Succession Made You Decide

Was it tragedy, sitcom, something else? Yes

- KATHRYN VANARENDONK

THREE SEASONS AFTER Kendall drove a car into a pond and killed a waiter at his sister’s wedding, the hanging sword of Damocles finally falls. Shiv, desperate for a reason to explain why she’s tanking Kendall’s ascension beyond her own selfishness, blurts out the secret. Kendall can’t be the CEO of Waystar Royco because he killed someone. Then two astonishing things follow. First, Kendall says “Which?,” sending his siblings into a tailspin of speculation about what else he might have done. And then, incredibly, Kendall simply says “No.” It did not happen. It was a story he made up. He was briefly experiencing a break from reality. It was imagined. It was never real.

The fun, distracting bauble on the surface of Succession was “Who will win?” But the deeper uncertainty has always been about whether the Roys will experience consequences. A dozen or more life-altering events have piled up at their feet over the past four seasons, including the promise of a tell-all biography, a massive magazine exposé, the risk of imprisonment, an FBI raid, testimony before Congress, and a truly uncountable number of almost-deals that either fizzle at the last second or die on the vine. Not a single repercussion has ever stuck to them. Even their election maneuvering, the finale suggests, might end up getting washed away. But this—Kendall’s complicity in causing a man’s death. This one thing has finally come back! Consequences do exist.