Farewell, Roys.
And so we send our friends off.
What would could anyone want from a Succession series finale?
I think that, with “With Open Eyes”, Jesse Armstrong and the Succession team, all those crazy kids, gave us what we needed.
There is always immense pressure on a series finale to close the book once and for all, but there would never be a way to do that with a show as layered as Succession. Instead, we received the answer to the show’s ultimate dramatic question: who will permanently succeed Logan Roy as CEO of Waystar Royco?
And the answer was Tom Wambsgans. Yes, Tom, the load-swallowing (his own), wine-sniffing son of Twin Cities lawyers walked away with it. But, of course, it’s not as simple as that.
I could spend our time writing a detailed plot breakdown of the 88-minute mega-episode, but I think we’re all better served by a leisurely stroll.
After the turmoil of Logan’s funeral, a battered Roman wandered away through a crowd of antifa to post-grieve. As his siblings look to shore up their respective sides of the deal, one where Shiv is in charge under Matsson and the other with the Sons of Logan steering their father’s ship, it turns out that Roman has taken refuge at their mother’s house in Barbados.
Both Shiv and Kendall tear themselves away from their strategy sessions to confront their brother, ushering in an unlikely family reunion. There is nothing funnier to me than siblings taking two separate private jets to the same location. Folks, ya gotta coordinate!
When they arrive, Roman is standoffish, rejecting any interpretation of his situation as him hiding out. He just happens to be avoiding his siblings/sort of business partners and not answering his calls.
Speaking of not answering calls, Kendall spends the first act of this episode trying to get a response from his beloved Stewy. He finally makes contact as he arrives at Caroline’s house. Stewy is in.
The stakes of the Shiv-Ken-Rome standoff are built around the fact that Shiv will be Matsson’s CEO, no question. But, all of a sudden, we are back in New York with Matsson and Tom, hopping from gallery to bar to restaurant where, lo and behold, Matsson finally pops the question. He wants Tom to be his figurehead.
Tom, of course, squirms, since that’s what he does, unsure about how this will land with Shiv. But Matsson drops a bomb. Clear-eyed about Tom’s complex cuckoldry anxiety, he tells Tom that he feels a spark between him and Shiv, and that they would hook up if it weren’t for… uh… reasons.
That lights a fire under Tom’s ass, which sets Matsson’s final move in order. “Why don’t I get the guy who put the baby inside the baby lady instead of the baby lady”, Matsson muses. Without so much as a handshake, they’re in business and doing shots.
That’s when Kendall, who has been patiently listening to his stepfather Peter Munion’s new pyramid scheme, gets a call from Thee Gregory Hirsch. Greg takes it upon himself to leak the news of Tom taking over to his cousins, asking only for full familial recognition in return.
Kendall comes back to dinner and tells Shiv to clean up her side of the street. In a hilarious and terrifying moment, we hear Shiv scream “motherfucker” in the distance after checking in with Karolina, who has taken Shiv’s name off of the press release announcing the merger.
And then, in a split-second, things are back to how they once were. The siblings are a united front, striding together to box out Matsson. The only problem? The question of who will actually take over. Which is also known as succession. Like the show!
Logan told each of them at various points in their life that it was them. Kendall was told when he was seven, Roman was told just before Logan died, and Shiv was told at some point in season two. They all realize in that moment that Logan never really wanted it for anyone. He just wanted to lead for as long as possible, and they never should have trusted him.
After a glorious swim in the ocean, where Roman and Shiv joke about killing Kendall (accompanied by impressions), they decide to all rally around Kendall at the top, the exact configuration they had agreed upon at the beginning of the season before their pride got in the way!!!!!!!
They head in to the kitchen where, in a delightful view into the childhood they never truly had, Shiv and Roman make Kendall a “meal fit for a king”, blended up out of various disgusting items found in Caroline’s kitchen. He drinks the slop, and the scene ends with Roman dumping the full blender on Kendall’s head.
Now a united front, the siblings head back to New York (on one PJ), shoring up votes for their takeover on the way. Before the climactic vote, though, they have to stop by Logan’s (now Connor’s) house, where Connor has set up a convoluted “claim your favorite items of Dad’s” system. It involves stickers, and they get dibs before the “second tier bereaved” (cut to Kerry! good bit!).
Now that Connor has a diplomatic gig coming up, and Willa has “a play reading in six to eight months”, they are going to do long-distance. As long as Mencken comes through. But no bother! Connor has set up a virtual dinner with their dead father, consisting of a lovely cell phone video of Logan, Kerry, Connor, and Logan’s squad at dinner reciting poems and singing songs. It’s a tender moment, acted brilliantly by the siblings, where we truly see how warm the light under Logan could be.
Shiv and Tom run into each other here, and Tom spill his beans to Shiv. They have a bitter recrimination for the road, and she tells Tom that Greg gave them the information. The siblings head to the office, and Tom pulls Greg into the bathroom, to berate him and slap him around for leaking to his cousins.
There’s a moment where they might kiss, but it just isn’t meant to be.
