Succession: Jesse Armstrong explains finale episode

Warning: do not read until you have watched the season finale of Succession.

Succession creator Jesse Armstrong has spoken about the outcome of the final episode, in a behind the scenes featurette, “Controlling the Narrative.”

“The idea of Tom being the eventual successor, that had been something that I thought was the right ending for quite a while now,” Armstrong said.

“Even though he’s not exactly the most powerful monarch you’ll ever meet — his power comes from Matsson. Those figures that drift upwards and make themselves amenable to powerful people are around.”

Speaking of the Roy siblings, Kendall, Roman and Shiv he said, “I thought about all their stories. You know, they don’t end. They will carry on. But it’s sort of where this show loses interest in them because they’ve lost what they wanted, which was to succeed — which, you know, was this prize that their father held out.

“In a reductive, brutal way, Roman ends up exactly where he started,” he continued. “He is that guy still. And he maybe easily could have been a playboy jerk with some slightly nasty instincts, and some quite funny jokes. He could’ve stayed in a bar, being that guy. And this has been a bit of a detour in his life, I would say.”

“Shiv is still in play, I’d say, in a rather terrifying, frozen emotionally barren place. But she has got this kind of non-victory, non-defeat. I mean, there’s gonna be some movement there. There’s still a lot of that game to play out, but that’s where we leave it. And it feels like it’s going to be hard to progress for them, emotionally, given the things they’ve said about each other.

“For Kendall, this will never stop being the central event of his life, the central days of his life, central couple of years of his life. Maybe he could go on and start a company, or do a thing. But the chances of him achieving the sort of corporate status that his dad achieved are very low. And I think that will mark his whole life.”

Source: TV Line