The day after Succession’s third episode of the season, I texted my friend that I was still so emotionally exhausted from the night before that I was feeling physically unwell. Turns out, I had an actual cold.
But it’s a testament to the power of “Connor’s Wedding” that I felt the effects of a literal fever and thought to myself, “this is because Logan Roy died.”
Yes, if you are reading this you presumably already know or were ready to discover that the Roy patriarch himself lives no longer, dying unexpectedly early into the final season of Succession. Maybe we should have suspected, given the sheer amount of blistering dialogue they packed into the first two episodes for Brian Cox to deliver, that the showrunners were making the most of a short time with the actor. But I was in disbelief until we actually saw the body.
So, how did it all go down?
It’s the day of Connor and Willa’s wedding, which I have been gleefully awaiting ever since their “fuck it, let’s do this” engagement. On his way to the nuptials, Roman gets a call from Logan — their shady alliance having been formed at the end of last week’s episode — who is off to Europe to see Mattson, the potential buyer of Waystar Royco. Logan gives Roman a truly diabolical loyalty test: tell Gerri she is getting fired. As Logan well knows (thanks to the unsolicited dick pic for the ages), Roman has a twisted sexual history with the company’s General Counsel. This cruel manipulation would be surprising, but again… this is Logan Roy we’re talking about. Nothing is beneath him.
Joining Logan on his private jet are Tom, Frank, Karl, Karolina, and of course Kerry. Notably absent? Greg, who isn’t invited because, as Tom shares, Logan finds him “visually aggravating right now.” I can’t wait to use this every day for the rest of my life whenever confronted with anyone/anything that mildly annoys me. Tom assures his assistant that he has an army of “greglets” helping him in the Roy cousin’s place, to which Greg replies, “Don’t turn me into a word, Tom. I’m a guy.” I’ve been losing any shred of sympathy I ever had for Greg pretty quickly this season, but the man still turns out a great line here and there.
Back on the wedding boat (because, yes, Connor chose to have his wedding start on a ferry), Roman finds Gerri. And Gerri looks hot! I say this both as an opinion (my own) and as a fact, because in her presence Roman immediately blubbers himself into revealing the secret of her impending termination. Gerri is understandably pissed off, and hisses what is now my favorite line in all of Succession: “I danced us through a fucking thunderstorm without us getting wet.” TELL HIM, GERRI. TELL THEM ALL.
Roman, for maybe the first time in his life, is really shaken up about having hurt another human being, and it is his love/lust/emotion for Gerri that finally inspires him to stand up to his father at last. He leaves him a long, hurt, angry voicemail that ends with him asking, “Are you a cunt?” Words that will soon come back to haunt him, no matter how deserved they were.
As he hangs up, Roman is “kidney-chopped” by Kendall, who’s in a real silly goofy mood. The two join their sister and her little messy bun on the ferry, where Willa informs them that Connor is having a meltdown about the cake — he doesn’t want to see the “internal qualities” of what he calls “loony cake.” This is how we find out that when Logan sent Connor’s mother to an institution, the eldest Roy brother basically sat around sadly eating sponge cake for a week while being neglected by his father. From last season’s trauma-inducing donuts to this, Succession seems hell-bent on ruining dessert for me.
Tom has been calling Shiv over and over, but she’s ignored him. She goes off to compassionately perform the role of “wedding grinch,” informing Connor that Logan is on a private jet and not coming to his wedding. That’s when Roman gets the call.
There’s really no way to fully capture in writing what Mark Mylod’s 30-minute sequence of the Roy children’s last goodbye to their father is able to achieve. From the death’s unexpected earliness in the season, to the frantic pacing, to the crackling phone calls and inability to see Logan’s body until many minutes into the scene, we’re thrown into the shock the Roys are experiencing in this moment. And for many who have gotten such a call in real life, the feelings from this episode were visceral.
Tom lets Kendall and Roman know that their dad is undergoing chest compressions and that it doesn’t look good — then offers to hold the phone to Logan’s ear so they can say their goodbyes (though it’s unclear if he’ll hear them).
Roman goes first, and says a lot of things — notably, trying to tell Logan he was a good dad, which… please. He does not say he loves his father, which later causes him to nearly break down. Eventually, it’s too much for him and he hands the phone to Kendall. Logan’s former “best boy” is able to get out an “I love you,” but his affection only goes so far. He tells his father, “I can’t forgive you.” Of all the Roy siblings, Kendall seems like the one who has truly absorbed and understood his father’s abusive ways (not to say he isn’t completely detached from reality in many, many other ways, but at least he has this).
Tom has been reminding the brothers to find Shiv — they may be separated, but he still cares. In a scene that felt in ways reminiscent of his re-entry to Shiv’s wedding after his vehicular manslaughter, Kendall scans the wedding ferry for his sister. Once he does — calling her, “Shivvy, honey” — she knows something is up immediately upon seeing his tear streaked face. And so begins Sarah Snook’s Emmy reel!
