Succession season 4, episode 3 recap: Logan Roy dies, and the battle begins

Note: This article accommodates spoilers for a number of Succession episodes, notably season 4, episode three, “Connor’s Wedding.”

Logan Roy is lifeless.

Succession is a present that’s at all times taken enjoyment of throwing out treacherous twists and turns, and in some sense, we knew this one was coming: By the top of this season, Logan would in some way abdicate his energy. Still, for his dying to return so swiftly, and in a frenetically paced third episode of the season, is a punch to the intestine. It’s Succession’s Red Wedding.

But that is Connor’s Wedding, and the present has killed off its central character offscreen, leaving his youngsters misplaced at sea. How might the present say goodbye to Logan (Brian Cox) with so little fanfare? But the anticlimax is what compounds the tragedy, and it serves as a closing reminder of who Logan was — an unsentimental, unpredictable curmudgeon who lived by an inscrutable code, who as soon as instructed his son Kendall (Jeremy Strong) that life wasn’t knights on horseback however a quantity on a bit of paper, a struggle for a knife within the mud.

The information comes as the remainder of the Roy household embark on the yacht the place Connor (Alan Ruck) is getting married (with Jamie Chung making a cameo as the marriage facilitator). As regular, the Roys are distracted by numerous numbers on numerous items of paper. But it wouldn’t be a Roy marriage ceremony with out excessive drama; at Shiv’s (Sarah Snook) marriage ceremony, Kendall unintentionally kills a younger cater-waiter. At their mom Caroline’s (Harriet Walter) marriage ceremony, Logan pulls out a reverse Uno card when his youngsters try to betray him. And now, the central tormentor of the Roy progeny has gone and left them ceaselessly.

Shiv, Kendall, and Roman (Kieran Culkin) are all dressed, appropriately sufficient, in black, and making an attempt to not roll their eyes on the festivities when the cellphone name comes. Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) first tries to name Shiv twice; she ignores him. He lastly will get a maintain of Roman, and he and Frank Vernon (Peter Friedman) attempt to relay via the static-ridden reception that Logan could be very sick. They’re on the personal jet to go to GoJo CEO Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgård) in Sweden, ostensibly to attempt to salvage the sale of Waystar to GoJo. There was discuss of Logan possibly making an attempt to make Connor’s marriage ceremony afterward, however Logan has collapsed within the lavatory. “They’re doing chest compressions,” Tom says.

Then viewers get a flash of somebody mendacity on the ground of the airplane. Tom experiences that Logan’s coronary heart has stopped and that he hasn’t been respiration for some time. It’s seemingly already too late, however they keep the pretense that he’s nonetheless hanging on. So, 1000’s of miles away, the youthful three Roy youngsters tearfully take activates the cellphone, making an attempt to convey in a handful of seconds a lifetime’s value of sincere emotions — that they love their father past reckoning, that they might have accomplished something for even a whisper of his respect. In their final phrases to Logan, the kids attempt to absolve him as a lot as they’ll; Roman — who hours earlier than had been cruelly tasked by Logan with informing Gerri (J. Smith-Cameron), Roman’s former ally, mentor, advisor (and object of his sexual curiosity) that she’s out at Waystar — tells him he was an excellent dad. On the opposite finish, there’s silence. Kendall tries to take cost of the scenario, calling his personal physician and making an attempt to pay money for the pilot, as if by taking decisive motion, he can change the result. But Frank tells Kendall gently, once more, that he’s most likely gone.

A protracted spell of disappointment, chaos, and panic passes earlier than anybody has the wherewithal to do not forget that Connor nonetheless hasn’t been instructed about his father’s dying. Poor Connor.

“He didn’t even like me,” Connor says after receiving the information. He amends the outburst by including that he by no means felt like he acquired an opportunity to make Logan proud.

Logan dies mainly alone, surrounded by none of his household. Roman, after the dialogue along with his dad on the finish of the final episode, has determined to not miss the marriage for the jaunt to Sweden. Instead of Logan’s household, a motley crew of hangers-on and opportunists encompass him in his closing moments: Tom, Waystar execs Frank and Karl Muller (David Rasche), Karolina Novotney (Dagmara Dominczyk), who heads the PR crew. They’re not grieving a lot as they’re merely surprised. Kerry (Zoe Winters) is in shock — Tom thinks she’s grinning like “she caught a foul ball at Yankee Stadium” — and in addition a nuisance to the remainder of the inside council, who instantly set their minds on who to contact first about Logan’s dying and drafting an announcement. There’s solely a lot time earlier than somebody notices that Logan Roy’s personal jet turned again round mid-flight and suspects that one thing has occurred.

Macall B. Polay/HBO

Back on the occasion yacht, the children don’t like that Karolina and Hugo’s first thought is a press launch (regardless that it’s their job), nevertheless it’s additionally deeply comprehensible. A public assertion makes the factor actual. In a single, prolonged scene that stretches for almost 30 demanding minutes, the household appears for any personal place at a packed marriage ceremony to plan their subsequent strikes. There’s a quick argument about whether or not Logan’s airplane ought to circle for a bit to purchase the household some extra time, earlier than everybody else finds out and the market reacts. But Karolina experiences that there are already reporters sniffing round. None of the children wish to take cost of claiming something to the general public, however in addition they don’t need anybody else to take the reins when it’s their father’s dying.

Denial comes first within the phases of grief, and it’s solely deepened right here by the truth that not one of the Roy siblings have seen their father. The Roy youngsters are particularly ill-equipped to face a guardian’s sudden demise, having spent a lifetime suppressing the expression of massive, uncooked emotions. Maybe part of them even thinks, given how prepared he has been to traumatize them, that that is simply his newest act of cruelty. Logan is simply in one other room, plotting his subsequent transfer.

