The King Is Dead, Long Live The King

At this point in HBO’s magnificent drama, Succession, the matter of succession itself may be less important than another lingering question: Will the kingdom survive, or will Logan’s heir become a prince of nothing, lording over the ash and rubble that was once Waystar RoyCo.

No matter what happens next, everything has changed and nothing will ever be the same again. The industry which gave rise to Logan Roy’s wealth and power has been overtaken by streaming and the internet. Technology has pecked and picked at it like buzzards. Mere months ago in the show’s timeline, Logan tried to buy Pierce media for around $20 billion; earlier this season, Nan Pierce was wooed by half that from Logan’s children.

The big GoJo sale may or may not go through, but it seems very unlikely that Kendall, Shiv and Roman will get as good a deal as their father would have had he not kicked the proverbial bucket quite so soon.

Speaking of buzzards, Episode 4 was largely a story of vultures and other scavengers circling in on Logan’s corpse and the empire he left behind after last week’s shocking death. All the suits are there, nervously mulling over a piece of paper Logan wrote that says Kendall should take over the company when he’s gone. The most interesting thing about the paper, however, is a line that’s either underlining Kendall’s name, or crossing it out.

Logan, reaching out from the grave, to haunt his son forever.

The siblings decide that Kendall and Roman will be co-interim CEOs to help shepherd the business through the rough waters to come, and they convince the board to go along with support from Sandy and Stewy. Shiv, however, seems distraught, clearly incapable of trusting her brothers to keep their word.

Some highlights:

• Greg trying to console his cousins and then awkwardly ingratiate himself to them, hoping for some kind of handout. Greg’s timing is whatever the opposite of impeccable is.
• He’s quick to mumble his disdain—perhaps passing it along after Roman’s tongue-lashing—to Kerry, Logan’s ex-lover and ex-assistant. She shows up at Marcia’s townhouse uninvited, a total mess, and only Roman steps forward to help her in her grief. Marcia, quite understandably, wants her escorted off the premises. She and Connor make a handshake deal for him to buy the property for a cool $63 million.
• Speaking of Connor, when he and Willa talk about their travel plans for after the wedding he starts listing states like Wisconsin and Michigan, big swing states crucial in any election. “Honeymoon states,” Willa says, bitingly. And so we get the episode’s title.
• Tom continues to be a man of surprising depths while at the same time shedding all dignity by telling everyone with any power that he lives to serve. When he tells this to the board, Karl gets one of his best lines of the entire series:

When Tom says that he’s “sick with grief” Gerry replies, “Oh you’re sick with grief? You might want to put down that fish taco. You’re getting your melancholy everywhere.”

“If there’s a ring, my hat’s in, respectfully,” Tom Says, wolfing down the taco.

“Well, I would just say, um, if we were to recommend you to the board, the question they might ask—” Karl says, stopping to insert: “Can I frame the question for you, but as a friend?”

“Sure,” Tom says, his mouth full.

“The negative case would go: You’re a clumsy interloper and noone trusts you. The only guy pulling for you is dead. And now, you’re just married to the ex-boss’s daughter and she doesn’t even like you. And you are fair and squarely f*&D*).”

“Jesus, Karl,” Tom says, clearly stunned. And off he goes to ingratiate himself elsewhere.

But the thing about Tom is that he pairs these moments with a truly genuine, loving moment with Shiv. When she tries to spurn him he says “Just let me show you some kindness,” and while everywhere else he seems to be looking for some new footing, here he seems to mean it.

Meanwhile, Mattson is blowing off the Roys and the deal hangs in the balance, but with both Roman and Kendall at the helm anything is possible. Neither man seems overjoyed. Roman remains haunted by his final message to his father, and Kendall is haunted by the note. When they’re given the option to either build up their father’s legacy or throw him under the bus, Roman is horrified. Kendall pretends to be, but in the end he decides his name was actually crossed out. He tells Hugo to do the dirty business, but keep it on the downlow. Even in death, Logan is Kendall’s adversary and nothing—not even succession to the throne—will keep him from his bloody vendetta.

I realize after watching this episode why they decided Logan had to die so early in the season. Logan was a king, and his death is monumental. It leaves his empire in tatters. We have to see what everyone does in the aftermath, while his ghost still haunts the castle. Queens and mistresses, generals and sworn swords, princes and princesses all milling about the corpse, counting the coins in the treasury, rifling through old notes and ledgers. Even his legacy is up for grabs, with political allies like Ron Petkus proclaiming him a man of dignity and generosity and compassion and various other words nobody would ever use to describe the man.

Connor, of course, is more concerned that they’re trying to paint him as a neocon when clearly he was a paleocon libertarian. Connor Roy was interested in politics at a very young age.

In any case, the show needed time for all of this. When the king dies, the kingdom is thrown into turmoil. The heir to the throne might be a man of vision, whose honor and competence brings forth a new golden age of prosperity and peace. Or he might be a weak, vain buffoon who leads the kingdom to ruin. Such is the tale of kings and succession told over countless centuries. For every Richard I there is a John I; for every Edward I there is an Edward II.

And for every Logan Roy, well, there are his children. “I love you,” he told them not long before he died. “But you’re not serious people.”

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