Now, it’s board meeting time. Roman gets cold feet, and Kendall big-dogs him by LITERALLY pressing on the bruise on his head, splitting it back open and making it bleed. It seems like it’s all smooth sailing, with the vote six to six, until Shiv freezes and leaves the room.
And now, the showdown that we have been waiting for. A united front mere hours ago, the siblings’ alliance has frayed. Kendall truly loses his cool and berates his sister in a conference room, while assorted Waystar employees pretend not to watch. Shiv’s final determination? Kendall simply can’t do it. Despite him being “a cog made for only one machine”, she can’t stomach him or the thought of his leadership any longer. After all, he killed a guy.
Kendall, who claims he will die if he doesn’t get to be CEO, changes his tune, claiming that he never actually killed anyone, having fibbed to get his siblings on his side. Weird strategy! Roman and Shiv turn on Kendall one last time, feeling used. Roman runs to his sister’s side, as she has the “bloodline”.
According to Logan, it turns out, Kendall’s kids “don’t count”. Sophie was a “buy-in” and Iverson is “half-Rava and half filing-cabinet boy”. Kendall snaps, calling his brother a cuck (rich given the disclosure of Iverson’s parentage) and attempting to gouge his eyes out. He screams, “I am the eldest boy!” as a massive glob of spit flies from his mouth. He moves to beat Shiv up, too, but Roman gets her out of the room. As the storm subsides, Kendall attempts to strategize.
Roman decides, then and there, that the whole thing is “bullshit”, and lets sleeping dogs lie. Kendall rushes into the board room, where Frank tells him that he has lost the vote. Matsson has officially acquired Waystar and Tom is in charge. Kendall, despondent and quite literally suicidal
After Roman and Matsson sign the papers, Tom and Greg have a reunion of sorts. Tom, having stepped on Greg’s throat to get to his new position, initially ices him out, before placing one of Connor’s stickers on Greg’s forehead, indicating that he is still in Tom’s possession. Nero and Sporus! What good is a soul?
And finally, we wind down. Roman sits alone in a bar drinking a martini. Tom and Shiv ride to an after-party, barely holding hands, an uneasy detente. And finally, we see Kendall at golden hour, wandering through Battery Park, trailed by Colin, just as his father trudged through Central Park at the beginning of the season (old money versus new money!!!). He looks out at the horizon, towards the Statue of Liberty. He sits down on a park bench, gazing at the symbol of all symbols of the American Dream. His American Dream has been ripped from his hands.
And that’s it.
There are so many powerful visual metaphors and cultural references, which just underlines how brilliantly Succession’s writers hew to classical tragic structure. Kendall’s pride was his hamartia, a fatal flaw that leads to his downfall. Had he not rocked the boat and tried to get one over on his father at the beginning of the series, none of this would have happened.
But the same could be said for any of the siblings. Writer Sarah Jae Lieber astutely compared the finale’s imagery to Oedipus Rex on Twitter, and much has been made about Succession’s echoing of King Lear. We could talk about this endlessly, but the show left us with uneasiness for nearly all characters, simply because they didn’t trust the process that was amorphous for them all along.
Karl and Frank are losing their jobs, Karolina wants to get rid of Hugo, Gerri gets a payout, and the siblings are isolated from each other. Shiv may be standing by her man in order to pull some strings, as foreshadowed by the illustration of her with a Matsson marionette at the beginning of the episode. But will that pan out? Perhaps. I just hope that Tom and Shiv’s baby gets to go to art school and stay out of all of this nonsense.
It’s also worth noting that the episode’s title, “With Open Eyes”, is yet another phrase from John Berryman’s “Dream Song 29”, the source of the titles for the last three season finales. The poem depicts a man taking stock of “thing[s] he has in mind”, yet “with open eyes, he attends, blind”. Perhaps the siblings, particularly Kendall, have had the answers to the show’s central question, the one that has defined their adolescence (see the opening credits) and adulthood, right in front of them. But, again, their pride has kept them from seeing that they would never have power, since they never deserved it.
I am truly amazed, four seasons in the rearview, that Armstrong and the army of Succession writers have gotten us to feel bad for Kendall Roy, the worst boy-prince failson of them all. But that’s just good writing. Thank you playwrights and screenwriters!
It almost feels obvious to say this, but the acting in this episode was absolutely spectacular. Jeremy Strong, as usual, showed us the highs and lows of being Kendall Roy, Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen brilliantly portrayed Shiv and Tom’s uneasy détente, and Kieran Culkin’s vulnerability was an engine for “With Open Eyes”. Kudos to the supporting cast as well, from Arian Moayed’s gorgeous shitbag Stewy to David Rasche and Peter Friedman as Karl and Frank, the Statler and Waldorf of Waystar Royco. Even J. Smith Cameron, our beloved Gerri, and Zoë Winters as Kerry, who stayed mostly silent in this episode, indicated to us where we were going and what we should be watching.
For reading this recap for the last two seasons, supporting my writing, and sending me posts and memes to fuel my writing, I want to thank you, the reader. I may come back soon with a more macro piece of writing about Succession, but that remains to be seen.
I leave you with this:
Thank you for reading!
