‘Succession’ Season 4, Episode 5 Review: Death-Wrestling Ogres

The battle for the future of Waystar RoyCo continues as Succession hits the halfway mark in Season 3. GoJo mastermind, Lukas Matsson, outmaneuvered all three Roy children in this week’s episode, bringing Shiv into his confidence in order to use her and outplaying Kendall and Roman after they impulsively decided to tank the entire deal. He is very offended at their attempts to “Scooby-Doo” him, but he has the killer instinct that all three Roy kids lack.

Unfortunately for the Quad Squad—Greg’s absurd description of him and his three cousins—Kendall, Roman and Shiv are all clearly out of their depth here. Matsson tells the brothers at one point that while he didn’t like Logan, at least their father knew what he wanted. The same cannot be said for his feckless offspring.

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It becomes more and more clear that Logan decided to sell to Matsson because it was the best way to ensure that the company he built would not immediately fall into ruin thanks to the incompetence of his own children. In Matsson he saw a kindred spirit, someone who he could trust to at least be competent.

He couldn’t let go of ATN, and now, inexplicably, neither can his sons. When Matsson reveals that he wants the news company as part of the deal, they’re paralyzed by a single, ludicrous question: What would dad do? This question haunts them at every turn. “We can’t navigate by dad maps,” Kendall says at one point, but you know that all he can think about is whether his name was crossed out or underlined.

Mattson plays his hand perfectly. Even his story about sending liters of blood to his ex—who also happens to be his head of communications, Ebba—was just a way to get closer to Shiv. Tell her something that makes him look a little vulnerable, get her to give him some advice (go higher on the price, she suggests, which is both super obvious and exactly what he ends up doing) and then say the magic words: “I like you. I think you’re cool. You remind me of your father.” The boys may hate his guts, but he’s buttered Shiv up like toast—and by the end of the episode he’s already using her against her brothers, even if it is just to get her to take a picture of their dour expressions on the plane after the $192/share offer comes through.

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A well-buttered Shiv whistles a much different tune when it comes to Tom. Earlier in the episode the two squabbled and fought—she called him narrow-framed, like a ‘spelunker’ and he said she has thick, chewy earlobes “like barnacle meat” which I’m going to think of every time I see her now. All that sniping takes a backseat by the end of the episode. Nothing turns Shiv on like the heady combination of power and a boosted ego. She tells Tom he can fire Cyd and then asks him if he wants to get dinner when they get back. Tom is flustered, though perhaps not quite so flustered as he was during his cringey attempt to ingratiate himself with Matsson. Neither Greg nor Tom have any actual skill at this kind of schmoozing but they continually fail upward. It’s truly remarkable.

Some other great lines this episode:

Gerri’s bit about how GoJo is comprised of soft Europeans. “They may think they’re Vikings, but we’ve been raised by wolves,” she says, which I couldn’t help but think was some sly reference to Travis Fimmel, the star of both Vikings and Raised By Wolves (a wonderful HBO show that was cancelled during the big Warner Bros / Discovery merger, curiously enough). Hugo chimes in: “We’re snakes on a plane.”

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At one point, Shiv is trying to talk with her brothers and they try to shoe her away. They’re busy “death-wrestling ogres” Kendall tells her. “You’re looking at documents,” she jabs back. Shiv has lots of good zingers. “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,” turns out to be right on the money.

This episode really highlights each of the Roy children’s major shortcomings and Achilles heels. Kendall is driven by two entwined goals: The first is his desire to be in charge, to take over the family business and make his father proud. The second is desire to destroy his father at all costs. These are both impossible now that Logan is dead, but they still motivate every single one of his (often wildly impulsive) decisions.

Shiv is driven by ego and a sense that she is better than everyone else and she harbors a deep bitterness and resentment toward the world for not realizing that. She overplays her hand constantly because she’s not nearly as smart as she thinks she is. She’s just smart enough and just capable enough to fool herself, but she doesn’t fool anybody else. This is why people who claim that she played Matsson have it backwards. She was trying to play him and she truly believes she got the best of him, but the moment he tells her she’s cool and reminds him of Logan you know it’s the other way around.

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Finally, Roman. Roman is the only one of the three whose ego doesn’t get in the way, and who has some basic human dignity. It’s Roman’s humanity that gets in his way. We’ve seen this countless times now. He’s full of barbs and can be spiteful and dismissive, but he’s never comfortable with the cloak and dagger stuff. He’s also the only one of the three with any business sense. But he’s not really cut out for leadership. He’s too indecisive and wishy-washy. He’s not a killer, like Logan. He’s bad at playing the game his father—and Lukas Matsson—play so effortlessly.

Matsson plays each kid like a fiddle. He bruises Kendall’s ego, provokes Roman and gives Shiv all that validation she so desperately craves. All of this in Norway just days after their father’s death when everyone is emotionally drained and jetlagged. It’s all brilliantly manipulative.

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The fact that they end up getting a much higher price than they first expected pretty much by mistake is honestly kind of hilarious. Kendall is terrible at this stuff—Matsson calls him ‘Vaulter boy’ disdainfully at one point—but the deal is a good one. It’s a deal they can’t—and definitely shouldn’t—refuse. And yet, we know from experience that they’ll do whatever they can to foil Matsson and hang onto a company they can’t possibly hope to run anywhere except into the ground.

Where all this leads—who gets “killed” in the acquisition—or whether the Roy kids will find some way to blow the whole thing up still, remains to be seen. All we know for now is that Kendall is up to something. “He’s got that gleam in his eye,” Shiv says in the trailer for Episode 6. Uh-oh . . . . Matsson may be a sociopathic egomaniac but you should never underestimate Kendall’s willingness to, well, go full Kendall.

What did you think of ‘Kill List’? Let me know on Twitter or Facebook.

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