Succession Series Finale-Recap: Kendall’s Ultimate Failure, Shiv’s Defeat, and a Man Who Will Always Lose
The point was not who was going to win. The point was always that these people would inevitably destroy themselves in the battle, which they did. The finales feel unexpected, like they were always going to happen, and you wouldn’t have thought of them. I think this passes that test.
It’s exactly the right finale for this show, I think. Kendall’s ultimate failure seems like it has been inevitable. Men whose treatment of women goes unquestioned has been the focus of this season. So it makes perfect sense that Siobhan’s eventual realization that if you are in a man’s world, you might as well pick the man you can most easily work with was the realization that kept Kendall from the throne. Kendall told Shiv once, with quivering lip, that it would never be him, and he was right.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1178689904/succession-series-finale-recap
The Rise and Fall of Tom, Kieran Culkin, and the Real Bloodline: A Tale of Three Laughtaflops and Six Faces
Tom has a superior knowledge of the world because he was not raised in it. Tom understands how these people think about power, because he had to learn that in order to survive. He didn’t have any advantages other than his malleability. He is the closest thing this world has to a scrapper, despite the fact that his biggest worry about prison was forgetting to burp the toilet wine. When there are no principles and there is no loyalty, there is only humiliating yourself in whatever way you must — playing boar on the floor, sitting calmly while a sexist devalues your wife — to obtain, or to keep, your position. And in the end, perhaps you too will end up as a figurehead, elevated by someone with no faith in you, who may well grow even more grotesquely rich while gaining not an additional ounce of respect from anyone.
The leader at the end of the series wasn’t a result of a genius move or a crazy chess move. Tom gained the leadership position by being a reliable suck-up who never thought about anything except following the power wherever it led. He has no principles, he has no particular skills — but because he also has no pride, he has always been willing to be a literal yes man. Yes I will betray my wife, yes I will go to prison for you, yes I will accept this position you’re offering me specifically because you know I will not bring anything to it. I will keep your backstabbing from my family, and I will take advantage of it even though you are offensive and sexist. Yes, yes, yes.
There is a good argument that if I was to pick only one of the three leads this season, it would be Kieran Culkin because he has slipped so easily between sympathetic moments like the funeral and horrible ones like his behavior on election night. That ugly side of Roman surfaced again when he decided to tell Kendall that Shiv is the real bloodline and Kendall’s kids are fake — or at least that’s what Logan used to say. This, unsurprisingly, provokes the physical fight that gives Shiv enough space to get out of the room and cast her vote to let the company go to Matsson.
They had a very nice moment remembering their father, when they watched him have a dinner party with friends, and then they went over to divide up his possessions. Truly, Kendall was as happy in this middle section as we’ve ever seen him. It couldn’t possibly last.
He got agonizingly close. Seeing Jeremy Strong playing the confident, smooth side of Kendall in the first part of the board meeting was so painful, because it seemed entirely too easy. It couldn’t be that easy. Kendall saw trouble potentially brewing with Roman and fathered him, embraced him, comforted him to try to make it okay. He even brought his one loyal friend Stewy back into the fold to support him — to be “Team Ken.”
In a sense, the story of Succession has always been Kendall taking over for his father. In the early going, this was literal; it meant taking over as CEO of Waystar Royco. It always seemed like the point was the yes or no question: Would Kendall take over?
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1178689904/succession-series-finale-recap
The fate of the car crash that killed a 19-year-old boy: A relationship between Tom and Shiv and the fate of her marriage to Tom and Marksson
When Tom and Shiv are in their car together, she doesn’t hold it, but she lays her hand on him. It seems like they will find a way back to a marriage that will allow them to once again return to Waystar. Shiv is a woman who has had limited choices her entire life. Her father offered her the top job and took it back. Her brothers didn’t like her. Her husband doesn’t even think she should have children, because she’s incapable of love. She made her choices. She will live with them.
The car crash at the end of the first season, in which Kendall drove while high and wound up killing a young waiter at Shiv’s wedding, had been lying dormant all season since the fateful scene in Tuscany after Caroline’s wedding, in which Kendall confessed to his siblings. They never said anything or poked him, even when he was getting very frank during parts of “America Decides.” So it seemed like maybe it would just never come up again. It had to come up again. It’s hard to believe she wouldn’t mention it if this was going to be a bitter battle between the two. And eventually, in the heat of the moment, she did.
There are many explanations for why Shiv went this way. She may have had a bad relationship with Tom, and she owed him something. Maybe she couldn’t get past the many things Kendall has done to her, from the time he played Nirvana’s “Rape Me” over the Waystar loudspeakers while she was speaking, to the fact that he and Roman spent this entire season cutting her out and pretending they weren’t doing it, to the fact that Kendall and Roman tried to hand the country to Jeryd Mencken. Maybe she believed she had a better chance of being part of the company through her husband than she did through her brother. Maybe at some level, she knew Kendall really wasn’t qualified.
Matsson’s alliance with Shiv fell apart, thanks to Greg sniffing around a meeting where Matsson revealed his actual choice for the new U.S. CEO: Tom. Kendall managed to get the siblings united in a plan to kill the GoJo deal and anoint him CEO, but when it came right down to it, Shiv chose not to go along. GoJo bought Waystar, Tom became CEO, and Kendall wandered aimlessly through New York while Roman had a drink.
What’s the big deal? Succession was about whether any of the Roy children could ignore the legacies of their parents and live happily ever after. The answer was no. Needy love sponges 4-ever!) But Shiv’s big move is what the show was about as a television event.
Who is she? In the final episode of the show, it was revealed that the youngest child and only daughter of the media mogul, played by Brian Cox, died in the third episode. She goes by “Shiv,” and if your first thought is, “Shiv, like the knife?” the answer is, “Yes, exactly like the knife.”
The Succession of Siobhan Roy’s Final Choice: Which HBO Has Really Been Better at Its Comedy-Like Kicks?
HBO’s Succession ended a four-season run on Sunday night. And Siobhan Roy’s final choice, which determined the fate of her father’s empire, exemplifies what the show has been best at, and what its devotees love about it.