For all its whizz-bang caper-gone-wrong energy, and for all its subsequent emotional troughs, this week’s Succession finale might have been the most important in its entire run.
It’s an unexpected twist, like if King Lear contained a weird new beat where Lear hands the British crown to Jack Dorsey for a laugh, but it sets up a bold new future for the show.
This is something that Succession undoubtedly does very well – for the most part, its greatest moments have been those heart-thumping scenes where Kendall scraps for support to unseat his dad – and Jesse Armstrong has more than enough dramatic clout to centre the entire season around the battle to stop the Matsson deal dead in its tracks.
There’s a contingent of Succession fans – I confess to being one of them, from time to time – that has long been desperate to see how the kids would cope without the entitlement that comes from having their dad as their boss.
Is Logan Roy capable of being a contented retiree, or would his hunger for professional violence send him mad? Would Shiv re-enter the world of politics? Kendall has experience of existing outside of Waystar, so could this new environment be his path to rebuilding his fractured self-esteem? What in the world would Roman do? All the all-time great shows have a season like this, where the lead characters find themselves ripped from the comfort of their surroundings – Mad Men broke Sterling Cooper, Tony Soprano divorced Carmela, Lost hit a nuclear bomb with a rock and everyone went back in time – and there has never been a better chance for Succession to follow the pattern.
For years, Tom has been a figure of ridicule – his wife doesn’t love him, and her family views him as nothing but a socially climbing freeloader – and so his late-stage betrayal in the season three finale was an air-punching moment of true elation.