Game of Thrones slaughtered countless beloved characters. And The Last of Us abandoned its protagonists entirely for almost an entire 80-minute episode. So why should Succession be any different? As the HBO drama proved last night, it’s just as willing to shock and awe as any other series to occupy that Sunday night slight.
Succession Season 4 Episode 3 did something completely new for the series. It’s something many fans thought would never actually happen, but will now affect every remaining moment of this final season. This twist may have come as a huge surprise, but if you knew where to look, the signs were there all along.
Warning! Major spoilers for Succession Season 4 Episode 3 ahead!
What happened in Succession Season 4 Episode 3
The most important event of Succession Episode 3, and arguably Season 4 and the series as a whole, doesn’t take place on screen. While the Roy kids are mingling at Connor’s wedding, Roman gets a panicked call from Tom, who is on a plane with Logan and his entourage heading to Sweden to talk with their potential buyer, Lucas Mattson. Logan has had some sort of medical event, and it’s not looking good.
Throughout the rest of the episode, Roman, Kendall, and Shiv try to come to terms with their father being ripped from them, while also grappling with cruder details like that huge sale, their companies stock price, and the all-important subtext of the official press release announcing that Logan Roy is dead.
The episode also works because it comes as such a huge surprise. After kicking off Succession with a medical emergency, Logan has mostly seemed like the pinnacle of good health. One episode earlier, he gave a rousing speech at the right-leaning cable network he owns that suggested he’d be around for many years. That’s why it’s so effective when, a day later, he’s lying on the floor of his private plane dead.
A Succession Easter egg hiding in plain sight
If you look closely at the promotional poster for Succession’s final season, the signs that Logan’s demise would happen in this way were there all along. The poster shows the Roy family outside a skyscraper, and if you look closely at the window reflection, you can see an airplane.
It may seem like a sparse connection to go from “there’s a plane in the poster” to Logan’s demise, but in the context of the entire show, it makes sense. Succession has always been about the looming grim reaper. It’s called Succession, after all. With Season 4 being the final season, it was bound to happen at some point. We just didn’t expect it so soon. But maybe we should have been looking harder.
