headed. And so he’s not.
When (it seems at least) Kendall is out of earshot, Roman flies into a rage. He tells Matsson that he hates him, that he’s furious at Matsson for not even giving them a week to deal with their dad’s death, and that he will never, ever let Matsson, ever, buy Waystar Royco or ATN. Roman says he knows he shouldn’t be so brazen about it, and perhaps everything he’s saying is just a negotiation tactic, but also it’s not. But it could be. But it’s not.
Moments later Kendall is back. The final discussion seems to be over and everything remains unresolved. Matsson looks bothered. Later Roman and Kendall are talking. “It wasn’t the plan, but maybe it plays,” says Kendall. “If a deal collapses in a wood and no one hears it, is it an SEC violation?” says Roman.
They’re on the plane home when Matsson calls. He increases his offer to an insane 192. Everyone in the Waystar Rocyco team believe that Roman and Kendall have actually been master negotiators – Gerri, Karl and Frank in particular are dead impressed. But of course, the Roy boys weren’t playing hardball at all.
Matsson texts Shiv and asks her to send him a picture of Kendall and Roman’s faces when they hear the news of the increased offer and she does when they’re not paying attention. They look glum, to say the least. And Matsson, it seems, is getting off on crushing their spirits.
Final thoughts
Another brilliant episode, and all the better for having so much of the very strange, absolutely hilarious Matsson in it, who is perfectly played by Alexander Skarsgård.
Fascinatingly, episode five really doesn’t move things along that much, other than set up yet another storyline: now the games have begun between Matsson and the young CEOS. Matsson will keep increasing the price of the buyout, and Roman and Kendall, who will find it increasingly difficult to decline the deal, will have to find ways to scupper it without their team, the board, the shareholders or journalists, getting wise.
Meanwhile, Shiv, who is still keeping Matsson’s bizarre secret to herself, is texting the Swede. This could now go in a million directions and we’re thrilled about it.
