After Succession’s penultimate episode ever, the final showdown is coming into sight:
it’s Kendall versus Shiv for the crown,
while Roman completes his spectacular self-destructive fall.
A day after the US election,
the Roys prepare for Logan Roy’s funeral,
and the mood is straight out of a Shakespearean history play –
nearing the climax when the plotting villains fear
the tides of consequences coming for them
and just might be cracking under the pressure.
We open on the Roy siblings in ultra-high rises,
in these towers where they’re literally far above the rest of the population,
removed from the real-world consequences of their actions –
in this case, their choice to declare fascist,
Jeryd Mencken, president on ATN news before all the votes are counted,
thus giving Mencken’s claim legitimacy and potentially even making him the president.
It’s a truly Shakespearean level of villainy:
they’ve altered the course of history in a direction that –
given Mencken’s ideology and the documented violence of his supporters –
endangers people and is already creating scary conflicts around the country.
So, like in history plays like Richard III or Macbeth
where an ambitious king seizes power through violence,
the Roys have installed a false king, and as a result,
the world is out of order, breeding chaos and unease.
Typically, the Roy siblings have been able to remain
fairly insulated in their towers, yet this time we feel the “world”
intruding on them more than ever,
as ATN news screens report on intense-looking clashes.
The isolation of these out-of-touch glass boxes in the sky
feels increasingly eerie; there’s a sense of vulnerability and danger.
And a palpable anxiety seizes the characters
as the Roys descend to street level for the funeral,
where the protests are right next to them.
When Ewan says of Logan,
"Sometime,he decided not to try anymore
and it was a terrible shame"
we see this same choice
reflected in Kendall who’s completely given up
trying to be a decent human being and is rapidly becoming
the worst version of his father.
As the battle lines are drawn, it’s looking like Kendall
is in the best position to be the heir apparent,
because he’s becoming ever more like his dad by the minute.
He’s driving his family away, making business decisions
that negatively impact his kids personally,
spending apparently no time with them, yet deciding to try to get custody
so he’ll get to “win” through his money and power –
again repeating his dad’s parenting playbook.
He’s lost his assistant Jess, who was evidently there for the other,
high-minded Kendall, and is mastering the tyrant's art
of building a team of obedient underlings that he owns.
"you'll be my dog, but the scraps from the table will be millions.
woof,woof"
He’s controlling his brother, Roman, by degrading and shaming him,
"That's because you f--ked it, you thought you were dad,
tried to dad it. Holy s--- dude.
Jesus f---ing christ man. But listen. Take it easy."
just as his father did to him and others.
"I hear you bend for him. What I what?
I hear you bend for him, and he f--ked you"
In his eulogy, the camera looks up at Kendall,
emphasizing how powerful he now appears to his audience.
His speech pushes aside Ewan’s moral concerns
and emphasizes instead his father’s power and life force instead,
riling up the crowd just as we saw Logan do on the ATN floor:
"You know he had a vitality, a force, I mean look at the lives and the livings
and the things that he made. And the money. the money.
Corpuscles of life gushing around this nation,
this world"
and earning the fascist’s admiration.
"that was perfect"
He seems to be completing his Henry IV Part 2 arc,
as we’ve discussed, darkly but successfully
turning into his dad.
But just as it seems like Kendall has it wrapped up by copying the Logan way,
Shiv makes a final play and gains the upper hand.
"look at her, in her f---ing pomp. she's f---ing glowing"
To a degree, this showdown
might feel like a clash between two different approaches
or ideologies –
Kendall’s Logan-like dark way versus Shiv’s potentially a little-more-enlightened way.
After all, she goes more honest in her eulogy,
speaking (importantly) to Logan’s woman problem
which has become ever more apparent the more we’ve seen of Waystar Royco.
"he was hard on women, you know, he couldn't fit a whole woman in his head"
And in the previous episode, Shiv seemed to actually care about
not throwing the country away to a fascist candidate who hadn’t won.
"I have a concern for the state of the republic and pluralism
and the future of this country and it is real"
Yet even then, it was in her personal interest to care
because she knew Mencken would block the deal with Matssen,
who's her ally.
