I don't know when but sometime he decided not to try anymore
and it was a terrible shame
Godspeed my brother
and God bless
Of all the characters in Succession, Logan Roy is undoubtedly the most brutal. He is abusive,
manipulative, and coarse, and while he isn’t bereft of love, he is incapable of communicating
it through affection and instead uses a cruel meritocracy as his method. Throughout the story,
he is portrayed as layered, complex and nuanced, but there are no holds barred in communicating
just how awful of a person he is. And there are bits of pretty substantial subtext across the
seasons to help communicate to the audience why he is the way he is, but it was a key element in
the penultimate episode of the series, Church and State, that helped reveal a layer that was
always there, yet never palpable. Something that had been hinted at throughout the series,
but never dwelt upon, that helps us piece the picture together more accurately than ever before.
—
To Rose!
/// Or Ewan saying that Rose was not his fault/logan saying hes not interested
—
With the information used to sabotage an oblivious Rhea in this moment,
and through Ewan’s attempts at comforting Logan, it’s clear that it was common knowledge to all
that the topic of Logan’s sister Rose was a sore subject to say the least, and that he
blamed himself to some extent for her fate. But none of the specifics were given by any involved,
and it seemed to be some sort of unsaid secret. It’s the sort of thing that I personally made note
of at the time, but it faded into the back of my mind and I hadn’t really thought overly much about
it for a while. That is, until it was explicitly brought up again by Ewan during Church and State
at Logan’s funeral. And the specifics connected his character in ways we never could’ve imagined.
—
Ewan’s speech. He gave her polio. 4x9
—
Regardless of whether or not it was reality, Logan thought and was encouraged to think
that it was his fault that his beloved sister died. And the truth of the matter isn’t really
relevant - whether she did or didn’t catch it from him does not matter. What does is that he
thought she did. And so from then on, it became the truth, his truth. And this was what taught
Logan to stop trying to search for more in life - to settle and become a man that inspired this
meagerness in others. We can infer that this is what caused him to generally lose hope and heart
and optimism in life after Rose succumbed to the disease that he believed was his doing. And so the
implication here, combined with the fact that his brother ended up significantly different,
but states that that was not always so, leads us to one conclusion - that while Logan’s upbringing
was rough to say the least, he did still have the capacity to love more wholly. He
had the capacity to see the world and others with more than gray cynicism. That is - until
he lost himself in grief, self-hatred and shame and froze himself off from others as a defense
mechanism in order to protect himself. There is an ironic vulnerability here that adds this
human softness to a man who otherwise seemed so tough and unyielding, and it is appropriate that
it comes out in this very matter-of-fact, almost mundane way - as tends to be the case at funerals.
It very much seems as though he did this in defense. Obviously there are key strategic
elements to being Logan Roy, and his successes speak for themselves, but all the way back when,
he became who he became in order to avoid pain and protect himself, and he stopped trying because it
was the easy way out, at least according to Ewan. He did this in order to prevent himself from
feeling, likely because feeling only ever lead him into heartache. And he could have persisted
through his guilt, and he likely would’ve been rewarded for it with loving relationships with
his lovers and children. But that would’ve required him to keep trying. While it is
strange to think of Logan Roy as someone who was vulnerable, someone who stopped trying and gave
up - Ewan’s words here help us see why he was as much of a scared man who wanted to reach out
to his children but had taught himself not to, as he was the ruthless tyrant we know him as.
And that puts into perspective the weight in his attempts to bring his
family together at the beginning of season 4. He undoubtedly cared and wanted more love,
but he had conditioned himself to be the worst possible person suited to getting it.
—
Jesse Armstrong - it’s key to him. Behind the episode S4E9
—
As stated by showrunner Jesse Armstrong, this isn’t an element that fundamentally
recontextualizes the entire character of Logan Roy, but it does offer insight and an extra layer,
and it does give some of his more somber, sensitive scenes a bit more
context and weight. His generation, and most specifically, him and his brother,
grew up hardened. Rougher and colder than anyone could know, challenged by the world in ways that
would push them to their absolute limits. But while Ewan at least tried to maintain a moral
core and a sense of decency, regardless of whether or not he succeeded on every level he attempted,
Logan gave up. He gave up and stopped trying to have faith in his ability to be decent,
and in the world and his place in it. He was still capable of love,
and he is not lying when he tells his children that he deeply cares for them. But it’s a hateful,
manipulative and toxic love, one that conflates affection with brutality and abuse. He viewed the
world as cruel and maybe subconsciously thought that the only way in which he could properly show
his love for his children was through showing them how to be a killer so they could not let
the world destroy them like it had done him. But because he stopped trying, he was never properly
equipped with dealing with the world in a way that would help his children. And so all he ended
up doing was breaking them in fundamental levels. Maybe the poison drips through.
But this isn’t to say that Logan lived a life full of regret. Past a certain point,
I don’t believe that he would have changed the vast majority of how
he approached life. Because after those formative years, his trauma and pain had
fundamentally altered and chisseled him and the armor he wore became molded to his skin.
He embodied his damage, and became this magnificent, awful storm that only knew how
to live in one way. And while that awesome power of his is what will go down in history, I do still
think that that tiny bit of regret, of shame, of pain at Rose’s loss, of yearning for the affection
of his kids - I think that was still there. I think it’s plain as day during his final hours.
Tiny, but palpable. Yet all that will remain of him will be what he wanted others to know,
and all that he will inspire in others is.. this meagerness. This meagerness that brings forth all
the cowardly colours of life, and this meagerness that he would never have had if his sister had
just stayed healthy. His legacy will be carried on and his philosophies have shaped the world and
the direction it would go in the future, but that direction does not make for happy reading for all
of the reasons that Ewan described. A fitting and tragic tribute to the legend of Logan Roy.
Many thanks for watching.
and now people might want to tend and prune the memory of him to denigrate that Force
that magnificent awful force of him but my God I hope it's in me
he was comfortable with this world and he knew it he knew it and he liked it
and I say Amen to that