A Farewell to a King
I can now proudly present to you the recap for Succession S4 E3, “Connor’s Wedding”, the episode that shocked everyone into silence.
This week’s guest writer is the one and only titan of writing, my friend Eli Campbell.
Take it away, Eli!
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I have words for the creators of Succession. Ones like “sneak” and “traitor” and “you band of unparallelled geniuses.” Preferably accompanied by an accusatory finger wag. “Connor’s Wedding” seemed to be about everything except Connor’s wedding, and I still haven’t recovered.
We begin with the promise of customary Roy Nuptial Shenanigans. In two separate plush company cars, Logan’s got a worm in Roman’s ear. He’s letting Gerri go, would Roman be a dear and break the news? Oh, and now that he’s on his way to talk to Mattson, he won’t make it to the wedding (Connor’s wedding, his son’s wedding), could Roman pass along the info?
With what I’m sure takes a massive amount of courage, Roman pushes back ever so slightly. But he’s been second-best for too long, trapped in a kennel of his family’s making, and no match for the bloody steak of approval Logan is dangling in front of the bars. He just needs to prove what he’ll kill for it.
But look! It’s Connor’s wedding! There’s a yacht and a band in pinstripe suits and more American flags than a public elementary school!
Greg’s on the phone, desperately interrogating the only person in New York who will acknowledge his existence (Tom, it’s always been Tom). But even his mentor-turned-friend-turned-Roman-emperor is shunning him. Looks like there’s no room on the Sweden plane for those who tell their uncles’ girlfriends they don’t have the arms for TV, and now Logan finds Greg “visually aggravating.”
Willa has a moment with her mom, who, despite being closer in age to Connor than her daughter is, seems happy to see them married. “He’ll look after you,” she says. And maybe that’s enough.
Logan boards the plane with his usual team of gnats, and together they prepare for battle. A deal with Mattson, knifing Gerri, a move on Cyd. “Clean out the stalls. Strategic refocus. A bit more fucking aggressive.”
Back in the land of bridal Americana, Roman looks five seconds away from jumping off the boat. He dodges Shiv, grows restless after a check-in call from Tom, and eventually sidles up to Gerri like it’s the last thing he’ll ever do.
(I would be remiss if I did not mention how stunning Gerri looks. The pearls, the hat, the general J. Smith Cameron of it all. Just, you know, for your mental image moving forward.)
Immediately Gerri can tell something’s off, a testament to her cunning and to how intimately she knows Roman’s particular brand of emotional ineptitude. Roman tries to schedule their “talk” for later, but it doesn’t take long for the truth to come out, an ugly thing with its belly exposed at their feet, and Gerri cuts off whatever frail attempt at comfort Roman is offering. “I’m good. This is fine. This is nothing at all. Thank you for the consideration.” And because Gerri is the sort of person who can name betrayal by vanquishing it from existence, that’s the end of that.
Meanwhile, there’s something wrong with the wedding cake, or so Connor claims, and you know he’s going to make it everyone’s problem.
Roman’s done his job, he’s knifed the beast, but it turns out there is no victorious aftermath. Instead, he grips the edge of the yacht and leaves his father a voicemail that seems much more honest than he’s ever been, saying, “Uh, I’m not totally okay with…Are you kinda just being shitty with me? Cause your son is getting married, and you can’t fucking keep expecting me to bend over for you, like being cunty. So I’m just asking. So uh, yeah. That’s the question. Are you a cunt?”
It is a moment of incredible strength. Roman’s there in the spotlight of his father’s gaze, having already gotten through the worst of this biblical test of loyalty, and he essentially throws it all away to soothe the open wound of having done it. After three seasons of Roman being the most timid among the three (okay, four) siblings, this is a shift we should pay attention to.
When Roman rejoins Kendall and Willa, she mentions Connor’s strange fixation on the cake, and we get a little insight into yet another Roy absurdity. Apparently, after Logan got Connor’s mom sent to a mental institution, Connor was fed Victoria Sponge for a week straight just to distract him from the trauma. And suddenly I’m empathetic towards a middle-aged man yelling about dessert.
Once the siblings (the main siblings, the continental siblings to Connor’s Alaska) realize their brother doesn’t know Logan won’t be in attendance, they essentially draw straws to see who has to tell him. Shiv is the unlucky winner and, subtly dodging calls from Tom, heads off to break the news.
She really shouldn’t have ignored those calls, though. Tom tries Roman next and, despite being greeted with an elegant “Fucky Sucky Brigade, how can I help you?”, catapults us onto a roller coaster that we are not allowed to get off.