Succession is inhabited by characters who imagine, on some degree, that they’re invincible and everlasting. That was very true of Logan, who constructed an ideal media empire from the bottom up and lives in a world the place actuality bends to his will. With a lot energy, why wouldn’t he be immortal, too? Early within the first season, as Logan lies unconscious within the hospital after a mind hemorrhage, Roman proclaims that chronologically, Logan is likely to be 80 years outdated, however “physically he’s, like, still in his 70s.”

Throughout the sequence, nonetheless, Succession reminds us that Logan Roy is a person whose energy, and well being, is in decline. When we first meet Logan, he’s stumbling out of sleep and pissing himself in the dead of night. By the top of the pilot, he has a mind hemorrhage. In season three, Logan faints from warmth exhaustion and in a later episode briefly turns into delirious as a result of a UTI, nearly main Waystar to catastrophe as a result of his impaired school. In Connor’s Wedding, he goes to the toilet and doesn’t come again out.

Yet Logan was a person who imagined he had many extra chapters to put in writing: He had simply given a fervent speech at ATN headquarters about constructing a greater, quicker, lighter, meaner, wilder media enterprise. Still, viewers have identified from the soar how this story ends. His youngsters, in fact, know, too, on an mental degree that Logan received’t be round ceaselessly, they usually like to remind each other when handy that he’s dropping his edge. At the identical time, does anybody ever actually grasp that their mother and father will die in the future?

The final epithet Logan hurled at his youngsters, at a personal karaoke room within the second episode of season 4, was that they had been “not serious people.” All that was on Shiv’s and Kendall’s minds was revenge, spitting some venom again on the man who had by no means made an apology in his life. The final thing Logan and Roman talked about was whether or not Roman was able to dispense with the farce of collaborating along with his siblings, however Roman was pissed off and noncommittal. Will Logan’s dying will lastly pressure them to turn into weightier individuals, with out his domineering presence bending them a method or one other, like reeds within the wind?

Logan’s airplane lands again within the US, and the boat returns to the harbor so the Roy youngsters can get off. But Connor goes via along with his marriage ceremony to Willa (Justine Lupe). He admits his worry, rising to the floor even amid his grief: If they don’t get married right now, will Willa run away for good? She’s completely happy, she tells Connor, for now, no less than. Meanwhile, his siblings rush to the airport as Logan’s physique is carried out on a stretcher. The press are already swarming the place, and Shiv offers a quick assertion. She’s shaky, crying, and clearly bereft. “Logan Roy built a great American family company,” Shiv tells the media. “This nation has lost a passionate champion and an American titan. And we lost a beloved father.” She additionally assures the reporters that she and her brothers intend to shepherd Waystar via its future.

Tom hugs her, and he or she leans into it at first earlier than strolling away dismissively. Only Roman, who spends a lot of the episode insisting Logan might not truly be lifeless, appears on the physique. Kendall can’t appear to bear the thought. But that, too, occurs offscreen, and it maintains the sliver of doubt about whether or not this large of a person is actually gone.

In an illuminating episode from season two, the Roy household travels to Logan’s native Scotland, the place a brand new plaque will commemorate the 5 many years since he based Waystar. The setting supplies an opportunity for everybody round him to reminisce, however Logan is surprisingly indifferent. “The future is real,” he tells Shiv. “But the past? It’s all made up.” Over the previous three seasons, we’ve seen the worry and awe Logan can command; we’ve seen how crafty he might be, how merciless and petty. But what do we actually learn about Logan? He was born within the city of Dundee, Scotland, he got here to the US with nothing and constructed a kingdom that he has dominated over with an iron fist. Everything else about him is a blur.

He’s a person that the viewers, and his youngsters, by no means actually knew. Yet there’s one temporary scene in season one the place Logan emerges from a pool, revealing a again striped with offended outdated scars — lashings he should have obtained as a boy. With his sudden dying, Logan ensures that he won’t ever not be an enigma. As the present’s nostalgic opening credit have proven us all these years, he’s the person whose face we by no means actually see, strolling off into the gap.

“I fucking win,” Logan instructed his youngsters on the finish of the final season, once they misplaced the struggle to cease him from promoting the household empire. In his abrupt and banal dying, Logan has pulled off the final word victory, one which has no counter. His youngsters won’t ever get the acknowledgment and love they so keenly yearned for; there might be no actual closure now, no satisfying conclusion, even for the one who finally takes the crown.

Already, you’ll be able to see the potential for brand spanking new alliances being fashioned whereas the outdated ones disintegrate. With Logan gone, the remainder of the season will inevitably be concerning the yawning vacuum of energy he has left behind — or, as subsequent week’s trailer reveals Shiv referring to it, “the coronation demolition derby.”

“This is a show about succession,” present creator Jesse Armstrong instructed the New Yorker in February. “I’ve never thought this could go on forever.”

It signifies that Tom and Greg’s defection in season three was for naught — all they’ve managed to do is piss off the Roy heirs. Will Tom attempt to sidle as much as Shiv once more? Who will Greg cling to now? Meanwhile, Gerri avoids the ax, because of Logan’s dying. It’s mainly a given, although, that the camaraderie between Kendall, Shiv, and Roman will bitter. It was a tenuous union to start with, because of Logan’s lifelong behavior of pitting them in opposition to each other.

What will the final episode of Succession be known as? Every season finale thus far has taken its title from a line in John Berryman’s “Dream Song 29,” a poem about grief endless. It begins with these strains: “There sat down, once, a thing on Henry’s heart / so heavy, if he had a hundred years / & more, & weeping, sleepless, in all them time / Henry could not make good.”