And in this episode, when she has a chance
of winning Mencken’s favor to push through the Matssen deal
and become American CEO, she eagerly throws away her principles.
"my feelings are irrelevant. our audience loves Jeryd and
so I respect our audience"
It’s also striking how she reassures Matsson
that he doesn’t have to worry about her being distracted
by her coming baby because she’ll be a terrible mother.
"Who's gonna do what? 36 hours of maternity leave, emailing through her vanity cesarean.
Poor kid will never see her"
This makes it pretty clear that, despite her speech,
she still doesn’t really care about making a different work culture for women.
Like Kendall is explicitly choosing to expose his daughter to the racism
that Mencken is unleashing,
"You said that Daniel would win. Our daughter is not fine. Nothing is fine."
Shiv is more than willing to sacrifice her future child
in order to become CEO –
and they’re both following in Logan’s footsteps through that choice.
"The incas in time of terrible crisis would sacrifice a child to the sun"
In other ways, Shiv is acting more and more
like her mom.
As much as she hates and criticizes Caroline,
she tells Tom she’s adopting the same parenting plan
"Oh, I'm not gonna see it, I'm just gonna do the family way"
and though it may be a joke, there’s little evidence
that she has any other model in her head for how to mother.
Meanwhile, we see a different shade to Caroline in the weirdly touching moment
where she mends the rift between Logan’s wife Marcia,
and his girlfriend Carrie by showing them a window into the past.
"Sally Anne was my Carrie so to speak, so it's all water under the bridge now"
It’s a brief moment of beauty as all of Logan’s former wives
and girlfriends share the front row,
united in acknowledging what this difficult man
put them through.
"At least he won't grind his teeth tonight"
and in these scenes, we can see a connection
between Shiv’s and Caroline’s mix of strengths and weaknesses.
Caroline, like Shiv, is capable of brighter moments,
and she’s likewise insightful – she knows from a single glance
that her daughter is pregnant,
"Oh...um...are you okay?"
whereas Shiv’s brothers
who spend every day with her are blind-sided.
(What’s comical is that Shiv says
she plans to tell their mother that day– which is why she has to tell the guys–
but we can infer that this really means
Shiv knows her mother will be able to see it.)
Still, Caroline combines
this insightfulness with a callous self-centeredness,
reacting not with appropriate grandmotherly joy
but by saying “And you didn’t think to let me know?”
Again we see signs that this is the kind of mother
Shiv will likely be: obviously smart
and able to see her kid clearly, but ultimately unable or unwilling
to put the child’s concerns over her own.
She also seems to be successfully sidelining Tom,
bringing him back into the fold but getting him out of her way.
"Why don't you go back to the apartment for a couple hours, just you know, sleep"
The most important takeaway from all this is that Shiv is not determined
to be different from her family.
She, too, is about self-advancement
at all costs and she’s thrown her lot in with Mencken.
Roman, at the beginning,
doesn’t seem to feel the anxiety that’s plaguing others –
he’s way up high like a balloon, believing he’s pre-grieved
and set up for success thanks to his In with Mencken.
"you,me, we'll go far"
He’s acting like a cartoon villain who feels nothing about his decision
to screw the country and grossly trash-talks his sister
even during her pregnancy announcement.
"Is it mine?"
Yet, back on the ground and looking at his father’s casket,
under the pressure of having to follow his uncle’s truthful speech,
Roman –yet again – loses his nerve in the moment.
He’s reduced to that little kid who feels inadequate,
and after Kendall takes on the Logan role of shaming him
"you f--ked it, but it's alright"
and his embarrassment may be going viral,
"It's circulating. Oh thats not right."
the masochism in him takes over
as he provokes the crowd to trample him.
He’s gone literally from the highest point in the sky
to the lowest spot on the ground in a single episode –
yet it’s really the completion of the self-destruction
we’ve seen Roman going through all season.
He’s turned away from Gerri and the better angel in himself,
Roman thinks that by embracing his ego and surface sleazeball persona
he can bluster his way to power.