Tom explains that Logan is very sick, that he was short of breath and went into the bathroom, then didn’t come out. They’re doing chest compressions. They’re not sure if he’s breathing. Tom’s going to put the phone to Logan’s ear so that the kids can talk to him. You know, in case. In case the unthinkable.
Roman shifts immediately, alert and overwhelmed. Kendall tries to snatch little morsels of control wherever he can. One after the other, we see them grasp at things to say. But these people have never had an emotional vocabulary and they don’t magically obtain one in the face of their father’s looming death, so we get, “You’re going to be okay. Because you’re a monster. And you’re gonna win,” from Roman, and “I can’t forgive you. But uh. It’s okay. And I love you,” from Kendall.
In a daze, Ken goes to find Shiv, who makes it back to their private room only to hear that Logan is dead. Or they think he’s dead, they can’t be sure, but it seems that way. And how sure can they really be, thousands of feet in the air on a private jet?
While I’d love to recount every moment of visceral horror that follows this realization, part of this episode’s genius is its truthful, unflinching mirror it holds up to unexpected loss. The siblings move in and out of shock, disbelief, anger, and hurt. Logan might be dead, he’s definitely dead, he might have a shot, they’re giving up on chest compressions. We float in and out of states of being, disoriented, not knowing where we are in plot or grief, and the kids are not there to guide us through it but drag us back down.
We get Connor’s devastating response to the news, “He never liked me.” We get the rapid yet careful figuring out logistics. The plane will turn around, Karolina is drafting a statement. Should it be the kids who draft the statement? No one really knows.
We get Tom on the phone with Greg, taking a break from his role as gentle attendant to the grief-stricken kids. He tells Greg to delete a file off his computer, to stick to Cyd, and “sing his song” when the time comes. “What’s at the bottom of your stocking, Greg? An old dude who fucking hated you.” But even his usual methods of keeping Greg’s leash taught are weak and glaring, and Tom’s voice is choked with tears as he admits, “I’m not okay. I’m not okay.”
And of course, even in the face of all this grief, there’s the company to think about. That massive, looming, monster that no one can afford to (or, more accurately, is willing to) stop feeding. Shiv floats the idea that they keep the plane aloft longer than necessary so they have more time to think, Roman vehemently opposes.
Kendall says, “Look, this is very surreal. And uh…just to say. Every single thing we say and do today is going in the memoirs, going in the fucking congressional record. It’s coming up at board meetings. It’s going in SEC filings.” As if they didn’t have enough to worry about. But it’s true. You can’t become a person against the backdrop of a multi-billion dollar corporation without putting your own tragedies on its chessboard. And worse, they know Logan wouldn’t have wanted it any different.
Connor and Willa try to decide whether to go through with the wedding. Connor seems ready to cancel, but it doesn’t take long for him to realize that if they don’t go through with it now, it’s never going to happen. Willa, content enough to nestle into Connor’s security, always has one eye on the door. We’ve seen her inching towards it more and more as the wedding drew closer, especially during her little adventure at the rehearsal dinner. Despite appearances, Connor isn’t totally oblivious. And he’s willing to take what he can get, when he can get it.
In yet another display of uncharacteristic honesty, Roman implores Gerri for comfort. But Gerri hasn’t forgotten what Roman did — Logan’s death is not the Get Out of Jail Free card Roman believes it to be, hopes it to be — and she leaves him to suffer alone.
The kids make it off the yacht and onto the landing pad where Logan’s body is being lifted from the helicopter. There’s a brief press conference that Shiv handles, a scattering of the siblings as they navigate seeing Logan’s body with varying degrees of emotional availability.
Tom allows Shiv to curl into him, then joins her in the car home, his eyes never leaving her grief-stricken face. Something tells me that tragedy may be the sticky thing that clings to the broken pieces of their relationship.
As Connor and Willa exchange rings to an audience of three, empty chairs much louder than the filled, we spend time with each of the siblings. They are silent, alone, lost in the aftermath of a man who ruined and rebuilt them time and time again. What’s left? What are they made of, if not his wayward love and the splinters that came from it? And what does it mean that, after all of that carving and filling, he is still the most terrifying thing to lose?
I don’t think the Internet (yes, the Internet being a monolith) is hyperbolic in calling this one of the greatest episodes of TV ever written. It was intense and scathing, but more than that, it was honest. If anyone figures out how they did that, let me know.
Anyway, ding dong, the witch is dead. Now we wait for the munchkins to tear everything apart.
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One thing that I, Rob, left out of my pre-review is how glad I am that the Succession team did not give us a three-episode deathbed arc for Logan where he can give a disquisition on his take on the meaning of life.
But no one really gets that! Death is ignoble. Sometimes you have a heart attack on the toilet in your private jet. Thank you for the chaos, Mr. Roy.
What a barn burner!!! See you next week <3 .