But seriously — I join the entire internet in saying hand this woman her award now. In the nearly unbroken shot that follows her from finding out, to absorbing the news — asking Tom, “Are you just being nice to me?” — all the way to the moment the phone is placed in her hand for her own goodbye, every choice Snook makes is heartbreaking. During my first watch I was in too much shock to fully register everything, but while rewatching I fully cried when she told Logan, “it’s okay.” To be clear — I’m not sad Logan has died. I’m not even that sympathetic towards the kids, who are all some of the worst people around. But in her performance as Shiv, Snook captured an emotion so painful that it was impossible not to feel for her.
Despite this being Connor’s wedding (and there being a giant photo of him and Willa on the wall), none of the Roy siblings have thought to tell their older brother until they see him mingling outside the door. Kendall and Shiv grab hands and walk out to inform him. After his defense of Logan at the karaoke bar the night before, Connor’s reaction to Shiv saying they think their dad is dead is all the more jarring: “Well, is he?” So much lingering resentment and disappointment in his father comes out in this moment. And Con-heads, we ride at dawn to secure Alan Ruck his Emmy for, “He never even liked me.”
Once the shock has settled, the action begins. Kendall starts taking charge in the most Kendall (read: incompetent) way possible, ordering his assistant Jess to get the best doctors in the world on the phone in two minutes. Very reasonable, Ken! He then calls Frank and tells him he needs to talk to the pilot (unclear what this is supposed to accomplish). Frank takes his frustration out on a door while tenderly telling Kendall, “He’s flying the plane, son.” I can’t decide if him handling Kendall with kid gloves is a moving way of showing him the fatherly love he never got, or is just another sign of how pathetically childish Kendall is.
Along with Frank, everyone on the plane is acting pretty according to character. Karl is pouring himself a drink, Karolina is already planning the company statement and contact list (so many people are going to find out before Marcia), and Kerry… well, Kerry is having an absolute bonkers, grinning meltdown — and is promptly crowned “Chuckles the Clown” by Karl, who is quickly becoming THE thrower of shade this season.
And then there’s Tom. I would love for Matthew Macfadyen to stop making me feel bad for Tom Wambsgans! He calls Greg to share the news and ask him a few shady favors, including deleting evidence of Cyd’s impending firing and making sure everyone knows he was with Logan in his final moments. But when Greg asks how he is, he starts crying, “I’m not okay. I’m sad… I lost my protector.” It’s true — Tom put all his (gr)eggs in Logan’s basket when he betrayed Shiv, Roman and Kendall. And he and his father-in-law always seemed to have a strange sort of mutual respect, likely due to Tom’s bungling attempts to stand up to the Roy patriarch. In Logan’s view, at least he tried!
When the Roy siblings get wind of the leadership team’s intentions to put out a statement, they immediately intervene — as Kendall points out with his trademark grandiosity: “Every single thing we say and do today is going in memoirs.” So they decide to draft their own statement that emphasizes their lack of estrangement from Logan (LOL) and then disembark the wedding ferry to head to the tarmac — though not before Gerri gives an emotionally distraught Roman a completely frozen shoulder. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of this fractured relationship in episodes to come.
As the plane lands, we get one of the most memorable shots of an episode full of memorable shots: Colin, Logan’s driver, muscle, and self-anointed “best pal,” is standing by his car, looking utterly without purpose. It’s such a short moment, but Scott Nicholson is able to convey such a sense of loss in those few seconds that I was shocked to feel such sympathy. Then I remembered how truly terrifying Colin is and I snapped out of it.
As Shiv prepares her speech, Roman and Kendall playfully bicker over who’s going to be worse off in their dad’s absence, showing affection in the only way the Roys know how (by being really mean). The siblings approach the press, and Shiv tearfully reads their prepared statement — then adds one off-the-cuff response about how they will remain involved in this moment of transition for the family company. After she shares a brief embrace with Tom, Shiv goes outside to join her two brothers in what I think can now safely be called The Iconic Hug of Succession. Once again, I must remind myself that while these people are evil, they are also fake, so it’s not terrible of me to feel for them!
Shiv leaves, Kendall watches from a distance, and it is only Roman who ventures into the plane to view his father’s body before he’s wrapped up and carried into the waiting ambulance.
But wait — there is another Roy sibling, and this was a wedding day after all! What about Connor and Willa? Earlier, Connor finally asked his bride if she’s marrying him for the money. She admits that the money is part of it, but shares that she is genuinely happy and won’t abandon him (yet). I kind of hate to say it, but I honestly love these two. Much like their “fuck it” engagement, the two decide to “fuck it” and get married with a handful of remaining guests — Connor being finally free of his father’s expectations and disappointment, he decides to just go for the thing he wants and enjoy his day in spite of it all. The shot of their first kiss against the Manhattan skyline? I’ll say it — the most romantic thing I’ve seen on TV in a while!
So there we have it: R.I.P. to the monstrous Logan Roy. He died as he lived: surrounded by people who fear him as he ignored his children in the pursuit of money and power. A fittingly pathetic end. He still has to be buried, though, and I can’t wait to see what Kendall envisioned when he said, “We’ll get a funeral off the rack, we can do Reagan’s with tweaks.” Until then, I’ll be playing Nicholas Britell’s devastating new variation on the Succession theme on repeat.