"Nothing f---ing matters dad's dead
and the country's just a big p---y waiting to get f--ked"
Yet this hasn’t worked because puffing himself up
and acting cruel doesn’t erase that other person in him –
the one who feels small and inadequate,
even more, so the more he fakes being the big man.
Sooner or later, however well we think we’ve killed ourselves off,
"nothing matters, ken"
our feelings return.
"I can't do this, I actually can't do this."
Logan’s brother Ewan gives an amazingly truthful eulogy
that finally delivers the answer
to Logan’s Citizen Kane-esque “Rosebud” mystery –
something we’ve seen hinted at before.
"and his sister rose"
Ewan sheds light on why Logan became so closed off –
after wartime trauma as a young kid,
he believed he killed his sister through bringing Polio home with him from school.
"he always believed he brought home the polio with him
which took her"
But this also isn’t any excuse – Ewan goes on to speak honestly
about what he believes Logan’s impact really was.
"He was a man who has now and then darkened the skies a little,closed men's hearts.
He was mean and he made but a mean estimation of the world
and he fed a certain kind of meagerness in men, perhaps he had to."
This meagerness of the billionaire is illustrated through the gaudy mausoleum
that no one really likes but that Logan got for a steal at 5 million,
"It was a dot-com pet supply guy who built it, I believe. What? But that guy decided against."
and which Shiv quips are: “cat food ozymandias”,
She’s referencing the Shelley poem
(also featured in Breaking Bad)
about how the hubris of history’s greats all comes to naught:
a fearsome ruler’s words “look on my works ye mighty and despair”
mean nothing after he’s dead, and likewise the scary Logan
is now forever declawed.
"Intrigued to see how he gets out of this one"
Kendall’s eulogy puts an appealing,
almost romantic spin on Logan,
and on brutish capitalism – he suggests that
the desire for money inspires people to push harder
and ultimately live more.
"the will to be, and to be seen, and to do. that magnificent awful force of him
but my god I hope it's in me. Because if we can't match his vim,
then god knows the future will be sluggish and grey."
Shiv likewise shares that she felt this irresistible sun-like force in her father.
"He kept us outside. He kept everyone outside,
when he let you in, when the sun shone, it was warm."
Yet Kendall’s words about money
inspiring the world to improve and empower
ultimately feel like dressing up the darker reality
we’re seeing push in on the Roys,
and the truths they might not be able to forever escape.
The Roys seem to assume that they’re still insulated
in their high-rises from any bigger threat of losing power, –
yet as they fight for the top job as usual, they may also be missing the bigger picture.
All the Roys have now placed their bets on Mencken.
But what if they’ve truly pushed the country too far this time and their false leader falls?
In the Shakespeare history plays about villainous kings
with ill-begotten crowns like Richard III or Macbeth,
the out-of-order world can’t last, and the great chain of being
has to be restored –
so maybe, at last, justice could be coming
for the whole Roy family.
There could even be a kind of mutual assured destruction in store,
where everyone gets wiped out besides a few random survivors.
"you're an addendum of miscellanous matters in pencil with a question mark"
Or if not, the ending
will likely drive home just how much the Roys
have to sacrifice and destroy their kingdom
in order to hang on to power.
The succession finale’s title is called “With Open Eyes,”
taken from a John Berryman Poem called Dream Song 29 –
the line goes
“Ghastly, with open eyes, he attends, blind.”
It has Oedipal echoes – fitting for this drama
that’s all about daddy issues and a son who’s striving to supplant his father.
But it’s also a reflection of how Kendall and the other siblings
are both open-eyed about what they’re doing
and blind to so much of what their existence represents and accomplishes in the world.
In Episode 8, Kendall’s last line
drives home that he’s willing to throw the country under a bus
just so he can win a measly deal.
"Some people just can't cut a deal, Fikret"
They’re increasingly being confronted with this mirror of the damage they inflict,
yet they continue to ignore this as they pursue power.
Watching this season’s reminders of exactly who the Roys really are
and where they fit into our world, it’s hard for us to be rooting for any of them
to come out on top.
The question now is less who’s gonna win, as much as how much everyone loses
when this is the leadership the world is subjected to.